Creeping privatization and its implications for schooling in the inner city

During the 1980s, the Conservative government introduced a number of measures to enhance choice and diversity in education. It claimed that these would be particularly beneficial in Labour-controlled inner-city areas, where too many children were currently receiving an inadequate education in poor neighborhood comprehensive schools. Three of the government's initiatives—the assisted places scheme, city technology colleges, and grant-maintained schools—are reviewed in this paper in the light of the evidence so far available and the claims of critics that they are a subtle form of privatization. Despite any benefits they may offer to individual children or schools, they are not seen to constitute an adequate response to the problems facing education in the inner city.Parts of this paper draw upon work carried out with Tony Edwards, John Fitz, and Sharon Gewirtz under ESRC Research Grants C00230036 and C00232462 and with members of the Bristol Polytechnic Education Study Group.