This paper focuses on school reform in England and in particular on the attempts to increase diversity and choice through specialist schools. It examines the extent to which diversity and choice have been introduced into the state (public) education system and then presents key findings to emerge from an evaluation of the flagship government program designed to increase diversity into the state system, namely the Specialist Schools Programme. By September 1999 there were over 400 specialist schools in local education authorities across all parts of England. This represents over 12 percent B a significant minority B of all eligible secondary schools. The Programme enables schools to develop their strength in either technology, modern foreign languages, sports, or the arts. The various types of specialist schools all provide the full national curriculum. Section 2 provides an overview of the structure of the state education system in England and the reforms that have been introduced over the past 15 years or so. Section 3 focuses explicitly on specialist schools and the Specialist Schools Programme in particular and Section 4 presents key findings to emerge from the first evaluation of the Specialist Schools Programme commissioned by the Department for Education and employment. Section 5 concludes the paper with a discussion of the extent to which the Programme can be considered to have increased diversity and choice. (Includes 16 references and 4 figures.) (Author/MLF)