Education Acts of 1981, 1988, 1993 and 2001
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The education system has been changing during last twenty-five years. It is a natural result of the society evaluation because it is not a secret that education changes according to new conditions of life which pose new demands and force educationists as well as the government to adapt curriculum, school management, financing to these demands.
The education system has been changing during last twenty-five years. It is a natural result of the society evaluation because it is not a secret that education changes according to new conditions of life which pose new demands and force educationists as well as the government to adapt curriculum, school management, financing to these demands. It is particularly important if a technological and scientific progress is very fast and so rapid as we observe in last years. Now it is evident that old-fashioned ways of education are not acceptable and had to be changed in order people to be able to acquire new knowledge as long as life endures.
Education shouldn’t be discriminating and abusive because nowadays everybody must have equal chances to receive good education regardless one’s social position or physical abilities. Otherwise, unfair conditions and selective access to some education establishments will lead to the growth of social tension and to deterioration of the situation in the whole country. Moreover, it won’t correspond to any democratic norms of any civilized society. That is why the education system couldn’t be static and rigid, on the contrary, it must be flexible and take into consideration all recent trends in the society.
But these are just general ideas why the education system should be constantly changing, now I want to find the reasons which has caused really great changes in British education in last twenty-five years. To do this I have to analyze the historical background that forced the government to reform the education system of the UK. For I am going to focus my attention on education acts since 1981, then it is necessary to take into consideration social, economical and even political situation at that period of time. Actually, this time is characterized by a great shift in favour of equality of all people and as a result children with health problems were often in the centre of these reforms. It was necessary to make them an integral part of the society because earlier they were considered to be unable to get the same education or achieve the same results as other children could. Certainly, such situation created a definite tension in the society and caused political, social and economical embarrassment. Consequently, the government realized the necessity to implement the education acts that would improve the position of children with ‘problems’. Namely, three acts were dedicated to the solution of this problem, they were education acts of 1981, 1993, and 2001.
As for the act of 1981, it mainly followed the Warnock report of 1978 which was dedicated to the problems in education of disabled children and the author underlined that “as far as is humanly possible, handicapped people should share the opportunities for self-fulfilment enjoyed by other people” (Warnock Report, 1978, p.99). So the education act of 1981 was, probably, the first education act that concerned so much children with special educational needs. By the way, the term ‘special educational needs’ appeared exactly at this time and replaced another term that existed before – ‘handicapped’. As for the content of the act among the principal ideas I would point out the idea of ‘mainstreaming’ of children with special educational needs. It means that the authorities had to provide for them ample opportunities to attend ordinary schools like other children. Also this act made LEAs responsible for defining what is necessary for children with ‘problems’. Finally, it gave parents of such children more rights and possibilities to receive all necessary consultation concerning their children’s rights and they also had more possibilities to have a juridical protection of their children from any discriminating decisions.
But it wasn’t the last document dealing with the problem of special educational needs children. Part 3 of the education act of 1993 is a logical continuation of the education act of 1981. In this act we can find the following definition of special educational needs: “A child has special educational needs if he or she has a learning difficulty which calls for special educational provision to be made for him or her” (section 156, 1993 Education Act). Thus, this act aimed at improvement of educational situation for disabled children. One of the means of such improvement was the Code of Practice, which was a practical guidance on assessment of special education needs children. But this act also aimed at limiting the power of LEAs and increasing the power of the central government. According to this act the Funding Agency for Schools was created and it dealt with financing grant maintained schools and at the same time it limited some powers of LEAs. And one more important innovation of this act was the creation of a single School Curriculum and Assessment Authority instead of National Curriculum Council and School Examination and Assessment Council as the white paper “Choice and Diversity” suggested (Choice and Diversity, 1992). In this respect, the education act of 1993 is subsequent to the education act of 1988 that I will analyse a bit later.
Finally, the last act concerning the special educational needs children is the education act of 2001. As the previous acts of 1993 and 1981, which have already been mentioned in my work, the education act of 2001 also aims at improvement of conditions for disabled children. It gives them better opportunity to study without discrimination because of their special needs. In general, this act absolutely forbidden any discrimination of disabled children as well as students and adult learners. Moreover, according to this act, the authorities are under the duty to increase the accessibility of ordinary schools for children with special educational needs.
Now, I want to dwell upon the act which is said to be the most important since 1944. Certainly, I mean the education act of 1988. Unlike the acts of 1981 and 2001 it was not so special educational needs children oriented but it produced a great impact on the act of 1993 in the part of limitation of LEAs’ power and giving more autonomy to schools. In general, this act caused a long-term political discussion because two opposing views of two political counterparts were in the centre of attention because LEAs, supported by the Labour party, traditionally opposed to the central government where the Conservative party dominated while the latter tended to centralize the power (Garner, 2001).
Finally, the Conservative party managed to cope with the opposition of LEAs and implemented the education act of 1988. Why, then the act caused such a discussion? First of all, this act gave parents a possibility to choose freely what school their children could attend. Secondly, this freedom of choice was reinforced by the permission to create grant maintained schools which had more financial freedom then ever before and, consequently, they were more self-governing and independent from LEAs. Even not grant maintained schools had more autonomy because Local Management of Schools had more financial freedom and, in addition, it could hire and fire the schools’ staff. Also, due to the act, mechanisms for establishing of City Technology Colleges (CTCs) were worked out that, in its turn, provoked the discussion about their effectiveness.
For example, Whitty estimated that “strong competition for places that is already developing in some CTCs makes it difficult to predict what form selection will take in the future and the effects this will have on disadvantaged groups” (1993, p.46). Finally, the National Curriculum Council was created in order to control the content and assessment of the national curriculum. Thus, the act of 1988 was underpinning the development of the policy of the conservative government at large and parents free choice of schools for their children, schools’ autonomy, national curriculum and grant maintained schools in particular. But still it was quite controversial because according to Garner “the paradox of granting more power to individual schools (decentralization) with the desire to assume a more centralized control of education was more apparent than real. In giving more schools day-to-day control over their own affairs, the government was, at the same time, stripping power from LEAs, thereby largely ridding itself of what had become a major source of dissent and criticism of central government action” (2001, p.101). It is also noteworthy that in the act of 1993 practically all curriculum proposals of the act of 1988 were improved.
Finally, on comparing all education acts that I analysed in my work I have to say that the general impression is quite dualistic because on the one hand, all of them are logical and related to each other. But on the other hand some of them, particularly the act of 1988, seems to be controversial because, being revolutionary for its time, very soon (within five years) a new act was implemented that was the result of necessity of its improvement. However, I cannot deny that all acts are vitally important and all of them were supposed to improve the condition of education, particularly for children with special educational needs and, consequently, they were necessary. Otherwise, I think any progress would be impossible because these education acts were the result of the demand of time, since it is evident that disabled people must have equal opportunities to realize their right for education as well as the education system must be as effective as possible and these education acts contributed, more or less successfully, to the realization of these conditions.
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