Since the 1980’s both conservative and labour conservative and labour governments have put a range of policies into place, the aims of which have been to raise standards and choice. Some theorists have argued that these changes were mandatory to improve Britain’s industrial competiveness. Some sociologists – Marxists especially have claimed that the real aim and result was to undermine comprehensive education and maintain inequalities.
In the years 1980’s – 1990 the labour government imposed many education policies in order to improve the education standards and parental choice of Britain. When Labour came into power they decided to keep the education policies that conservative had already introduced. A major policy that was introduced was the national curriculum. The national curriculum was introduced to the whole England as a curriculum for primary and secondary schools. The national curriculum is part of the education reform act of 1988. The purpose of the national curriculum was to ensure that everyone throughout the whole country was receiving the same standard of education and to reduce the ‘inequality gap’ from most schools. The schools would be on the curriculum scoreboard and there results would be shown in public and there the parents can make a choice to which school their child goes too.
After the national curriculum policy was introduced and was seen as a success, many other policies came into place such as Grant Maintained Schools, City Technology Colleges and Local Management of Schools. The 1998 education reform act gave freedom for schools to drop out of the local education authority – on the consequence that majority of the parent government were supporting it to happen, otherwise no freedom was given. Schools that did drop out were funded by the central government. Through this technology colleges were introduced – they focused more on the