politics, markets and schools: education policy and social (in)justice

Monday, April 10, 2023 1Event Name and Venue

Politics, markets and schools

Education policy and social (in)justice

University of Leicester 20th May 2013

Howard Stevenson

School of Education, University of Nottingham

[email protected]

Monday, April 10, 2023 Event Name and Venue 2

An exercise in policy analysis . . .

Understanding where we are . . .

. . . and where we might be going . . .

. . . by understanding where we have come from

Post-war welfarism and citizenshipPost-war welfarism and citizenship

In contrast to the economic process, it is a fundamental principle of the

welfare state that the market value of an individual cannot be the measure

of his [sic] right to welfare. The central function of welfare, in fact, is to

supersede the market by taking goods and services out of it, or in some way

to control and modify its operations so as to produce a result that it would

not have produced itself.

(Marshall, 1981:107, original 1950)


F A Hayek and the battle of ideas . . .

If in the long run we are the makers of our own fate, in the short run we are the captives of the ideas we have created.

Hayek, 1994:2


‘. . . if we take the people whose views influence developments, they are now in this country in some measure all socialists. If it is no longer fashionable to emphasise that “we are all socialists now”, this is so merely because the fact is too obvious. Scarcely anybody doubts that we must continue to move towards socialism, and most people are merely trying to deflect this movement in the interest of a particular class or group.

It is because nearly everybody wants it that we are moving in this direction. There are no objective facts that make it inevitable.’

Hayek, 1944:5


Hayek – The Road to Serfdom (1944)

‘Freedom’ is the objective (freedom from . . .).

Competition is the key – the market.

State involvement necessary – but only where it supports competition and not where it supplants it.

The state has a natural tendency to grow . . . – opens the door to producer/political/vested interests . . .

The state is a threat to democracy, liberty, rule of law

‘ . . . the Road to Freedom was in fact the

High Road to Servitude.’ (p27)


Friedman – Free to Choose (1980)

‘A very different meaning of equality has emerged in the United States in recent decades – equality of outcome. Everyone should have the same level of living, or of income, should finish the race at the same time. Equality of outcome is in clear conflict with liberty. The attempt to promote it has been a major source of bigger and bigger government and of government-imposed restrictions on our liberty.’ (p120)


Friedman – What’s wrong with our schools? (in Free to Choose,1980)

‘For schooling, this sickness has taken the form of denying many parents control over the kinds of schooling their children receive either directly, through choosing and paying for the schools their children attend, or indirectly through local political activity. Power has instead gravitated to professional educators. The sickness has been aggravated by increasing centralization and bureaucratization of schools, especially in the big cities.’ (p141-2)


Chubb and Moe – Politics, Markets and America’s Schools (1990)

Economic crisis as the catalyst for change – ‘From an economic standpoint, America clearly needed better – and more rigorous- education. But beyond that it also needed education of a different kind’ (p9)

‘When it comes to educational decisionmaking, particularly at the state and local levels where effective authority resides, the most powerful political groups by far are those with vested interests in the current institutional system: teachers’ unions and myriad associations of principals, school boards, superintendents, administrators and professionals – not to mention education schools, book publishers, testing services, and many other beneficiaries of the institutional status quo.’ (p11-12).


Adam Smith Institute on ‘Producer Capture’

‘Education has proved easier for the producers (teacher and administrators) to capture than other industries, partly because its shortcomings can be disguised by jargon. The school with poor examination results can claim that knowledgeable educationalists nowadays hold ‘school spirit’ or ‘awareness’ more important. Although the consumers (parents and children) demand examination passes and other measureable achievements from their schools, education producers are able to argue that they, as ‘professionals’, know better . . . .’ (Omega Report, 1980)


The New Right analysis

The Causes . . .

•‘Big government’ – tendency to growth

•‘Politics’ and political decision-making

•Producer interests

•Lack of incentives

•Lack of sanctions

And Cures . . .

• Quasi-markets

• ‘Choice’

• Vouchers

• Entry and exit to market

• Union marginalisation

• Privatisation


Crisis? What (kind of) crisis?From the Right . . .

• Social and moral crisis (Black Papers)

• ‘Big government’ crisis (Bacon and Eltis, 1976 - ‘too few producers’)

From the Left . . .

• Fiscal Crisis of the State (O’Connor,1973)

• Organic crisis (Hall, 1980; Gamble 1988)

From the Social Democrats/Centre Left . . .

• ????


Thatcherism – The Free Economy and the Strong State (Gamble, 1988)

‘Thatcherism has been widely interpreted as a hegemonic project, aiming at the replacement of the discredited social democratic consensus of the postwar period with a new consensus for the 1990s. At first it signified especially an intense ideological struggle, but it also involved from the first political calculation aimed at winning and maintaining support, as well as a programme of policies for reorganising the state, improving economic performance and reversing British decline.’ (p24)


1987 Conference Speech

(Education contribution at 13’45”)


Educating the ‘Right’ Way (Apple,2006)

The Conservative modernisers . . . a hegemonic alliance:•Neo-liberals•Neo-Conservatives•Religious Right•New Managerialists

‘The assumption that individual freedoms are guaranteed by freedom of the market and of trade is a cardinal feature of neo-liberal thinking . . . The freedoms it embodies reflect interests of private property owners, businesses, multinational corporations and financial capital.’ (Harvey, 2005:7)


The1988 Education Reform Act - from theory . . . to policy . . . to practice . . . ?

• National curriculum• Testing – 7, 11, 14, 16• Open Enrolment• Local Management of Schools• Grant-maintained Schools (‘opting out’) /City Technology Colleges

‘ …a subtle set of linked measures are to be relied on to have the desired effect – that is to push the whole system towards a degree at least, of privatisation, establishing a base which could be further exploited later.’

Simon (1987:13)


Comprehensive values

•Student needs•Universalism•Mixed ability•Co-operation with other schools•Resource emphasis on ‘less able’/SEN students•Caring ethos•Priority on social/educational concerns•Oriented to needs of community•Integrationist•Good relationships as basis of school discipline•Distinctive

(Gewirtz, 2002)

Market values

• Student performance

• Differentiation

• Setting

• Competition with other schools

• Resource emphasis on ‘more able’

• Academic ethos

• Priority driven by image/budget concerns

• Oriented to attracting ‘motivated’ parents

• Exclusivist

• Emphasis on extrinsic discipline eg uniform

• Emulative

The return of the New Right . . .

"The structural change is we've got to bust open the state monopoly on education and allow new schools to be established. It's what's happened in Sweden, in parts of America it's hugely successful in terms of making sure there's excellence, there's competition, there's innovation and new excellent schools come along. It's a big chance. It will mean some big battles with forces of resistance. Some LEAs might not like it, some of the education establishment won't like it.”

“There are forces in the education establishment that have to be taken on and defeated on this.”

David Cameron, Daily Telegraph interview (6/2/2009)


Michael Gove – speech to the National College for Teaching and Leadership (April 2013)


The Producers 1: The new local authorities . . .

what does this market look like? what is the shape of it? as it starts to clump together .. and how many groupings of schools are we getting .. and should we play a role and how should we play a role in encouraging schools to actually group together .. and make the ways that they intended in meeting out those other options .. and what would be our kind of market .. and I don’t want to say regulated .. because I don’t think that it is that - market shaper or an influencer .. where we are .. you know very clearly .. in the role as a champion for children not for institutions.

(Local Authority Officer, interview 2012)


The Producers 2: The new teachers . . .

• Schools Direct teacher training• QTS de-regulation• Alternative credentialing eg Teach First• ‘New Leaders’ eg Future Leaders• Performance-pay – ‘rewarding the best’• Professional ‘voice’ – non-unionised (Royal College of Teachers, Edapt)• Easier routes into, and out of, teaching

Teaching as a job . . . not a profession or a career.


The Producers 3: The new academics . . .

• Reduced role in teacher education• Politicised evaluation research• Increased influence of private research bodies and think tanks (see common personnel

between DfE and Teach First)• ‘Academic capitalism’ (Slaughter and Leslie, 1999) and the threat to academic freedom• Policy entrepreneurs and ‘the rest’


The Post-Welfarist Education Policy Complex . . .

. . . functions as a powerful disciplinary mechanism of re-acculturation and how processes of re-acculturation appear to be generating various forms of oppression and injustice, including the reproduction and exacerbation of entrenched socio-economic inequalities, the subjugation of teachers, a closer alignment of schooling with the values of capitalist society, and a move towards more traditional and socially regressive pedagogies.

Gewirtz, 2002:22


Politics, markets, schools and social (in)justice. . .

What kind of citizen in what type of society?

What are the implications for . . . ?

•Distributive justice

•Cultural justice

•Associational justice

(Cribb and Gewirtz, 2003)


The dictatorship of no alternative cannot be overthrown without ideas . . .

(Fielding and Moss, 2011)