Educational Work and the State of Education

Abstract

1988 was an eventful year for state education in England and Wales; it saw the passage of an Education Reform Act which represents the largest and most far-reaching piece of educational legislation in these two countries since universal secondary education was introduced by the 1944 Education Act. The 1988 Act was the final nail in the coffin of the liberal consensus over state education which had existed since 1944, a consensus which basically said that education was a good thing, that it should be freely available to all as an important facet of achieving social justice and that, broadly speaking, teachers and pupils could be left to get on with it. The Baker Reform Act challenges all of these things — education is expensive, it isn't necessarily a good thing especially when controlled by the local state and teachers, schools should be competitive with each other and social justice is not a consideration compared