Osbourne’s budget statement and the education white paper
which quickly followed set out the latest and most drastic assault in the
40-year war against state education. From 1976 onwards, public discussion of
education in Britain has been dominated by what Stephen Ball refers to as a
“discourse of derision” about teachers and teaching. This was made concrete in
policy terms by the 1988 Education Reform Act which set the trend, consistent
throughout Tory, New Labour and Coalition governments, towards the announcements
of recent weeks.
Every school is to be forced to become an academy and parent
governors will be removed from governing bodies, where these still exist.
