The Destruction of the Local Education Authority in England 1974–2016

Abstract

Donald Naismith describes the destruction of the partnership between central and local government, on which the national system had always rested, which began to take place in the 1960s and the attempts which subsequently gathered pace to replace the country’s ‘national system locally administered’ with a ‘local system nationally administered’. In particular, he focusses on Margaret Thatcher’s education revolution which sought to reorganise the ‘failed’ ‘supply-led’ state system, in which the local education authorities played a pivotal part, along the lines of the ‘successful’ ‘demand-led’ independent sector. Donald Naismith argues that there is no inherent contradiction between the government’s school improvement programme and continued—albeit re-vitalised—local involvement, and that the reasons for such involvement are as valid as they have ever been, if not more so as the shortcomings of the present arrangements become increasingly apparent.

Until the Government of Wales Act 1998 Wales was included in legislation affecting England also.