Author Description

How is education controlled? And who has the power? This book looks at school education in England and Wales in the 1990s in the perspective of the past thirty years. A world in which government laid down broad objectives and left local education authorities and schools to interpret and implement them in local circumstances has been swept away. Detailed and centralized control of every essential aspect has been put in its place. Yet at the same time attempts have been made to introduce 'a market in schooling' and the Parent's Charter. John Tomlinson examines the forces of social change, economic failure and political ideology that drove these sweeping changes, and emphasizes how much freedom can still be exercised by the dedicated and professional teacher in the interests of the pupils.