Since the 1990's the governments in the Western developed countries have stressed education reforms, in particular, reform of the secondary school system, which is caused by (1) the restructuring of the capitalist economy, (2) the re-organisation of the capitalist state, (3) the disparity between economic/political systems and the existing education system, (4) the anxiety and discontent in the people's "life world", and (5) the political strategy by the dominant forces to recover the political legitimacy. However, these education reforms have found four paths: a social democratic- welfare statist, a conservative- corporatist, a neoliberal- market competitionist, and a communitarian-localist. Among them, this article focuses on the education reforms in the UK under the Blair government since 1997, which are the mixture of neoliberal (to a major extent ) and social democratic (to a minor extent) measures. Section 1 gives an overview on the education budgets under the Blair governments 1997-2006 and points to several strengthened state interventions by the central government, rather than the local governments and education authorities (LEA), to the secondary schools within public sector ("state schools" in UK). Section 2 examines the Education and Inspection Bill 2006 which could convert an ordinary local school with public sector (so-called "comprehensive school" or "community school") into a new specialist school by a private provider ("city academy" and "trust school"); promote "parental choice" and "competition among schools"; and let the LEA powers shrink. And Section 3 studies the case of Islington (one of the inner-city areas in London), where the LEA is "privatised", and "parental choice and school choice" is implemented, and the conversion of a comprehensive school into a city academy is proposed. Section 4 sketches another policy of "London Challenge" in the inner-city areas to promote the high quality public service (schooling) through the social democratic centralist intervention. Even though there is a strong drive to the neolibeal centralist intervention mentioned above, this article also pays attention to some communitarian education movements which try to reconstruct good, local, comprehensive schools, within the public sector, controlled democratically by the LEA and local governments as well as parental participation.