Twenty Years On

Twenty years on from the 1988 Education Reform Act, what did it do? More to the point is what it failed to do.

It failed to re-open a single grammar school. Indeed, not one re-opened at any time between 1979 and 1997, and David Cameron recently led his party into the division lobby in support of a Government Bill to ban the creation of any more.

And it failed to reverse the Thatcher Government’s own replacement of O-levels with GCSEs.

But it did gravely weaken Local Education Authorities. Without strong LEAs, a bipartite or tripartite system could not and cannot function. Hence their downgrading by Kenneth Baker, one of Thatcher’s staunchest lieutenants, who has devoted his retirement to the battle to abolish church schools.