Intergovernmental Relations and the Limitations of Central Control: reconstructing the politics of Comprehensive Education

Abstract

The election of a Conservative Government in May I979, and the immediate action it nas taken to repeal the main sections of the 1976 Education Act, marks another watershed in the post-war politics of comprehensive reorganisation in Britain. Fifteen years before, a Labour Government came to power committed to ending selection in secondary education. This remained their objective throughout the intervening years, eleven of which were spent in government. Furthermore, in the mid-960os, the educational and much of the political world believed that the argument for comprehensive education had been clearly and finally won. And yet as we enter the I98os the foreseeable future of selective education seems secure. Forty-seven of the 97 local education authorities in England still have at least one grammar school and a small but significant minority of LEAs (at least I and probably nearer 30) seem certain to retain selective systems [i]. This situation raises important questions about the relationship between central government and local authorities in England and Wales. To the extent that the popular view of government in Britain is of a strong central tier, it presents a paradox. Comprehensive reorganisation is an example of major central government intervention intended to influence local policy yet at best it has achieved only a partial success. For, while over 83% of maintained secondary school children are now in Comprehensive schools, the principle of selection has survived. This paper is concerned with the political processes involved in the implementation of comprehensive reorganisation and their implications for intergovernmental relations in England and Wales. These recent events serve to highlight the inadequacies of much of the existing literature in both of these areas. The large number of studies of comprehensive reorganisation can be clearly divided according to their predominantly national or local focus [2]. This division reflects one particular problem with the literature; the failure to analyse adequately the dynamic interaction between the tiers of government. Although some of the institutional literature on the government of education is clearly aware of the importance of local government's role and the central-local relationship [3], the national studies of comprehensive reorganisation rarely analyse the structure of intergovernmental relations and place too heavy an emphasis on central government policy-making. Hill criticises this approach for its 'top-down' bias which tends to see policy as an input from the top which is then implemented at the local level [4]. The local studies are almost all discrete analyses in which the central government is treated simply as an exogenous influence [5]. In addition the literature is concerned almost exclusively with the progress of reorganisation and pays little attention to the build up of resistance. There is a dearth of detailed local studies of LEAs opposing reorganisation or under safe Conservative control.