Inner London Education Authority - Abolition

Abolition

The ILEA had fought off one attempt to abolish it in 1980. The abolition of the GLC, announced in 1983, led to another attempt to get rid of the ILEA, but the Inner London Boroughs were adjudged not ready to handle education services. The Conservative government was led by Margaret Thatcher, who had grown to dislike ILEA as over-spending and over-bureaucratic while Education Secretary in the early 1970s, and would have liked to abolish it. Initially the proposal was to replace it with a joint board nominated by the inner London Boroughs, but eventually it decided to keep the ILEA as a directly elected body. In the May 1986 elections, each London Parliamentary constituency elected two members of the ILEA. Labour won easily.

Backbench Conservative MPs continued to oppose the continuation of the ILEA. The Education Reform Bill of Kenneth Baker proposed to allow Boroughs who wanted to opt out of ILEA and become education authorities. However, the Government's hand was forced when an amendment was tabled in the House of Commons by Norman Tebbit and supported by Michael Heseltine to abolish ILEA altogether. This unlikely alliance was particularly notable as Tebbit and Heseltine represented very different ideological wings of the Conservative Party. It was also the source of some local controversy at the time, as both members represented constituencies (Chingford and Henley respectively) outside the ILEA area.

The Government announced on 4 February 1988 that it would accept the Tebbit/Heseltine amendment and abolish ILEA in 1990 as part of the Education Reform Act 1988. Once the Bill was passed, ILEA then complied with this decision in the interests of education. The inner London boroughs then became education authorities, and remain so today.