Gov Pol by party

• Management and funding

  • Management moved away from local authorities and to governors and headteachers.
  • The Conservative governments changed the formula used to calculate funding. Money is now allocated to schools based on the number of pupils in a school.
• Choice

  • Parental choice and open enrolment – any school with vacancies had to accept any pupil until they were full.
  • A National curriculum and national testing (SATs) was implemented.
• Control measures

  • Establishment of Ofsted to measure school performance and school quality.
  • Introduction of school performance tables (league tables), ranking schools on the grades achieved by their students and the 'quality' of each school.
• Overview of improvements

  • Increased funding for schools.
  • More nursery education.
  • Smaller primary school classes.
• Education Action Zones

  • Establishment of Education Action Zones and academies in the more disadvantaged areas.
  • Education Action Zones are special areas, often in deprived parts of the country. The aim was to unite local schools, local parents & businesses to try to improve education in these areas.
• Funding

  • Introduction of the Education Maintenance Allowance (EMA).
  • This provided supplementary funds or income to support children from less advantaged backgrounds as they continued in school.
• Funding

  • Introduction of the Education Maintenance Allowance (EMA).
  • This provided supplementary funds or income to support children from less advantaged backgrounds as they continued in school.
• Specialisms

  • Introduction of Specialist school status where all secondary schools were encouraged to adopt a specialist subject area.
  • For example, some schools could become 'Language Colleges' and specialise in teaching languages to their pupils.
• Academies and free schools

  • Increase in the number of academies. Academies get the money for their budget directly from the central government (or department for education), instead of from the local government. Academies often have more autonomy around which teachers they should hire and how they choose which pupils should be admitted to their school.
  • Introduction of free schools. Free schools are schools that are set up by a group of people (sometimes parents) and they also receive their funding directly from the central government.
• Funding

  • Introduction of the pupil premium (extra money for the most disadvantaged pupils).
  • How much money schools get in 'pupil premium' is often linked to the incomes of the parents of the children who attend the school.
• Curriculum

  • Introduction of the English Baccalaureate (EBacc).
  • The Department for Education define the EBacc as the subjects English Language & Literature, Maths, Science, Geography or History, and a language.
  • National Curriculum Reform (academies exempted).
  • Exam reform (new-style GCSE, AS and A levels). Coursework was removed from many subjects and exams were less modular, with AS levels de-emphasised and most GCSE exams happening at the end of year 11.
• Targets

  • Tougher performance targets for schools.
• League tables

  • Within education, international league tables compare the standards of educational performance.
  • The international league table known as PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) is measured every 3 to 5 years in order to compare performance from around the world.
• PISA panic

  • The concerns that PISA highlights often creates panic amongst governments, this as ‘PISA panic’.
  • This is because governments want to quickly fix issues so that their education system is looked on more favourably.
• Multiculturalism

  • Globalisation has also impacted education due to the increasing flow of people from other cultures. 
  • This has led to teachings of multiculturalism, citizenship studies and wider variety of modern foreign languages.