Public Affairs Part I

The Local Education System

 The ‘Phases’ of Education in
the UK
• Primary phase – Education in all the subjects of “primary”
importance (i.e. English language, maths, basis history
and science) in primary schools (ages five to 11);
infant (five to seven) and junior schools (seven to 11): or
first (five to eight/nine) and middle schools (eight/nine to
12/13)
•

• Secondary phase – Education (for11/13 – 16/19 year olds)

in primary subjects like English and maths, but with
increasing specialisation after pupils take their “options”
at 13 or 14.
• 

• Further education – “Catch-up” and vocational education

for the less academic and/or additional qualifications for
those who do less well at GCSE. The generic term used
to describe FE colleges is tertiary colleges
• 

• Higher education – University education for those who

Recent History of State Schools
System
• 1944 – Introduction of new system of comprehensive
education in England and Wales, overseen by a
Secretary of State for Education. He or she
delegated responsibility for actually running and
planning local schools in the maintained– or “state” –
sector to LEAs. The Act also… 
•

•a) Set up a three-tier system of primary, secondary and

further education
•(b) Made provision for child welfare and children with

disabilities
•(c) Abolished fees in secondary schools

•(d) Raised the school leaving age to 15

• 

• 1960s/70s – Emergence of selection through

controversial “11-plus” exams for entry to secondary
 Recent History of State School
System
• 1965 – Labour government calls for LEAs to start planning
to convert all schools into comprehensives – eliminating
need for a selection
•

• 1970 – The then Tory Education Secretary, Margaret

Thatcher, tells LEAs they are no longer bound to do this
•  
• 1976 – Recently re-elected Labour government urges all
LEAs still to abolish grammar schools to submit schemes
outlining how they plan to
•

• 1979 – Tories return to power and repeal this stipulation.

• 

• 1980 – The Government introduces the assisted places

scheme - a means by which pupils from lower income
families who were successful in entrance exams for
independent schools (i.e. ‘private’ and ‘public’
 The 1988 Education Reform
Act
• This Act introduced the biggest shake-up of
the state school system since the 1944 Act. In an
effort to give parents, teachers and governors of
individual schools greater direct control over the
day-to-day running of those schools, it ushered in
a system known as local management of
schools (LMS):
•

• Parents and governors of schools with a least 300

pupils offered chance to “opt-out” of local
authority control and be given grant-
maintainedstatus. Money would be given
direct to them in future by central government
– bypassing local councils – and they could take
 The 1988 Education Reform
Act
• A single National Curriculum introduced to
teaching in specific key subjects
• 

• Tertiary colleges taken out of LEA control and

transferred to new FE sector funded directly by
government via the Further and Higher
Education Funding Councils
• 

• Act also allowed individual LEAs discretion to

move as quickly as they liked towards the new
system - meaning wide geographical
discrepancies emerged
•
 Controversies Surrounding
1988 Act
• Schools that opted out of local authority control were
seen as being granted unfairly favourable financial
treatment from government.
•
• Many GM applications made by schools seeking to
avoid closure or amalgamation proposed by their
LEAs to reduce surplus places
•
• The eventual number of approved GM schools fell well
short of the Conservatives’ initial estimates,
meaning that, in some people’s eyes, the cost of
introducing the system was never wholly justified.
•
• Despite the fact that Labour later put an end to the
creation of any new GM schools on coming to
power, both Tony Blair and the administration’s first
 Further Reforms Post-1988
• 1992 – Local league tables of schools covering
National Curriculum test results, truancy rates
and destinations of school leavers released
amid huge controversy. Schools inspected
regularly by Ofsted (Office for Standards in
Education)
•

• 1993– Secretary of State formally given duty of

“promoting the education of the people of
England and Wales” in a new Act. No mention
any longer of the role of LEAs, and new
quangos – The Funding Agency for Schools
and The Schools Funding Council for Wales
– introduced
 Further Reforms Post-1988
• 1996 – All post-1944 Acts pulled together in a
single Consolidation Act. The Act also gave the
Education Secretary the right to publish
information relevant to “parental choice”
•
• 1997 – The assisted places scheme scrapped.
•
• 2002 – Government opens first city academy, a
new type of ‘independent state school’, which
is allowed to select 10% of its pupils on the
basis of aptitude in a specialist area
•
• 2007 – Govt invites struggling private schools to
become academies
 Department for Education and
Skills and the Secretary of
State
• The role of the Secretary of State has become
an increasingly interventionist one as the powers
of LEAs have been eroded over the years. He or
she now:
•
• Intervenes to prevent unreasonable uses of
power/acts in default where particular bodies
are failing to carry out their statutory duties
•
• Can direct LEAs and other to reduce surplus
places in schools - or increase them
•
•
 Department for Education and
Skills and the Secretary of
State
• Where individual schools are deemed to be
“failing”, can put them under special
measures, under Fresh Start Initiative
(schools given two years to improve)
•

• 2000 (March 1) – David Blunkett, then Education

Secretary, announced at NUT conference that
he wanted LEAs to consider “fresh starts” for
any schools where fewer than 15 per cent of
their pupils achieved five or more GCSE passes
as grades C or above. First on the block was
Gillingham Community College in Medway, Kent
•
 Local Education Authorities
(LEAs)
• Traditionally, LEAs have been directly involved
in the running of schools. This has changed since
the advent of LMS. Reductions in their powers
have included:
•

• 1993 – Statutory ‘duty’ of LEA to appoint an

education committee removed, although, in
practice, most have continued to do so
•

• New Labour has proposed that committees that

remain should include parents – just as the
Tories introduced church reps and teachers
• 
 Local Education Authorities
(LEAs)
• 1998 – New requirement for every LEA to prepare
an education development plan (EDP)
setting out proposals to Secretary of State for
developing school provision
•
• 1997 onwards – Labour has gradually replaced
pre-existing grant-maintained schools with
foundation schools (now known as trust
schools)– which also ‘self-govern’ – and is
planning to increase the number of academies
to 400 by 2010
•
 Range and Types of State
Schools
•

• Prior to 1998, these were main ‘categories’ of

LEA schools:
• 
• County schools (often known as
“comprehensives” or “secondary moderns”, if
at secondary level) – Established by the LEA,
which owned their buildings
• 

• Voluntary schools – Though run by LEAs, land

and/or buildings owned by charities and/or
church denominations (e.g. Roman Catholic
schools). There were either voluntary
 Range and Types of State
Schools
• City technology colleges – An early incarnation
of the principle behind ‘city academies’,
introduced by Tories
•
• Special schools– Set up to meet the needs of
children with learning disabilities. Most are
educated in the normal state system, but if
awarded “statement of special education need”
– a process known as statementing – go to
special school
• 

• Grammar schools – Secondary schools located

in some parts of England (e.g. Kent,
Lincolnshire) where academically able pupils
 Changes of School Name
Post-1998
• Old New
 
•

• County Community College

• Controlled Voluntary Controlled
• Aided Voluntary Aided
• Maintained Special Community
Special
• GM (previous county/controlled) Foundation
• GM (established by Funding Agency)
Foundation
• GM Special Foundation Special
•
 Recent Trends in State
Schooling
• City Technology Colleges– The Tories began to
experiment with new kinds of secondary schools,
CTCs, specifically designed to prepare pupils for
careers in science, technology and maths. The first
were set up in Kingshurst, Birmingham, and
Nottingham. Controversially, while the schools
themselves received most funding direct from
central government, the capital costs were shared
with business sponsors (Bradford has a “Dixons
CTC”)
•

• City Academies – Tony Blair’s equivalent of City

Technology Colleges, these are major capital
investments, usually financed through PPP/PFI and
targeted at areas of deprivation/academic under-
achievement. In some cases, existing schools have
been ‘improved’ in this way, rather than new ones
built. There are currently a little over 40, but Blair
hopes that, within a few years, there could be as
 Recent Trends in State
Schooling
• Faith schools– Tony Blair has been a vocal
advocate of the standards of discipline and
academic achievement in faith schools, and
sent his own son, Euan, to the Roman Catholic
Oratory School. After a long lull, the number of
faith schools has begun to increase again – with
four Muslim, two Sikh, one Greek Orthodox and
one Seventh Day Adventist school being set up
since 1998
•
• “Successful” schools (those that perform strongly
in government league tables) to be granted
“super school” status. This will enable them to
set their own pay policy and decide how they
wish to raise money for new buildings and
resources and spend the budgets allocated to
 Recent Trends in State
Schooling
• Major decisions to be made directly by school
governors - giving parents more say
•
• High-performing schools to potentially be given
control of their own admissions policy – a move
which some parents’ groups, unions and Labour
traditionalists object to on the grounds that
popular schools may be able to reintroduce a
form of selection (i.e. choosing only the
academically most bright/”middle-class” pupils)
•

• Local authorities reduced in many areas to

“commissioners” of education services, rather
than providers. This model is seen by many as
 The Role of Ofsted
• The Office of Standards in Education (Ofsted), led by
the Chief Inspector of Schools, has legal responsibility for
monitoring the quality of teaching in all state schools (including
foundation/trust ones and grammar schools) and tertiary colleges.
Inspections are usually carried out once every three or four years:
•
• Summary report produced by Ofsted/Estyn (Wales) is considered
by the governing body, which has to produce an action plan
within 40 working days
•

• LEA required to produce a report depending on Ofsted findings

• 

• Where report finds that a school is “failing to give its pupils an

acceptable standard of education” – i.e. is dubbed a “failing”
school – it can be deemed to be in need of “special
measures”. In such cases, an action plan must be submitted
to the Education Secretary, who will monitor closely the
school’s progress over the following two years. If no signs of