Local Management of Schools

Schools are now 'in the market'. Formula funding, largely based on pupil numbers, is designed to make the popular school rich and the unpopular non-viable. Legislation for 'open access' in the 1988 Education Reform Act (ERA), means that efficient schools, with high standards, are expected to thrive and expand, as the inefficient close down for lack of pupils. Associated changes in educational policy require teachers to 'deliver' the National Curriculum, assess their pupils' progress at seven, eleven, fourteen and sixteen, and, depending on local authority policies for phasing in the changes, take over the management of their own budgets. It is this last aspect of government policy - budget delegation based on formula funding - which, although it inevitably embraces all the rest - is commonly known as Local Management of Schools (LMS). LMS is not an isolated policy change but part of a comprehensive range of legislation designed to change the way schools work. In spite of the rhetoric, LMS has a pivotal role in locking 'self-management' into the mechanisms designed for increased central control. Far from 'closing the loop' in a rational system of market competition and opportunity, tensions and paradoxes inherent in the system are devolved on to individuals and groups who experience them as stressful dilemmas and perversities.