Now, in this firsthand look at school reform in Great Britain, John E. Chubb and Terry M. Moe show how the landmark Education Reform Act of 1988 imposed a radically new framework on British education—a framework built on the same types of reforms that American activists have been proposing for years: school-based management, choice, and accountability. The authors assess the sucess of the British experience with school choice and contends that it can well serve as a model for American school reform.
Questions many of Britain's idiosyncratic attitudes towards education and argues that Britain could learn from Japan and improve education and vocational training considerably.
The Education Reform Act introduced in England and Wales in 1988 brought about enormous changes in schools, both as management units and as educational institutions. This book, first published in 1992, was the first to look at the effects of the Act in all its aspects on the basis of empirical evidence gathered from schools over the first three years of the Act's implementation. It looks at how change is being achieved in the Local Management of Schools, the influence of the market on schools, the introduction of the National Curriculum and the place of Special Needs provision in the new education scene. This book will be of interest to all who want to know about educational reform in Britain. It will also be of interest to those in the fields of education policy, educational management and sociology of education.
This book is about how special education policy and practice is being negotiated within the context of educational reform in two countries. The political climate of recent years in both Britain and the USA led to many changes along similar lines, with a move towards placing greater power and choice in the hands of those individuals with special educational needs. Each chapter provides an overview and comparative analysis of the origins and evolution of specific educational reforms in the USA and the UK. The themes explored include: *providing parents with greater choice *decentralising decision making *making the whole curriculum available to all *accountability *funding the necessary changes.
Much has been written on Education Acts, yet we have abused and neglected them. The history of educational legislation has been written off as ‘Acts and facts’, and the conventional approach to writing about them has been concerned with politics, and especially with the men responsible for them. On the centenary of the 1918 Education Act and Education (Scotland) Act, and the thirtieth anniversary of the 1988 Education Reform Act, we can rightly compare them alongside the other two agenda-setting master-Acts of the 20th century, those of 1902 and 1944. These latter Acts, themselves landmarks of legislation, have each attracted several significant articles that have been published in the British Journal of Educational Studies. Between them, these provide a detailed commentary on the key legislation that has framed the development of UK education that is also open to critique and challenge. The anniversaries of these key Education Acts are also starting points for broader discussion of continuities, changes and contestation in legislation involving the regime of power, control and regulation of education. This can also include consideration of the international context and the relationship between educational and other social legislation and reform.
This book questions many of Britain's idiosyncratic attitudes towards education. Dimensions missing from Britain's recent reforms, but present in Japan are highlighted. The author argues that Britain could learn a lot from Japan in order to improve education and vocational training considerably.
This book supplies the definitive contemporary history of education policy in the late twentieth century. Some of the leading educationalists reflect on the major legislative and structural changes in the field over the last 25 years.
'Thoroughly researched and written with such calm authority, yet makes you want to scream with righteous indignation' John O'Farrell 'We can expect the manifesto-writers at the next general election to pass magpie-like over these chapters ... The appeal to act is heartfelt' Financial Times ___________________ Includes a new chapter, 'Moving Ahead?' Britain's private, fee-paying schools are institutions where children from affluent families have their privileges further entrenched through a high-quality, richly-resourced education. Engines of Privilege contends that, in a society that mouths the virtues of equality of opportunity, of fairness and of social cohesion, the educational apartheid separating private schools from our state schools deploys our national educational resources unfairly; blocks social mobility; reproduces privilege down the generations; and underpins a damaging democratic deficit in our society. Francis Green and David Kynaston carefully examine options for change, while drawing on the valuable lessons of history. Clear, vigorous prose is combined with forensic analysis to powerful effect, illuminating the painful contrast between the importance of private schools in British society and the near-absence of serious, policy-shaping debate. ___________________ 'An excoriating account of the inequalities perpetuated by Britain's love affair with private schools' The Times
