Government, Schools and the Law

Analyzes the legislation of five key areas in education - school choice, the secular curriculum, expenditure constraints, falling roles and opting out. The book puts each into the political context.
In recent years, education has become the scene of some of the government's most radical reforms. The principles of freedom of choice, accountability and "family values" all came into play in the drafting of the Great Education Reform Act of 1988. As the Act has been implemented, it has brought to the surface a whole range of tensions between central and local government and between individual interests and the interest of the community. This book focuses on five areas of education in which the legal debate is complex and the implications are particularly wide-ranging for ordinary parents and children: school choice, the secular curriculum, expenditure constraints and their effects on educational provision, falling roles and opting out. It looks both at the legislation in these areas and at specific challenges in the courts and a final chapter sets the issues in their political context. This book should be of interest to postgraduates and academics in the fields of educational policy and research.