Bernard Barker's thesis that schools have been undermined over the past quarter of a century by a damaging combination of top-down, centralised reform and a desire to impose a market philosophy on education is powerful. This article analyses the nature of the apparatus of control--both statist and free-market--which has been applied to schools over this period. In particular, it will focus on the key control mechanism: the use of test and examination results as apparent measures of schools' quality. It will assess the success of this system, comment on its design faults and its problematic implications for the broad conception of education as understood in "The Pendulum Swings," and argue that the concluding note of optimism sounded in Barker's book--about a future of communities exerting greater influence over education locally--appears not to be being realised in policy under the new coalition. (Contains 28 footnotes.)