Public Service on the Brink by Jenny Manson

Author:Jenny Manson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Public service, politics, reorganisation, trade union, civil service, government, local government, privatization, NHS, health, education, public management, university, welfare state, railways, legal aid, citizens advice, sociology, reform, public sector, cuts, coalition, public spending, austerity
ISBN: 9781845403539
Publisher: Andrews UK Limited 2012
Published: 2012-03-13T00:00:00+00:00

At the same time, comprehensive reorganisation stalled. Central government was no longer prepared to leave it to educationists or Local Authorities to set the way ahead. Politicians began to talk up the importance of competition between schools as a means to improve quality and highlighted the right of parents to have a choice of school. An attempt was made to find alternative education providers to finance City Technology Colleges. Rising unemployment led to extreme anxiety about educational standards and distrust of ‘progressive’ methods of teaching, all of which culminated in an overwhelming emphasis on testing and assessment of both pupils and schools to see how they were matching up to the demands of the national curriculum. OFSTED was established in 1992 as a more systematic way of inspecting schools and ensuring accountability. All of this was against a background of severe restrictions in public spending which LEAs could do little about since their ability to raise money locally had been curtailed by rate-capping.

Under the New Labour government, elected in 1997, there was a welcome injection of funds but no change of direction. The suspicion that public servants were ‘vested interests’ and somehow just in it for themselves was still there. A storm of initiatives followed to formalise schools’ responsibilities for all aspects of pupil development, personal, social and health education, sex education, citizenship and so on. Most of the assumptions that lay behind the changes since 1988 were accepted; national politicians now felt that they, not professional educationists, should determine what was to be taught and even methods of teaching. National testing became even more important. The drive to reduce still further the role of LEAs (or rather Local Authorities - education committees were eventually abolished) continued with the creation of more schools funded directly by central government and the promotion of ‘diversity’ - as between types of schools, certainly not in relation to what was taught. The original national curriculum had proved far too detailed and burdensome and was gradually pared down, but despite the commissioning of a number of reports, little encouragement was given to innovative curriculum development; politicians were satisfied with lists of traditional subjects familiar to them from their own schooling. What they were interested in was measures designed to show whether and how much improvement was being made in schools, and they were anxious not to offend the middle classes whose interests had been well served by conventional approaches.

The coalition government (May 2010) finally abandoned the idea of a ‘national system locally administered’ opting for a push towards complete fragmentation, strongly encouraging all schools to cut their links to LAs and to become state funded independent schools. The belief that competition between schools was the best way to raise standards overall was unshaken; choice was what mattered, parents would choose successful schools, less successful ones would close, and with diversity of provision would come innovation and progress. Accountability would be achieved by the regime of tests, public examinations and league tables. At the same time,

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