Specialisation and Choice in Urban Education: The City Technology College Experiment

The authors of Specialisation and Choice in Urban Education start with the contention that the City Technical Colleges experiment--schools funded by the government to offer choice to inner-city parents and pupils--needs to be understood as part of a much broader political project--a project whose solution is based on entrepreneurship, competition and aversion to welfarism offered by the New Right in answer to Britain's economic malaise. Based upon research which includes nearly 400 interviews with players involved at all levels, the book follows the initiative from planning to effects. It focuses on the impact of recruitment policy on parental choice and the effect the new schools have had on local provision of education, and asks how far CTC's actually constitute a new form of school. The book will be valuable to those involved in the school choice debates currently in progress.