The development of various pieces of legislation such as the Education Reform Act and Education Acts, as well as the development of Ofsted, education has become much more competitive. For example, league tables produced through Ofsted inspections mean that parents are much more competitive as they want their child to go to the better schools. However, this creates winners and losers because those who manage to attend the better schools would be seen as winners, whereas those at the lower league schools would be seen as losers. There is also losers created by the comparison of males and females, between different social classes and races. For example, boys are now seen as the losers in education in comparisons to girls because their attainment is lower, but the gap between these is much smaller than the gap between social classes. This means overall, the losers are often those from minority ethnic groups or those in poorer classes and it is likely that they receive poorer education than those in higher classes. The development of alternative education such as vocational and work-based education as well as personalised education have meant that now all pupils have a much better opportunity to receive the best education they can because everyone is being focussed on rather just those who engaged with the National Curriculum. This creates winners across the board including pupils, teachers and the Government as if pupils are doing better in school it is likely that it will benefit the economy. .
The Education Act 1988 meant that there was 'a surge of educational change, reform, legislation and government intervention' (Ward & Eden, 2009) which meant that changes were made to all aspects of education including curriculum, assessment and evaluating the effectiveness of the setting. Ofsted was set up in 1992 under the Conservative Government and it aimed to raise standards of achievement, improve quality of education, improve management of the school and to raise students' self-esteem (Ofsted, 1995).
