Introduction

Abstract

It is hoped that this book will stand on its own as a detailed study of New Labour’s policy toward secondary education in Britain, starting from Tony Blair’s election as leader of the Labour Party in July 1994, to the defeat of Gordon Brown’s Labour government in the general election of May 2010. But it can also be seen as a sort of sequel to an earlier book I have written under the title Towards a New Education System: The Victory of the New Right? published in 1989 (Chitty, 1989a). Based on research for a University of London doctorate, this was a study of the politics of education in England and Wales from 1976 to 1988, and, bearing in mind that much of the so-called education establishment was united in its opposition to the market-driven proposals in the Conservative government’s 1988 Education Reform Act, the book ended on a fairly optimistic and upbeat note: “The question mark in the title of this book remains firmly in place, and will not easily be dislodged” (p. 227). It now seems clear to me that that optimism was somewhat misplaced. One of the purposes of this present book is to show how so many aspects of the education agenda of Margaret Thatcher’s government were continued, and expanded upon, by all the governments (both Conservative and New Labour) that followed. It will, in fact, be argued that the postwar education settlement that was dismantled at the end of the 1980s remains in pieces today, as we come to terms with living in a post—welfare society.