How successful were Thatcher’s social policies?

NHS success

• Aim to make the NHS more efficient by applying business principles

• Hospitals could become self governing, controlling their own budget

• NHS services to compete with each other

• GPs got control of their own funds

• Supporters argued it injected financial discipline

NHS failure

• Critics argued it was first stage in privatising the NHS

• That profit would be put ahead of social care

• Business methods inappropriate for public services

Education success

• Introduction of a national curriculum and GCSEs to improve the standard of education in Britain

• State schools could become grant maintained and control their budgets

• Kept grants for university students and also maintained the polytechnics for vocational training

Education failures

• Concern that GCSEs were not academically rigorous enough

• Content too restrictive and testing too frequent

• Disagreements on content for History and English

• Inconsistency of freedom of budget but not content

• University budgets were cut so they had to look for funding from other sources

Council Houses success

• Wanted those she saw as having hard work, self reliance and initiative to be able to own their homes

• She believed owning homes made them less likely to be socialist

• Council tenants could buy their own homes

Council Houses failures

Meant that the stock of council housing dropped and was never fully replenished

factors

1. NHS

2. Education

3. Council Houses

argument in every paragraph

MOSTLY success despite problems implementing especially:

1. Education changes received a lot of criticism and were restrictive on curriculum limiting her abilitu to fully impose her values

2. NHS reforms - Thatcher saw them as “damage control” because rising healthcare needs and public pressure forced her to protect the NHS even as she tried to limit the state