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QUEST, 1993,45,321-338 O 1993 National Association for Physical Education in Higher Education

Improving the Quality of Physical Education? The

Education Reform Act, 1988, and Physical Education in England

and Wales

John Evans, Dawn Penney, and Amanda Bryant

The Education Reform Act (ERA) 1988 represents the most significant piece of legislation to have entered the education system in postwar Britain. Al- though all its "effects" have yet to materialize, this paper argues that aspects of ERA legislation will have a very damaging impact upon both the level and quality of PE provision in some state schools. The tone of this paper is necessarily speculative; but the analysis, based on the authors' ongoing research in primary and secondary schools, will suggest that ERA may exacerbate social and educational divisions within the education system and make it very difficult for some teachers to provide a quality "PE for all."

After more than a decade of furious debate over educational policies and ideas, major institutional changes are being imposed. Under the 1988 Educa- tion Act, the powers and procedures of local education authorities (LEAs) are being reordered. Balances between "partners" (the Department of Education and Science [DES], LEAs, and teachers) tilted powerfully towards the State. New types of school are artificially implanted (invented? restored?) by "philanthropic" alliances where there is little desire for them. In existing institutions we face layer upon layer of imposed tasks, novel drudgeries, and imperative demands to account for ourselves. Whatever the outcome of the first election of the 1990s, the 1988 Act and the National Curriculum have set many conditions for the new phase, rather as the 1944 Act constrained the postwar reforms, though in a different direction. The 1944 Act could be turned into a charter for "universal" public provision and local experimentation; the 1988 Act, though complex and ambiguous, as we shall see, sets the scene for split provision and central curriculum

J. Evans, D. Penney, and A. Bryant are with the Department of Physical Education at the University of Southampton, Highfield, Southampton SO9 5NH, U.K.

322 EVANS, PENNEY, AND BRYANT

control. If 1944 was informed by a heavily qualified universalism, 1988 is animated by the spirit of Education Ltd, Education-as-a-business-Corpo- ration: commercial in outlook, hierarchial in organisation, "limited" in liberality or extent-unless you pay for more. (Cultural Studies, Bir- mingham, 1991, p. ix)

For over a decade, the conservative discourse of "New Right" politicians has dominated and defined the agenda of political and pedagogical debate in the U.K. and elsewhere (Apple, 1986; Ball, 1990). Here, as in the U.S.A., central government has endeavored, relentlessly, to restructure the state education system in ways that dissolve the egalitarian aspirations and achievements for which so many educational and other social reformers struggled for over 40 years (see Apple, 1986; Simon, 1988). The belief that market principles can be expressed as easily and productively in education as they can in the private sectors of the economy has sponsored a range and kind of educational reform (some of which are alluded to above) that will be familiar to many working in education way beyond our U.K. shores.

In the U.K., the U.S.A., Australia, New Zealand, and elsewhere, the introduction of market principles to the practice of education, and strong pressure to centralize control over education and teachers, has presaged "deregulation" in the education system on a grand scale. In the U.K., the powers and responsibilities of the "local state," and LEAS within them have been eroded systematically and substantially and have been redistributed to the central state, headteachers, and governors-the new managers of schools. All of this has occurred putatively in the interests of raising standards of behavior and promoting educational "excellence."

Furthermore, as in the U.S.A. (see Secada, 1989) deregulation has meant that debates about standards and excellence have occluded, if not replaced almost entirely, those of equality and equity in education (Evans & Davies, 1993). Debates about ability and selectivity have replaced issues of personal rights, needs, and opportunities of access; debates on parental choice and private education have replaced those on community schools; and debates on central state and school governor control have replaced those on teacher professionalism and the autonomy of the local state. The emphasis and direction in state public policy-arried powerfully in the discourse of Thatcherism and Reaganism, now softened but sustained in the policy programs of John Major-has intentionally changed from issues of employing the local state to overcome social and educational disadvan- tages, inequity, and difference in material and cultural provision, to that of guaranteeing the individual's choice under the conditions of the "free market" to secure for herself or himself the services she or he wants and needs (Apple, 1986; Evans & Davies, in press). In the eyes of the political Right, the redistribu- tion of power, control, and responsibility from the local (federal) state to the individual constitutes the only valid panacea to a nation's social, educational, and economic decline.

This is the political and cultural terrain upon which teachers work in the U.K. and elsewhere. Given the pressures for educational change and the range of policy initiatives now flowing through the education system in England and Wales post-ERA, these are extremely difficult and challenging times for physical educators in all sectors of education. They are also dangerous ones for democracy in schools and the communities they serve. Thirteen years of Conservative rule

EDUCATION REFORM ACT 323

have induced a radical shake-up in the state-maintained sector of schooling in England and Wales in a direction, we contend, which may not prompt either the arrival of equity in the education system (see Evans, 1993) or improved quality in the physical education experiences offered to all pupils in schools.

Because the electorate has mandated the Conservative Party for a further 5 years, we anticipate both the consolidation and further development of their educational reforms. The Education Reform Act (ERA) introduced in England and Wales in 1988, the most significant piece of legislation to have entered the education system in postwar Britain, is bringing about a level of change in the structure, management, and content of the education system which makes all earlier post-1944 endeavors at educational reform pale into insignificance.

The 1988 ERA is a complex and comprehensive package of measures calling for a wide range of changes in the state education system in England and Wales. These include, among other measures (see Martin, 1988), the following:

1. The adoption of a national curriculum (NC) 2. Changes in the way admissions to schools are controlled 3. Local financial management, or local management of schools (LMS) as it

is sometimes called 4. The establishment of grant maintained schools.

The power of LEAs to fix limits in order to spread children among schools is replaced by a parent's ability to chose any school up to the point of its actual capacity. LMS aims to make schools in England and Wales more accountable for their operations and to encourage a more efficient use of resources. It makes fundamental changes in the financial and management structures of education, placing limitations on the function of LEAs and giving greater autonomy to schools and governing bodies. Instead of LEAs controlling almost all of the schools' expenditure, a large part of this is transferred to the control of governing bodies of the school.

The two key features of this policy are formula funding and delegation of management. Formula funding introduces the allocation of school budgets on the basis of the number and age of pupils, with certain mandatory exceptions. Pupils enter the school system with a price tag attached. The more pupils a school attracts, supposedly the wealthier it becomes. Delegation of management makes governing bodies responsible for the management of school budgets, thereby significantly reducing the power LEAs have with respect to school finances, resources, and personnel and giving far greater opportunities and autonomy to governing bodies in these respects.

Through the mechanism of "opting out," any except the small primary schools (with under 200 pupils) are allowed upon a simple majority vote of parents to opt out of local authority control and funding into "grant maintained status," directly formula funded by (central government via) the Department for Education (DFE). Even in those schools remaining within LEA control, the headteachers and governors of all secondary schools (and primary schools with 200 children or more) receive and manage their own budgets. This budget is determined by a formula that relates directly to the numbers and ages of pupils on the school roll. The social background of the pupils does not enter into the budgetary considerations.


Whether these changes represent progress in the education system remains to be seen. One educational commentator recently stated the following:

It is quite possible that within 5 years the Conservative government will have turned the clock back so far that our education system will resemble the [highly selective and socially stratified] one before the Butler Act of 1944.' Local Councils could find themselves responsible for a dwindling number of schools catering for children rejected by the burgeoning "opted out" sector. (Hugill, 1992, p. 3)

The commitment, enshrined in the 1944 Act, to providing a quality "education for all" may therefore be destined to become a dream of the past.

There are many elements to the ERA which we cannot detail here. Although further reference is made to the measures mentioned above, in later discussion we concentrate on just two of these major aspects of change arising from the Act-the national curriculum (NC) and local financial management or local management of schools (LMS)-in order to consider their effects upon the provision of sport and physical education in schools.

It has to be stressed, however, that at the time of writing this paper some of the requirements and ramifications of this Act have still to materialize. The NC has been phased in for all pupils (ages 5-16) registered in state-maintained schools in England and Wales over a period of 3 years and the national curriculum physical education (NCPE) is among the last of the school subjects to have been "created," entering the school system for pupils age 7, 11, and 14 in September 1992. It will take longer for the full effects of this legislation to occur.2 Our comments are therefore necessarily speculative.

Furthermore our analysis calls on data from research on the NCPE which has only just begun.3 However, like others, we reject the view that the concerns and difficulties that we identify here are merely expressions of the sort of "teething troubles" which accompany all educational reforms. We share Bowe, Ball, and Gold's (1992) view that the problems facing teachers in schools post-ERA will not go away, because they derive from the ideological intent, principles, contradictions, and inconsistencies which are inherent in the ERA legislation. This leads us to claim that, far from raising educational standards in schools as the accompa- nying rhetoric of ERA asserts, the ERA may help both produce and exacerbate educational and social inequalities in the state education system, erode the egalitarian values and commitments which were embedded in the 1944 Act, and damage the quest of providing equity in the system and a quality PE for all children.

Among its many policy recommendations the ERA established a "national curriculum" comprising core and foundation subjects, to be taught to all pupils of compulsory school age (5-16) in state-maintained schools in England and Wales. The core subjects are mathematics, English, and science together with, in Welsh-speaking schools, Welsh. The foundation subjects are history, geography, technology, music, art, physical education, and a modem foreign language. Every pupil in these schools is now entitled to a curriculum that is "balanced and broadly based" and this, it is claimed, will guarantee "the achievement of consistently high standards" and ensure that "good curriculum practice is much more widely employed" (Department of Education and Science, 1989, pp. 2-4) throughout the state-provided education system.


The planning of the NC has been conducted in three phases. First, an overall structure for the NC (consisting of attainment targets and programs of study)4 was created by Conservative politicians and their aids. Second, professionals from education and-reflecting the Government's belief in the efficacy of the market-industry were brought in to construct a curriculum to express this form. These "working parties" in each subject carried out their work with variable amounts of political intervention in their activities (see Bowe et al., 1992; Evans, Penney, & Bryant, 1993). Third, recommendations were referred back via the National Cumculum Council, a quasi-government agency: to the Secretaries of State for their approval.

The culmination of this process for physical education was the publication, in June 1992, of the "final order," the statutory requirements for the NCPE (Department of Education and Science, Welsh Office, 1992). The importance and significance of this document cannot be overstated. Both its implicit and explicit requirements will have a direct bearing on how PE teachers work and how they think about the body, ability, performance, and competency in PE for many years to come.

Prior to the establishment of a NC working group for PE, government spokespersons were attacking PE teachers for undervaluing the place and importance of competitive games and sport in the PE curriculum. By stressing educational and egalitarian ideals, PE teachers were reputedly obstructing the real purposes of schooling: to equip pupils for a postschool leisure involvement in major team games, imbue them with a competitive attitude, prepare them for their futures as consumers of sport, and enable them to cope with failure or success in the wider game of life (see Evans, 1990; Kirk, 1992). In the eyes of the political Right, PE had become insufficiently vocational and antisocial (see Pollard, 1988).

Against the educational conceptions of a "physical education for all" or physical education "for its own sake" emanating from some within the physical education profession (and sometimes disseminated through the official voice of the profession, The British Journal of Physical Education) the vocationalist voices of the New Right counterposed principles of practicality and relevance (Letwin, 1989), which stressed the development of correct attitudes and skills rather than knowledge and understanding (for examples see, Evans, 1990; Pollard,1988; "Schools Urged," 1988). Given the strength of the criticisms directed at PE in state schools in England and Wales by spokespersons of the political Right, which at times seemed to threaten the very existence of PE as a subject in the curriculum (Evans, 1990; Kirk, 1992), the mere inclusion of PE as a foundation subject in the NC induced an almost audible sigh of relief from PE teachers. At last, the future of physical education in the curriculum of state education was secure, or so it seemed. However, as worries over the very existence of PE have receded, they have been replaced by other more technical and practical concerns.

Before and throughout the making of the NCPE, PE was both the object and the subject of struggles over the meaning given to the teaching of PE and over how and what PE and sport in schools ought to be, both conducted at a most public and vitriolic level. This debate (for examples see Evans, 1990; Kirk 1992; Pollard, 1988), which often announced very clearly the social, political and economic functions of PE, did little to help the PE profession clarify its thinking about what, educationally, the PE curriculum in schools is for. However, with the NCPE now made and delivered to teachers in schools, the issue of what


is to be taught as a NCPE has been supplanted-though not lost altogether- largely by more technical and instrumental concerns centering on how an entitlement curriculum is to be expressed in all state schools, given that some may have neither the material resources nor the staff expertise to make the recommendations of the report a reality in practice.

This shift in the discourse of physical education has arisen partly because, in addition to prescribing what is to be taught in schools, ERA and the NC also set a timetable for the implementation of each of the NC subjects. For PE this has been pressing and unreasonable. At the time of preparing this paper, the final NCPE documentation had only just been issued to PE teachers. Effectively, teachers in state primary and secondary schools in England and Wales have some 6 to 8 weeks to appraise their curriculum in respect of NCPE guidelines in order to implement its recommendations as required by September 1992. For not the first time in recent years, the demand for educational reform has arrived unaccompanied either by the time for teachers to consider properly the merits of the changes proposed or by the moral or financial support from central government to support their implementation in schools.

Needless to say, the rush towards innovation and control has limited the opportunities for teachers to reflect on the pedagogical, social, and cultural implications of a NCPE. Nor do the texts of the "final order," the statutory requirements of the NCPE (Department of Education and Science, Welsh Office, 1992), or the nonstatutory guidelines which accompany them (National Curricu- lum Council, 1992), encourage them to do so. Although the final report of the PE working group (Department of Education and Science, 1991) contained strong and progressive sections on a "Rationale for PE" and "Equal Opportunities," most of this material was excluded from the above texts as they were being prepared by the National Curriculum Council for distribution to schools. Thus, at a time when issues of equity and equal opportunities ought to be uppermost in the thinking and practice of physical educators if they are to protect the interests of all the children in their care, we find them relegated in the official discourse of the subject to a position that will hardly capture a teacher's concerns.

However, what emerges as practice in schools in the form of a NCPE and whether equity will prevail in the distribution of physical education experiences within the education system, will depend not only upon the principles and ideologies that have underscored the production of this policy text and those of the schools and teachers now implementing it, but also on how the NCPE interacts with other aspects of ERA legislation, particularly LMS. ERA policies cannot be treated in isolation. As each aspect of ERA (NC, LMS) legislation interacts with others in the variety of social and educational contexts that constitute and define the system of education and schooling in England and Wales, they may together produce not only varied but also highly differentiated educational experiences for teachers and pupils in schools, some of which may actually work against the development of a national curriculum PE.

What unfolds from any innovation, however, will always also depend much upon what went into the initiative in the first place, in the form of resources, motives, beliefs, and ideological intent. To understand the nature and significance of these ERA measures and their interrelationships, we first have to explore further the background and origins of the Act in the U.K. By describing some of the details of this legislation, we highlight its implicit principles and ideological


intent and draw attention to those features that are causing concern and dissatisfac- tion among teachers of PE. We then center on some of the problems and challenges facing PE teachers in primary and secondary schools as they endeavor to resolve the inherent contradictions of the Act (see Bowe et al., 1992) and deal with the consequences of working to free market rules.

The Background to ERA6

For well over 50 years the education system in England and Wales endeavored to operate, not always wholly successfully, on the basis of a partnership between teachers, local education authorities (LEAs) and central government. The relative autonomy of the educational system in relation to the state, secured in the administrative particulars which were embodied in the 1944 Education Act, meant that in England and Wales the state education system was effectively managed by LEAs. They provided the organizational frameworks and the levels of resources with which and in which teachers were left to manipulate the curriculum and the pedagogy of schooling. There was, to use Ranson's (1988) terms, "a complex, polycentered division of power and responsibility appropriate to different tasks. Divided power was designed to ensure partnership between necessary and equal parties to the government of education" (p. 37). Although this partnership was never so equal or productive as Ranson suggests, within this framework and the limits set by the examination system, teachers could exercise a great deal of control over the content, organization, and pedagogies of schooling. The curriculum was theirs-a carefully protected area of decision making and responsibility serving as the context in which their power resided.

Many teachers in the U.K. utilized this freedom productively to achieve status as experts and to gain recognition for their profession, though not always with a parallel success in developing or encouraging a partnership between themselves and parents and pupils. And although it would be as wrong to either romanticize or exaggerate the achievements of these teachers as it would be to suggest that there was ever anything approximating a crisis in the comprehensive system, we can claim that in such contexts progressive curriculum initiatives could and did flourish and develop (Simon, 1988).

The curriculum reform movement of the 1960s and 1970s challenged prac- tices of selection and differentiation inside schools and the merits of subject- centered teaching, and it began to develop forms of curriculum and teaching which emphasized learning processes and a content sensitive to the cultural differences of children. It was in this domain of decision making vis-a-vis the curriculum, the "secret garden of schooling" (Lawton, 1978, p. I), that LEAs, like the Inner London Education Authority (ILEA-disbanded by ERA legislation), could begin to develop curricula that addressed issues of racism, sexism, and equal opportunities and in which courses on peace education, sex education, and health education could flourish, all implicitly or explicitly recognizing the cultural plurality of British society.

Although the conservativism of physical education, combined with long- standing divisions within the profession (Evans, 1990; Evans, Duncan, Lopez, & Evans, 1987; Kirk, 1992) ensured that progressive initiatives were neither endemic nor widespread in PE during the 1960s and 1970s, innovations in teaching gymnastics, in recreational programs, and (in the early 1980s) in health education


and coeducational PE were also beginning to slowly address equity issues and to increasingly find a place in the official discourse, if not always very obviously in the actions of LEAs and teachers of PE. Concerns over sexism and elitism in PE, and much more rarely, racism (see Jarvie, 1992) and the special educational needs of physically disabled children (see Barton, 1993), were beginning to emerge, albeit very slowly, as serious concerns. However, just as the comprehen- sives were coming of age, as some teachers at last were beginning to create cumcular forms suitable for the mix of abilities and cultures within the system, they were "cut off in their prime." We entered a period of "decomprehensiviza- tion" in which the concepts of education and schooling were radically redefined (Evans & Davies, 1993).

During the 1960s and 1970s this relatively decentralized system of educational government came under increasing pressure from the accelerated evolution of industrial societies. The liberal democratic states in the UK and elsewhere were badly shaken by the oil crisis, by a fiscal crisis in public expenditure, and by a massive increase in the levels of unemployment particularly among their youth. In the eyes of the political Right this crisis placed heavy strain on the foundations of both the economic and the social and normative order.

That the conservative Right in particular (though never exclusively) should define schools and society as in a state of crisis is perhaps not surprising. As others have argued (Apple, 1986; Evans & Davies, 1993), dramatic changes in society and culture are always likely to be experienced as intense periods of crisis by those who benefit most from well-established ways of life and modes of thought. Equally, it is not surprising that throughout the last decade politicians, first on the Left and then the Right, turned to organization and content of the education system, rather than to the economy, to locate both the source and the solution to society's economic and social ills. The established pattern of government and bureaucracy in the U.K. could not, however, easily cope with the social and economic problems that the accelerating socioeconomic change was producing.

The U.K. government found itself at the apex of a decentralized education system that maximized the ability of the teachers and the LEAs to produce and resist innovation and minimized the capacity of the state to restructure and alter existing arrangements. In this context, against a background of social change and economic crisis, U.K. governments began to consider that they could neither afford nor continue to permit the luxury of a decentralized system which placed so much control in the hands of professionals and so little in the hands of the state.

There is nothing new about governments in the U.K. or elsewhere using education to solve an economic crisis and to sponsor or encourage the development of a particular social order or a certain attitude of mind among its citizens. As Ranson (1988) points out, the shaping of individuals through the family and the education system is the shaping of generations. The state and the church have long known this and have consequently intervened in the process. Both the 1944 and the 1988 Education Acts were about the government shaping educational purposes to secure the constitution of a particular social and political order. But whereas the former enshrined the distribution of power and responsibility among relevantly interested and empowered agents (local education authorities, teachers, and parents) to form a "partnership of sorts" the latter imposed a consumer democracy to replace the "purported weary assumptions of the of the liberal democratic state which have lasted a generation or more" (Ranson, 1988, p. 2).


In the years preceding ERA, Conservative policy systematically portrayed teachers as obstacles to "freedom" which could be better guaranteed by the market. Here, as elsewhere-in the U.S.A. in The Paideia Proposal and A Nation at Risk (see Apple, 1986), and in New Zealand in Tomorrow's Schools and other texts (Evans & Davies, 1990; Lauder & Wylie, 1990)+ver the last 20 years conservative attacks on the policies for comprehensive schooling, mixed ability grouping, and cumculum innovations have systematically pictured teachers and innovation as rampant and insidious evidence of egalitarianism damaging British schools. The charge against the profession has been falling educational standards, pupil underachievement, and the acceptance or even the promotion by teachers of ill discipline and poor pupil control.

As mentioned above, PE teachers in England and Wales did not escape this critique. To the contrary, innovative PE teachers were sometimes used as exemplars of all that was purportedly wrong with state education system and for a period were the main target of the government's vitriol and critique (Evans, 1990; Kirk, 1992). Although innovation in PE was not as widespread and never as radical as it was made out to be by spokespersons of the conservative Right (see Evans, 1990; Kirk, 1992) PE teachers en masse were accused of undermining the nation's health, success in sport, and economic wealth, as they purportedly devalued competition, team games, and single sex PE by promoting initiatives such as new forms of games teaching ("Teaching Games for Understanding") and coeducational PE.

In the eyes of the political Right, the whole purpose of schooling was being distorted by innovative PE teachers' preoccupation with equality, by the presence of too much egalitarianism in the system, and by local politicians and professionals appropriating too much control of the service from its proper source-the parents. Teachers were too powerful and insufficiently accountable to the "consumer." Thus in ERA we find that notions of state intervention to manage the education system in the interests of justice and equality are supplanted by a language of consumer "choice," cost efficiency, and the equal opportunities available to each individual to pursue his or her own freely chosen interests and ends. The sovereignty of the individual and the marketplace is proclaimed as the means of ameliorating society's social and economic ills. As we see in the discussion below, this has important implications for the provision and quality of physical education in schools.

In the U.K. this market discourse has played an extremely important part not only in mythmaking about the nature of education and its problems and solutions, but also in framing the future of PE and sport in state-provided schools. Having created in the public mind the idea that a crisis abounds in the educational world, that there is inefficiency and wastage in the system, and that teachers are self-interested, radical experts who prevent sovereign parent consumers getting the educational goods (Davies, 1988) their children need, the ERA 1988 enters as an alternative radical educational solution that privileges the market as the savior of our economies and moral welfare. Creating a direct accountability between consumers (parents) and producers (teachers) is the secret to the renewal of the education system and of society at large. Only decentralization will raise standards and change the form and content of education in accordance with that which the market demands.


In this view the market is conceived as a value neutral exchange process in which and from which all persons are supposed to benefit. It is simply a mechanism, "an unplanned outcome of myriad choices which purportedly em- powers and frees the consumer and provides incentive for the producer" (Bowe et al., 1992, p. 25). Thus ERA constitutes the blueprint for the commercialization of the state education system and the production of consumer identities.

Market Rules

As explained earlier, the NC itself divides school subjects into core and foundation subjects. Furthermore the Act requires that in relation to these subjects (a) the knowledge, skills, and understandings that pupils of different abilities and maturities are expected to have by the end of each key stage (attainment targets); (b) the matters, skills, and processes that must be taught to pupils of different abilities and maturities during each key stage of compulsory schooling (programs of study); and (c) the arrangements for assessing pupils at or near the end of each key stage to ascertain what has been achieved in relation to the attainment targets, should be specified. Everyone, regardless of social category (except those having special educational needs or lacking English as a mother tongue), is to acquire the key contents, skills, and processes from the core and foundation subjects. The curriculum thus constitutes a set of discrete contents and a structure given to teachers that, it is claimed, "will raise standards" (Department of Education and Science, Welsh Office, 1987, p. 10).

In the case of PE the NCPE specifies "areas of activity" to which children are "entitled" at different ages. At Key Stage 1 (defined as ages 5-7) and Key Stage 2 (defined as ages 7-1 I), the NCPE entitles children to the experience of six areas of activity: athletic activities, dance, games, outdoor and adventurous activities, and swimming. At Key Stage 3 (ages 11-14) children are to experience four areas with games compulsory in each year, and at Key Stage 4 (ages 14-16), two activities from the same or different areas. The amount of time to be given to the NCPE, however, is not specified by the Act. There is also plenty of testing and assessment. Attainment targets (objectives, knowledge, skills, and understanding that pupils of different abilities and maturities are expected to develop within a subject area) have been set for ages 7, 11, 14, and 16 in each of the NC subjects.

To "guarantee" the raising of standards, everyone will get more and better information: teachers on how their classes stand in relation to others and parents on what is taught and on individual class attainments. Armed with this information parents have the right (if not the opportunity; see Bowe et al., 1992) to pick their schools in the system of open enrolment, whereby county schools and voluntary schools are required to admit pupils to the limits of what is said to be their available capacity. Thus good schools will flourish while the bad are to whither and die. On what happens to children in these schools through the period of a school's demise, the Act is silent. Additionally, as outlined earlier, the arrangements for opting obt and the change in the budgetary controls in the education system mean LMS signals a significant shift of power from LEAS managing their systems to schools securing their individual fates.

However, although the discourse of ERA claims to empower the consumers of education, ERA and the NC established a set of cumcular contents and af~ assessment structure that place severe restrictions not only on the autonomy of

EDUCATION REFORM ACT 33 1

teachers but also on that of parents (Ball, 1990; Bowe et al., 1992). Despite the rhetoric of ERA, parents will have little capacity to influence the content of the cumcula and the priorities of what is to be taught other than through the with- drawal of their children from particular schools. The outcome of such freedoms may therefore be an increase in differentiation both between state-provided and independent schools and within the state system.

Privatization of the system may signal an increase in the number of segregated schools as parents weigh issues such as racial mix, religion, and culture in their choices and opting out proves to be a more effective "back door route to the reintroduction of selective schooling on a gradualist basis" (Hargreaves & Reyn- olds, 1989, p. 13; see also Evans & Davies, 1990). Whether this is the price which will have to be paid for the newly reconstructed system of schooling in which variety and competition are to flourish between different types of schools, and which celebrates the values of the new social order in which consumerism and market values rule, remains to be seen. All the evidence suggests that the return of the selective school system is now well under way ("Selection Slips In," 1993).

By confusing the sovereignty of the consumer with that of the citizen, the Act institutes far-reaching and potentially damaging changes to the education system, physical education within it, and to democracy itself. Indeed we share Evans and Davies's (1990) view that the undue privileging of the market in an area where, on good grounds, it has long been held to have little business, ERA effectively sustains the interests of the status quo under the cloak of populism. It guarantees, indeed celebrates, more hierarchy and difference in provision levels while claiming that the process will ameliorate standards. The evidence to date (see Bowe et al., 1992) is that it may in fact limit choice, ride roughshod over the principles and practice of discussion and debate within a well-laid framework of consensus politics, and put increased power firmly in the hands, not of the people, as it proclaims, but of central government and the state (Evans & Davies, 1990, 1993).

The ideologies of the New Right (see Ball, 1990) are both complex and heterogenous, and they cannot be characterized in any detail here. Here, the neo- liberal texts of Hayek (1973, 1976, 1986) have been particularly influential in the discourse of conservative politicians, and paraded as a basis for social and economic policy making for over a decade. Hayek's work rests on a critique of socialism, statism, and Keynsianism and is opposed to trade unionism, to government interventions into the economy, and to state welfare. They each, he argues, distort and inhibit the "free" and efficient workings of the market and thereby restrict the growth of cultural and material prosperity.

However, critics of this view have been quick to point out that the definition of "freedom" inherent in this discourse is very precise and very narrow: "It is freedom 'from' rather than freedom 'to,' that is an absence of coercion" (Ball, 1990, p. 37). Hattersley (1991) points out the following:

Tax cuts, public expenditure reviews, privatisation and deregulation in the social service sector of industry have all been justified by leading Conservative spokespersons with what amounts to a crude version of the theory of echelon advance-the idea that when the rich leap ahead the poor are dragged a little way forward. (p. 23)

As he and others go on to point out, however, the idea of "free choice" is only


meaningful if we ignore those factors that influence or construct consumer choices in the interests of producers (Bowe et al., 1992) and those that set limits both to what producers can produce and to what the consumers are able to choose.

The Hayekian discourse of the conservative New Right conveniently over- looks issues of power and resource. Matters of choice are always informed by matters of possibility and constraint: "The lived environment is not equally available to all, it is classed, gendered, it is socially grounded" (Bowe et al., p. 28). Here, parents do not have equal opportunities to choose their own schools; their choices are constrained by their geographical location (proximity to schools), their knowledge of the education system, their wealth, and many other social and cultural considerations. Our education system is notoriously varied in both its resourcing and delivery.

A variety of unequal, highly differentiated school systems characterize English and Welsh provision. This makes Hattersley's (1991) view particularly poignant. He points out the following:

The idea that liberty is simply the absence of government action is, under- standably, immensely attractive to those who have wealth and power as it allows them to express these "possessions" in their own exclusive interests. The importance of a discourse of "freedom" and "mobility," (which proclaims the right of every individual to both chose what they want and to progress to where they want to be)-to the rich and the powerful-is the soporific effect which they believe it has on the poor. Talk of mobility encourages the myth that anyone who accepts the system has the chance to enjoy its benefits. Its definition of liberty-the need for greater equality in order bring it about--confirms that aspiration. (p. 23)

However, liberty is the ability, as well as the right, to make choices, whether of education, health, or work.

The arrival of ERA thus may signify an important victory on the part of the central state in the battle for control over the cumculum and pedagogy of schooling. It may well be that the NC and a regular system of testing, along with the powerful pull of consumer choice and demand from below, and financial restriction or inducement from above, will facilitate a much more routinized performance of the knowledge production system. Although ERA celebrates the role of the profes- sional, it effectively strips teachers of much of their power and control in the educational system. Despite the rhetoric of ERA, the reality it fosters is fundamen- tally instrumental, commercial, bent on differentiating schools and children, and potentially elitist. This, as we see below, may have severe implications for the quality and level of PE provision in schools. ERA legislation may make it very difficult for teachers to cultivate an educational provision based essentially on what might be the requirements of pupils as individuals (Kelly, 1990) and deliver to all pupils in the state sector of education their "entitlement PE."

ERA and Physical Education

As mentioned above, LMS aims to make schools in England and Wales more accountable for their operations and to encourage more efficient use of resources. Although the effects of formula funding and delegation of management will take time to materialize, it has already been noted that LMS not only


exacerbates levels of competition between schools, but also creates competition within them (Bowe et al., 1992). Subjects are now forced to vie with each other for resources in terms of staffing levels and financial support.

However, all subjects do not enter this competition for resources within schools on anything approximating equal terms. Subjects vary in their historical, social, and political status, which will undoubtedly be influential when schools are forced to prioritize curriculum areas for budget allocations. Furthermore they have also entered the competition at different points in time. The phased implementation of the NC has created a situation in which the subjects "settled" first are at an advantage in competing for time, staffing, and physical resources. Conversely, those arriving late in the NC implementation process, and particularly those with low status subject matter such as physical education are disadvantaged.

The consequences for PE are potentially severe. As one head teacher in our study remarked, it is a case of ''first come first served. PE comes later." Another stressed that the main effect of the NC has been "to squeeze curriculum time for PE as other subjects have come on stream." Thus although all subjects feel the effects of these policy changes to some degree, their impact across the curriculum is far from even.

In the case of PE, where the resources available are a key determinant of provision, the effects can be particularly serious. Tighter or reduced budgets may jeopardize the upkeep of facilities, prohibit the purchase of new or replacement of old equipment, or mean that travel to off-site facilities (swimming pools or leisure centers) is no longer an available option. Pre-LMS, many LEAS managed the general school budget to ensure, among other things, that school swimming programs and travel to off-site sport or leisure facilities could be sustained. However, with most of the general school budget now devolved to individual schools there is no guarantee that head teachers and school governors either will or can (if funds have already been spent disproportionately on other curriculum subjects) give an equivalent amount of support to the curriculum of PE. As one secondary school teacher in our study remarked, "We now have to hire fields and transport. Thus [our] administration has increased dramatically. We also have to be aware of how frequently we go off-site. This may need to be cut in the future." Clearly the financial implications of LMS in these terms may have a direct impact on the PE experiences and opportunities a school can provide. Choices by heads of PE, and perhaps increasingly the governors of schools, will have to be made between high-cost and low-cost curriculum activities. Questions such as "Is dance more expensive than outdoor activities?" "Is games cheaper than athletics?" or "How long can a swimming or dance program be sustained?" will become increasingly pressing matters of concern.

These changes may also have serious implications for both the pedagogy and innovative activities of teachers of PE. The slow but perceptible shift away from the didacticism of "whole class teaching," which was beginning to emerge in PE programs in some schools with the introduction of health-related fitness, coeducational PE, and new methods of games teaching, may now be in jeopardy as heads of PE and governing bodies consider the expense of the teaching methods upon which these initiatives are dependent. Child centered pedagogies requiring group work and individualized teaching techniques (Evans, 1986) tend to make heavy demands on human and material resources and therefore are expensive. Teachers may be forced to return to less expensive and less sophisticated class


teaching modes, and may well be asked to be increasingly flexible in the subject areas they teach.

Under the 1988 Act, the LEA remains the employer of teachers, but all appointments are now made by the governors, who can decide how many teachers and of what kind to employ. With staffing the single most important budget item in schools, savings in this area are becoming a paramount concern, reflected in the trend that, rather than replacing staff leaving or retiring, some schools are looking to nonspecialist input to fill the gap created in a subject's staffing, thereby saving on salary expenses. As with the issue of subject budget allocations, all subjects are potentially affected by this change in outlook and practice, but the effects are also likely to be unevenly felt, and again are dependent to a great degree on subject status. Once again, the low status of PE may mean that ERA has unwelcome and potentially damaging consequences-in this instance, an increasing reliance on nonspecialist teaching in schools. This trend may herald a return to skill-oriented, traditional methods of teaching PE, further reducing opportunities for developing alternative pedagogies.

Governors also now determine how much time will be distributed to subjects across the cuniculum. Just as subject priorities and, specifically, their place in the phased implementation of the NC will be influential in decisions relating to subject budgets, time allocations will be made with these considerations in mind. As governors weigh up the status and cost of PE in relation to the size of the school budget7 q d the implementation of the NC as a whole, PE teachers may be faced with a reduction of staff time, and/or level of staffiig, which concomitantly may mean the loss of a particular expertise-and experience-from the cuniculum of PE.

"Open enrollment" also poses a challenge both to the quality and level of PE provision in schools. Open enrollment promises parents greater freedom to choose the school to which they will send their children. With the introduction of formula funding, this has created a situation in which schools are competing for pupils. Schools are forced to market their services and records, a key aspect of which may be their available facilities, including those in PE and sport. Obviously schools vary in their capacity to compete in these terms and such inequalities may exacerbate extant differences in the provision of PE and sport. Because of the marketing potential, schools having the facilities and staffiig levels to provide a wide range of activities may find financial support for PE, and thus for cuniculum development, far more forthcoming than in schools lacking such luxuries.

Thus schools will not enter the marketplace on anything like equal terms. As one Head of a Secondary school remarked, "Other neighboring schools with more on-site facilities including fields are more attractive to 12-year-olds" and presumably to their parents too. The difficulties may be even more pronounced in the primary sector. Historically underfunded in comparison to the secondary sector, primary schools have often had to make do with the limited facilities for PE to which they have access. A wide variety of schools-including first (taking pupils age 5-8), middle (8-12), infant (5-7), and junior (7-1 1)--characterize this sector, each differing in pupil enrollment, class size, physical size, and equipment available. Small and rural schools face the greatest problems because formula funding will ensure that their income is very low in comparison to other primary and secondary schools. Such schools may be unable, by virtue of their geographical location, to attract further pupils, and to concomitantly swell their funds.


Whether the above fears are justified will be apparent only in time. Our point is that the effects of ERA will not be experienced uniformly in the system. There will be inevitably winners and losers as market principles rule. To date our observations support Bowe et al.'s (1992) view:

The case for devolved budgets and decentralised decision making-the self managing school--often fails to connect the discussion of budgetary control to the realities of budgetary allocation and inter school competition. There is also a degree of self delusion involved in the notion that budgetary control is somehow liberating and inevitably more efficient without attention to the simple but crucial question of the size of the budget. LEA control of the size of the General School Budget and Government controls over LEA spending via the central spending estimates and poll capping are major sources of constraint and inequality. What is more, most writers seem to conveniently ignore the fact that student recruitment is inelastic, the student population is fixed. Increases in the roll of one school can only be achieved by decreases elsewhere. Greater budgetary flexibility in one school will mean additional constraints and a reduction in services in another. This is already happening as historic budgets are adjusted in relation to current levels of recruitment. Many schools are starting out by losing cash. (p. 29)

The upshot of all this is likely to be an increase in the number of more highly segregated schools. School differences, in terms of both the quality of educational experience they can provide and the social and ability mix which bedeviled the development of comprehensive schools in the U.K., will accumulate even further. Evidently the priorities of the market and of educational planning may simply be incompatible. As one head of a secondary school lamented, the consequence of "having to sell our subject and school to win more pupils may be an overemphasis on window dressing instead of getting on with teaching pupils.' '

At face value, requiring schools to address the levels of curricular provision they are making for PE, to ensure that it is broad and balanced, ought to have a positive effect on its provision in schools. However, whether the NCPE achieves equality and quality of provision across the system will depend on resources, including opportunities for staff training. LMS and open enrollment may make this face commitment to a "PE for all" extremely difficult to achieve. In primary schools in particular, where provision for PE is often very limited, the NCPE should ensure increases in the breadth of the PE curriculum. However, this is unlikely to materialize unless the NC is accompanied by quite dramatic increases in resource levels and training for teachers. In this sector teachers often "feel that a lack of training and confidence makes people wary of the subject and does not give children enough freedom," as one teacher in our study remarked.

In the present climate of competition for scarce resources, neither training nor other resources may be forthcoming. Nor may there be time for curriculum development. The phased introduction of the NC as a whole has meant that schools and teachers are already heavily pressured by the demands of implementing the NC in other subject areas. Teachers may have neither the energy nor the resource support to deal properly with those subjects such as PE that amve last in line. Again this problem will be particularly acute in the primary sector where teachers


are not only undertrained in PE (Laws, 1992): they are also subject generalists with responsibility for meeting the requirements of all the NC subjects with the children in their class. Already overwhelmed by silver ring leaf folders containing a multitude of NC demands, these teachers are not going to receive the NCPE documentation and its requirements with open and outstretched hands.

Facing this pressure and range of demands, it is not surprising that many teachers question the view that ERA and a NCPE will produce a quality, broad, and balanced curriculum for all children. Our reading of the future, like that of many teachers, is pessimistic. It is, however, tempered by the knowledge that even though ERA and the NCPE are highly detailed pieces of legislation requiring certain action, their policies will inevitably be made and remade by teachers within the education system in ways that have intended and unintended negative and positive consequences for both education and its surrounding milieu (Bowe et al., 1992; Evans et al., 1993). Whether ERA'S legislative measures foster equity or forms of differentiation that sponsor alienation and despair in the system will rest ultimately with the actions of teachers and governing bodies and with the commitments of the central state. The challenges facing the PE profession are many and formidable. What emerges as a NCPE in schools over the next decade and beyond, and whether it is something we can call progress and something in which we take pride, at this stage remains to be seen.

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Notes 'The 1944 Education Act drastically reorganized public education in England and

Wales, establishing among other things (see Dent, 1977) a system of free state-provided primary (5-11+) and secondary (12-18) education. LEAS were made responsible for securing adequate facilities in their areas for all forms of public education.

*The NC implementation timescales, beginning in 1989, will take until A.D. 2000 before being fully operational, that is, before any single year group (our present 8-year- olds) of pupils experiences it in its entirety (Kelly, 1990).

'This 4-year research project began in September 1990, is entitled "The Impact of the Education Reform Act on the Provision of Sport and PE in State Schools," and is funded by the ESRC (project R00233629), The Sports Council, and the University of Southampton.

4Attainrnent targets are defined as "the knowledge, skills and understanding that pupils of different abilities and maturities are expected to develop within that subject area." Programs of study consist of "the matters, skills and processes which must be taught to pupils during each key stage in order for them to meet the . . . attainment targets" (Department of Education and Science, 1989, Annex B).

SThe National Curriculum Council is a quasi-government agency established in 1988 under the terns of the ERA to review the NC, cany out research and development connected with the curriculum, publish and disseminate information related to the curriculum, and cany out ancillary activities as the Secretary of State may direct (Department of Education and Science, 1989).

6Portions of this section are drawn from Evans and Davies (1990; 1993). We are grateful to the Falmer Press for their permission to use this material.

'The government has determined that schools should be funded for teachers' salaries at the average salary costs for the whole county, rather than on the average staff costs for each school. In schools where the age and experience profile of staff is above average, teachers are facing redundancy or a reduction in their contracted time.

'Laws's (1991) revealed that PE in one year primary initial teacher training (ITT) courses varied from 15 to 75 hours, with an average of 40 hours. There is concern that government proposals to further reduce the college-based components of ITT courses may erode and damage the PE teaching component.

Acknowledgments We are grateful to the Economic and Social Research Council, the Sports Council,

and the University of Southampton for supporting the research upon which this paper is based.

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