Look at changes in education over the last 30 years and assess their relative importance.
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6 Responses to “What has been the most significant reform in British education since 1979?”
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The most significant reform in british education since 1979 has been the introduction of SATs for 7,11, and 14 year olds. The introduction of the SATs mean that British schoool children are now the most tested in europe. The SATs are not necessarily benificial to students but they have meant that three of the twelve compulsory years of education are spent preparing for the SATs and that is why they can be seen as the most significant reform.
i think that the most significant reform in british education is the introduction of the EMA. this is because it gives working class children the oppopunity to further there education, something that before its introduction was seem as something omly accessible to middle class children. it also gave working class children an incentive to want to learn more.
The Education Reform Act 1988, in my mind, is the most significant. This is when the national curriculum was brought in and gave teachers guidelines of what to teach. This meant that all students where taught the same thing and it was easier to assess everyone and for employers to see whhich people where more intelligent. Also it meant that teachers where able to teach the same thing to everybody and create more common knowledge, and more intelligence.
i think that EMA is the most important educational reform act. This is because it gives less privaliged people a chance for a better education without having to worry about supplying money for a family. This helps parents as they have less financial worries and it also helps teenagers support themselves throughout further education if their parents cannot (or cannot afford to give them that chance).
There have been many changes since 1979, such as the introduction of New Voationalism- introducing NVQ’s proving better work opportunities for the less academically able students and Curriculum 2000. But I would say that overall it was the 1988 Education Reform Act that was the most significant as it completely changed how our education system worked, a system which is still pretty much the same today. For example Marketization (an idea from the New Right) was introduced and schools were in competition with each other for the first time. Their students results then became statistical data put onto League tables from which Parents would be able to judge the quality of a school by its results and therefore decide which one to send their children to. The idea was that schools would now have an incentive to increase their standards of provision for students as high achieving schools on the League table would attract more students and receive extra funding whilst lower achieving schools could face budget cuts and ultimately closure. SAT’s (Key stage testing) was also introduced with Students taking tests at the ages of 7, 11 and 14 as well as taking their actual exams like GCSE’s making British students the most tested in Europe! (The results from these tests were also used as statistical data to show on the league tables.)
Other changes brought about by the act was the greater amount of power now given not to the local council, but the individual Head teachers of schools giving them greater freedom with how to spend government funding, along with the introduction of a National Curriculum (English, maths, science, technology, P.E, MFL’s, history, geography) to teach all students a broader amount of subjects.
So therefore, because of how much change it brought about that still influences how schools are run today. The 1988 Education Reform Act has been the most significant change since 1979. Arguably changes brought about by e.g. Curriculum 2000 and the introduction of EMA-Financial support for students would also be significant although none of them brought about as much change as the Act of 1988 did.
The most significent reform was the 1988 Education reform act because this introduced the marketing of schools, therefore schools raised standards because they wanted to be higher in the statistics and get advertised as a ‘better’ school to parents and the government.