In one sense, education was always a service industry. This book examines the quality as well as the quantity of contemporary education as it answers the following questions: Are we getting value for money? What makes a good teacher? What sort of education do we want? In the UK in the twentieth century education grew while national income did not. Britain devoted more of its resources to education than any other European nation and yet the UK had the largest proportion of children leaving school at 15 and spent more on each university place than the USA. The author argues that far too...

Originally published 1978.This volume examines the purpose and the functioning of the present education system inthe UK and when it was originally published it was the first overall review of developments in British education since the 1944 Education Act. It discusses some of the most significant reforms which have stemmed from developments in the primary schools, in particular from the adoption of child-centred and progressive methods of teaching.