Racial Segregation in State Schools: The Parent's Right to Choose?

Abstract

The state education system has been the site of constant political conflict since 1980. In part, this reflects simply the pervasive efforts of the Thatcher and Major administrations to reshape central-local government relations into a less pluralist mould.1 However, education reform has also been the subject of central government's reformist zeal because of its perceived dominance by the professional cadres of the liberal intelligentsia, exemplified in the demonology of the new right by new urban left councils and the National Union of Teachers.2 A national curriculum, premised on the need to imbue all children with a 'traditional', 'British' education, has been introduced to counter the supposed trendy multiculturalism and anti-racism espoused by the teacher training colleges; the innovation of opted out schools is allegedly intended to ensure that 'power' is removed from councillors, bureaucrats, and militant teachers and bestowed instead on parents.3 In many respects, the Thatcher/Major agenda for school reform has been the subject of overt conflict in the national political arena. Insofar as policy preferences have been enacted as legislation, their constitutional legitimacy might be questioned on conventional grounds (because of the goverment's minority electoral support, or because of the legislation's inconsistency with the post-war partnership model of central-local relations) but, in the narrow legal sense, the constitutionality of such explicit legislative reform is beyond dispute. This paper examines an element of education reform that has been achieved by rather more stealthy means, but which seemingly has profound practical and symbolic implications for the continued influence of pre-Thatcherite political values on the administration of the state education system. In R. v. Cleveland County Council and Secretary of State for Education, ex parte the Commission for Racial Equality,4 the Court of Appeal held that a local authority was obliged by s. 6 of the Education Act 1980 to accommodate