Back to the Birth Of The Millennials calendar
Time to go back to school. Well, not really, but time to look at education again. In 1972 the school leaving age was raised to 16. It had been 15 for sometime. By the way, I actually left school at the end of the summer term in 1968, on my 19th birthday. They put on a great party for me, loads of guests, food and speeches. It was a lovely day. I don't know if it was connected but we also had our speech day at the end of the summer term.
However, in 1988, the government introduced an Education Reform Act. It did several things which may still be affecting you. They introduced City Technology Colleges. Fifteen of these were set up and they are the forerunners of the academies that you may go to today. They made schools responsible for their finances not Local Authorities. Grant Maintained Schools were set up which were completely funded by government. Most of these things were to take schools out of the control of local government.
And, this one most definitely does affect everyone at school today, the National Curriculum was introduced and SATs began at age 7, 11 and 14.
In 1986 the old GCE exams that I had taken at age 15-16 were replaced by GCSEs. Also National Vocational Qualifications came into being to promote vocational, or job, training. I was actually teaching these at this time and my students were the very first in Essex to get a level 3 NVQ in Business Administration. I was very proud of them and how hard they worked. I was just there to help, guide and, sometimes, shout.
Forward to 1989AD
