Opting for grant‐maintained status: A study of policymaking in education

Abstract

The grant-maintained (GM) schools policy, which is one of a number of government initiatives aimed at reforming and restructuring state education, was announced in the Conservative party manifesto for the 1987 general election and subsequently incorporated into the 1988 Education Reform Act (ERA). Operating as autonomous institutions, outside the control of the local education authorities (LEAs) from which they had elected to 'opt out', GM schools obtain their funds direct from the Department for Education (DfE). The GM schools policy was, and remains, especially relevant to contemporary policy making in education because its chief purposes to diversify further school provision, to increase competition between schools, and to enhance parental choice are central elements of government thinking about the future shape and direction of education provision. The policy was represented by its advocates as an opportunity to 'take education out of the hands of planners and return it to parents where it belongs and a means by which educational standards would be improved and school provision diversified. Its opponents disputed whether it would extend choice to all families, while others saw it as 'preserving grammar schools and extending selection by the back door'. These competing claims about the policy provide the basis for our empirical investigation of the extent to which the intentions of its architects and the predictions of its critics have been realised. In examining the development of the GM schools policy and its impact on education provision in England, we drew on a variety of documentary sources and on recorded interviews with samples of those involved in the policy's formulation and implementation. We also interviewed local authority officials about their perceptions of, and responses to, GM schools