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Journal of Education
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1The term British formally denotes four territories, England, Scotland, Northern Ireland,
and Wales, each of which has a separate educational system. No recognized or elegant term
exists to speak of the combination of England and Wales, so I have chose to use British for
brevity and variety.
Requests for reprints should be sent to John Fitz, Cardiff University, School of Social
Sciences, 2.02 Glamorgan Building, King Edward VII Avenue, Cardiff CF10 3WT, Wales,
U.K. E-mail: fitz@cf.ac.uk
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Historical Background
In narrative terms, the 1944 Education Act provided the basis for the
governance of British education, much of which is still relevant today. As
well as establishing compulsory secondary education, the Act also created
the principle of local control through local education authorities (LEAs)
and local education committees. They were given the responsibility for
the planning and provision of education to meet community needs,
whereas the curriculum was a shared responsibility between LEAs and
schools, administrators, and teachers. They were expected to determine
curriculum content and modes of instruction in light of local preferences
and their own professional training and judgment. Often interpreted as a
national system locally administered, central government policy levers
were perceived as few and accountability diffuse. In the 1960s, one minister sardonically noted that his powers were limited to authorizing the
demolition of old air raid shelters on school grounds (Maclure, 2001).
Schools existed with low levels of external pressure either from government or from parents.
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J. Fitz
that this new ensemble has to regulate the various activities of LEAs,
schools, and educational professionals. At the heart of this process has been
the creation of a meso-state: nonelected, ministerially appointed agencies
responsible for the provision of aspects of education, social, and welfare
services. They are accountable upward to ministers, but have no clear lines
of accountability downward to citizens and electors. In education, for
example, teacher education is decided by the Teacher Training Agency
(TTA), whereas the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA)
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they are "deliverers" of the curriculum and other policies, not the professional creators and crafters of teaching and learning polices and practices.
Within central government, and notably under Tony Blair's Labour
administration, prominence has been accorded to the coordinating role of
prime minister. His policy unit now ranks in influence alongside the
education secretary and civil servants in the department of state in the
governance of education.
The central state has also established a formidable institutional com-
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J. Fitz
teachers as well as a demonstrated ability in the management of wholeclass teaching (Carvel, 1997; Furlong, 2001; Gardiner 1997).
5. Target setting for schools and LEAs, another Labour government
initiative to set levels of attainment for each school and local authority
expressed in terms of the percentages of pupils achieving specified
grades. Persistent underperformance is likely to trigger the interest of
school inspectorates. Targets are also linked to:
6. Performance-related pay for teachers, although its official designation
The grip that the center has taken on the system has been justified as
action necessary to drive up standards. However, it also demonstrates a
lack of confidence in policies and practices of LEAs and educationists to
contribute to this policy goal. The accumulation of performance indicators, targets, and interventions on one hand and punitive initiatives on the
other shows in the starkest terms where power now resides. The Labour
government has not only been keenly committed to using the available
levers created by the Conservatives, but it has added a raft of its own, to
maintain pressure on schools to improve levels of attainment. Their first
"consultative" White Paper, Excellence in Schools, issued in 1997 (Department for Education and Employment, 1997), declared a zero-tolerance
policy for underperforming LEAs, schools, and teachers. That agenda has
been pursued more or less unremittingly through a series of standardsdriven reforms.
From the central government's standpoint, it can now point to the proportion of the 11-year-olds achieving benchmark standards in literacy and
numeracy rising by 19 percentage points and 20 percentage points,
respectively, in the period 1996 to 2002 (Earl, Watson, Levin, Leithwood, &
Fullan, 2003). Moreover, the figures show the number of 16-year-old students obtaining the official benchmark of five GCSE grades A* through C
has increased by 4 percentage points between 1996/1997 and 2000/2001
ished in two respects. The central direction of curriculum and pedagogy leaves LEAs with important school and student support functions
(Firestone, Winter, & Fitz, 2000; Kogan, 2002; Riley & Louis, 2000) that
are primarily concerned with the "delivery" of central initiatives. They
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through offering schools a menu of in-service professional development activities. Schools, as budget holders, however, can choose to pur-
exists between LEAs and "their" schools. Their second key role, as
planners, providers, and organizers of local schools, has been seriously
undermined by choice and diversity policies, and I discuss the implica-
grades in the GCSE classes (15- to 16-year-olds) and have put in extra
resources to maximize the chances of these students obtaining C grades,
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J. Fitz
creative activities of innovative curriculum design matched to the particular needs of their children. There was also the sense that the NC and
its associated assessments were making teachers' relationships with students less personal. Although the immediate effect of the NC led teachers to feel more constrained in their professional practice in Pollard
et al.'s (1994) initial study, in its follow-up, teachers had redefined their
professional roles and reported feeling less constricted in their practices
(Croll, 1996). There is also broad acknowledgment that since 1988 teachers' work has intensified as they have been relocated, via the accountability system, into what is called a "discourse of performativity" (Ball,
2000; Jeffrey, 2002). In it, teaching success is narrowly defined in terms of
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The Act also introduced open enrollment, which meant parents could
express a preference for any school in their LEA (and after the Greenwich
high court judgment, any school), and, moreover, their children had a
right to attend any school with surplus places (Fitz, Taylor, Gorard, &
White, 2002). Open enrollment was linked to a per capita funding regime
where the number of students attending a school, not social or educational
needs, determined its share of the local budget. Any loss in student numbers therefore meant a reduction in a school's financial resources. School
are effectively under pressure to maintain their "market share" of students. The Act also created the grant-maintained (GM) schools policy
where, after a ballot of parents, enabled schools opt out of LEAs and
receive funding directly from the central government. The cumulative
effects of these policies transferred many LEA functions to schools and
parents. Previous plans to amalgamate, redesignate, or close schools in
order to reduce surplus places were disrupted by schools opting out or
threatening to do so from LEA control. Most striking is the fact the very
great majority of the grammar schools, which constitute 4% of all secondary schools in England, became grant-maintained. They preserved
the selective admissions policies in the face of LEAs, such as that of
Gloucestershire, that had progressively attempted to become fully comprehensive (Fitz, Gorard, & Taylor, 2002). There was downward pressure
on LEAs to become service agencies for schools, providing advice on
teaching and school effectiveness measures at a cost.
Even this brief account conveys the extent to which the then-Conservative
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J. Fitz
the end of 2003 aims to have about 30% of all secondary schools in
England designated as "specialist," a target it is well on track to achieve
(Gorard & Taylor, 2001). This is not the only program by which schools
can bid to the central government for extra resources. The Education
Action Zone (EAZ) initiative was an area-based policy designed to target
resources at disadvantaged communities (Gerwirtz, 1999). A zone includes
one or two secondary schools and designated primary schools working
together under a zone director and guided by a forum of parents and educational and local community and business representatives. In both these
initiatives, LEAs have been marginalized by the funding arrangements; in
addition, in the case of specialist schools, the schools themselves can
determine admissions arrangements. What is also significant in these
policies is Labour's determination to fund them via public-private coalitions. Applicant specialist schools and EAZs had to show they had raised
sums or had promises, in cash or kind-in the case of specialist schoolsof ?50,000 or more in order to attract matching grants from the central
government. How much hard cash has actually been raised from the private sector is difficult to judge, but it has proved less than easy for many
applicants to raise the required funds. At the time of writing, there is con-
The broad trend toward educational initiatives, in England and elsewhere in the United Kingdom, based on public-private partnerships has
ing such a course has not gone unnoticed. Programs such as the Private
Finance Initiative (PFI) funding of new schools and the refurbishment of
others involve financial consortia undertaking building projects that are
then leased back to LEAs for a substantial fee over a 30-year period (Fitz
& Beers, 2002). There are two sets of accountability issues here. The first
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Conclusion
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J. Fitz
ics teaching in the United Sates and England and Wales. Assessment in Education, 7(1), 13-37.
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Fitz, J. & Beers, B. (2002). Educational management organisations and the privatisation of
education in the US and the UK. Comparative Education, 38(2), 137-154.
Fitz, J., Gorard, S., & Taylor, C. (2002). School admissions after the School Standards and
Framework Act: Bringing the LEAs back in? Oxford Review of Education 28(2), 373-393.
240
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Fitz, J., Halpin, D. & Power, S. (1993). Grant-maintained schools: Education in the market place.
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