Educational Reform Legislation in the 20th Century2018

"Much has been written on [the] education acts, yet we have abused and neglected them. The history of educational legislation has been written off as 'acts and facts', and the conventional approach to writing about them has been concerned with politics, and especially with the men responsible for them. On the centenary of the 1918 Education Act and Education (Scotland) Act, and the thirtieth anniversary of the 1988 Education Reform Act, we can rightly compare them alongside the other two agenda-setting master-Acts of the 20th century, those of 1902 and 1944. These latter Acts, themselves landmarks of legislation, have each attracted several significant articles that have been published in the British Journal of Educational Studies. Between them, these provide a detailed commentary on the...