Policy and Politics in Education: Sponsored Grant-maintained Schools and Religious Diversity

In early 1998 the new Labour government decided that it would give sponsored grant-maintained status to two Muslim primary schools and one Seventh Day Adventist secondary school. This book examines the way that the idea of sponsored grant-maintained schools developed, passed into legislation in the 1993 Education Act and was implemented by successive governments. It shows that, under the Conservative government, rather than encouraging diversity, the policy became one which offered a rigidly enforced franchise. Since May 1997 the use of this part of the Act by the Labour government has indicated that it wishes state support to be available to schools run by a diversity of religious and ethnic minority groups. By analyzing these policy developments, Geoffrey Walford demonstrates that this apparently minor piece of legislation will, in the future, be seen as a turning point in British educational policy.