3.1 Tony Blair and Andrew Adonis

Many teachers hoped - some even dared to believe - that the election of the first Labour government for eighteen years, led by Tony Blair, would usher in a new 'golden age' in education. Tests and league tables would disappear, chief inspector Chris Woodhead would be sacked, Ofsted scrapped, and grant maintained (GM) schools would be brought under local authority control.

Perhaps most importantly, selection for secondary education would finally be abolished. There were good grounds for believing this. After all, David Blunkett, then shadow education secretary, had promised the Labour Party conference on 4 October 1995: 'Read my lips. No selection by examination or interview'. And the move would have had widespread public support. An ICM poll in 1996 had shown that 65 per cent of the population supported comprehensive education, while only 27 per cent favoured a selective system. [4, p.31]

But it was all to prove a delusion. The first 'New Labour' government, swept to power in May 1997 with a Commons majority of 179, was to prove very different from any previous Labour government.

Tony Blair's ten years in office, his principal education adviser was to be Andrew Adonis .

A former journalist and Liberal Democrat, Adonis joined Labour in December 1995 after Blair forced the party to end its commitment to public ownership. He became a member of the Number 10 Policy Unit from 1998 and in 2005 Blair gave him a life peerage and the post of junior education minister.

He exerted a powerful influence on New Labour education policies, coming up with a constant stream of ideas - including the academies programme - and, according to some, repeatedly interfering, for example over the vexed issue of university top-up fees.

Several education secretaries suffered as a result of what insiders dubbed 'The Adonis Problem'. They felt that their role was not to make education policy but to promote the policies devised by Adonis and Blair. The most notable casualty was Estelle Morris, who, it was widely believed, resigned because she felt undermined by Adonis . There were suspicions that Charles Clarke was told to keep quiet when he raised questions about the effectiveness of grammar schools. And Ruth Kelly found herself overruled when it came to some of the proposals in the 2005 White Paper.

3.2 New Labour's education policies

The Tories' Assisted Places scheme had provided public money to pay for 30,000 children to go to private schools. Within two months of coming to power the new administration scrapped the scheme in the 1997 Education (Schools) Act (31 July 1997). It also made a commitment to reduce some class sizes.

But it quickly became clear that in other respects New Labour's education policies would be little different from those of Thatcher and Major. 'This meant an endorsement of much of the 1988 Education Reform Act and its successors, in relation both to "parental choice" and to competition between schools in a diverse and unequal secondary school system'. [9,p.145]

Few were surprised, therefore, when David Blunkett , now secretary of state for education, announced that Chris Woodhead would be keeping his job as chief inspector of schools and head of Ofsted.

In relation to selection, despite Blunkett's pre-election promise, the warning signs had been clear. The 1995 Labour policy document Diversity and excellence: a new partnership for schools, for example, had set out the party's new thinking on grammar schools:

Our opposition to academic selection at 11 has always been clear. But while we have never supported grammar schools in their exclusion of children by examination, change can come only through local agreement. Such change in the character of a school could only follow a clear demonstration of support from the parents affected by such decisions.