The Education Reform Act of 1988
The 1988 Education Reform Act made considerable changes to the education system. These changes were aimed at creating a 'market' in education with schools competing with each other for 'customers' (pupils). The theory was that bad schools would lose pupils to the good schools and either have to improve, reduce in capacity or close.

The reforms included the following:

* The National Curriculum was introduced, which made it compulsory for schools to teach certain subjects and syllabuses. Previously the choice of subjects had been up to the school.
* National curriculum assessments were introduced at the Key Stages 1 to 4 (ages 7, 11, 14 and 16 respectively) through what were formerly called SATS (Standard Assessment Tests). At Key Stage 4 (age 16), the assessments were made from the GCSE exam.
* League tables began showing performance statistics for each school. These are regularly published in newspapers and are available over the web, so parents can see how schools are doing in each area of the country.
* Formula funding was introduced, which meant that the more children a school could attract to it, the more money it got.
* Open Enrolment and choice for parents were brought back, so that parents could choose or influence which school their children went to.
* Schools could, if enough of their pupils' parents agreed, opt out of local government control, becoming grant maintained schools and receiving funding direct from central government. The government offered more money than the school would get usually from the local authority as an enticement. This was seen as a political move given that often local authorities were not run by the governing Conservative Party whereas central government was.