key education policies

• liberal - 1870 Compulsory Schools Act


  lowers the cost of education

  widens opportunity and creates a more skilled workforce
• liberal - 1880 leaving age raised to 10


  extends education

  helps lower classes
• conservative - 1891 schools became totally free


  extends education - helps lower classes

  meritocratic as it allows access to opportunity
• coalition - 1918 schools leaving age raised to 14


  widens opportunity

  creates a more skilled workforce
• national - 1936 education act, raising leaving age to 15 in September 1939 (postponed due to outbreak of the war)


  creates a more skilled workforce
• coalition - 1944 the butler act introduced tripartite system


  tripartite system - end fee paying in maintained schools - grammar, secondary modern, technical college

  aimed to be meritocratic - a system of education that rewards effort and talent, many concerned it was labelling at age 11
• labour - 1948 a five year plan launched to train 96,000 teachers, 60,000 of them women, to reduce secondary classes to 30 and primary to 40 by 1951


  improving standards
• conservative - 1961 a campaign to persuade 50,000 married women back into teaching is launched


  meets the changing needs of the economy

  greater inclusion
• labour - comprehensive schools act 1965


  for all students - dismantled tripartite system - students would attend the school nearest them - create an even-playing field in the education system

  equal opportunity for all - meritocracy

  labour believed comprehensive education was fairer and provided equal access to opportunity
• conservative


  1981 - launches a programme to put a computer in every school, The Rampton Report blames teachers for ethnic underachievement and calls for more black teachers

  work experience 1983 - became funded by a Technical and Vocational Skills initiative which funded work experience for students in school time (usually Y10)

  to deal with high unemployment - due to the government selling off state industries, a new generation of young people needed training as they couldn't rely on manual work
• conservative - Education Reform Act 1988


  created an education market:

  • national curriculum
  • national testing
  • league tables
  • open enrolment
  • ofsted
  • formula funding

  marketisation became a key focus, improve standards and increase competition
• conservative - introduction of GNVQs (1992)


  vocational, skills and job-based qualifications

  General National Vocational Qualifications introduced in areas like business, health and social care and applied ICT

  more practical than a-levels (later renamed applied a-levels to reduce academic snobbery)

  designed to attract students to more skills based students
• coalition (conservative/lib dem), conservative - academies and free schools 2010


  marketisation of education and perhaps the privatisation of state education

  widening the education market