“So far as is compatible with the provision of efficient instruction and training and the avoidance of unreasonable public expenditure, pupils are to be educated in accordance with the wishes of their parents.”
Where have you seen this before? A Department for Education press release? A Conservative Party manifesto? The Education Reform Act, 1988? Actually it is Section 76 of the Education Act, 1944.
But wasn’t “parental choice” a new idea from the 1980s? Not so. It had been a basic principle of educational administration for 40 years.
What made it a political issue in the 1980s and today is the tension between the “wishes of the parents” and the “avoidance of unreasonable public expenditure”.
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