Introduction

Any account of education policy in 2006 has to be dominated by the content and process of the 2006 Education and Inspections Act. Within the Act almost all of the key themes of the New Labour public sector reform project are played out in and through education policy, building on, extending and reworking previous policies and previous legislation. The Act was also a significant moment in the history of Tony Blair.

In the run-up to the 1997 General Election Tony Blair (1996) announced ‘education, education, education’ as his key priority. In 2006 education policy may have played a not insignificant role in bringing his leadership of the Labour Party to an ignominious end. The Prime Minister has made an enormous personal investment in education policy and he himself has made many key policy announcements rather than the Secretary of State1. Education is a recurring theme in his speeches and press conferences, he makes many visits to schools and personally praises and rewards ‘excellent’ teachers. The 2005 White Paper (DfES, 2005a), the 2006 Act and the compromises that became necessary to achieve Party support were clearly identified with this commitment and his credibility. Blair also often speaks about education from the point of view of a parent.

In their review of English education policy in 2005 (and again here the focus is very directly on England) Dyson and colleagues (2006), borrowing a phrase from Tony Blair (2005a), posed the question as to whether that year marked a ‘pivotal moment’ in the New Labour programme of ‘fundamental and irreversible’ educational reforms. They went on to conclude, while acknowledging the significance of what had been ‘achieved’, that 2005 was pivotal in a different sense and that the fragility of and tensions within New Labour education policy were becoming ever more apparent. These tensions and fragilities are again very much in evidence in education policy in 2006 and serve to highlight both the extent and the limits of New Labour's reform agenda. Nonetheless, the longer-term significance of the 2006 Act, especially the provisions relating to trust schools, should not be under-estimated.

More broadly the Act exemplifies both New Labour's overall project of education reform (and public service reform generally) and concomitant changes in educational governance (and New Labour's governance strategies generally). It is also possible to see in the Act facets of New Labour's agenda around citizen behaviour and responsibility.