Impact of Historical Shifts in Educational Reforms in England on empowering communities for self governance

The objective of this paper is to describe and understand the English historical background of local government-initiated education policies. The paper then explores levels of equity and their correlation with levels of trust in a system. The conceptual framework is that of centralised and decentralised decision making in education governance systems. A constructivist comparative analysis approach was taken to ask a) what is the historical background of English current rapid changing governmentinitiated education policies?, b) what is the relationship between equity and trust in a system?, c) how can the findings be theorized to optimise students’ self-governance as they transition to adult citizens in the wider society? Evidence reveals the consequences of frequent and inexpedient reforms is system losses of valuable resources, and decreased morale of the key change implementers. A position that rapid reforms are needed by education systems is flawed. A model of self-governance emerges from the deconstruction of the policy analysis with Intended Learning Outcomes (ILOs) to self-govern. These include making observations; developing beliefs and methods to critique changes that will impact their lives; developing principles of trust in governance systems. Recommendations for future research to test proof of concept of the ILOs is recommended.