Charging for free education: an exploration of a debate in school governing bodies

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Abstract
Legal judgements delivered in recent years have impelled the government to redefine the meaning of free education. This redefinition was one of the miscellaneous measures included in the Education Reform Act. In contrast to former years, much of the responsibility for ensuring that schools only charge for those activities that they are legally entitled to, now falls to school governing bodies. These were, themselves, restructured and reconstituted by recent legislation. In this paper, we outline some of the resultant changes to the composition and functions of governing bodies which were intended to shift power away from those governors constructed by the new right and the Secretary of State for Education as producers, to those categories labelled as consumers. We then present some of our findings concerning the debate on charging for school activities which took place among the governors who are included in the sample of governing bodies which we are currently researching. We conclude by suggesting that the evidence we have obtained does not reveal a movement of power away from the professionals or producers and we question the capacity of governing bodies to implement what is required of them by the Educational Reform Act.