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Homework answers / question archive / Revision Session 2020-21 Dr Patrick Bailey Policy and Politics in Education Content A
Revision Session 2020-21 Dr Patrick Bailey Policy and Politics in Education Content A. Module content: A. Overall themes for the module B. Session by session summary of each topic B. Exam preparation: A. B. C. D. 2 Types of question Planning an answer, timing Topic and overall questions Practicalities Overall themes for the module 3 Topics on the module • Education policy and politics: What is policy? • Education and political ideologies • Neoliberalism in education and the Global Education Reform Movement (GERM) • School Choice • Policy enactment, policy windows and the localised nature of policy actions • Assessment policy: High stakes testing • Teachers and teacher education • Private Sector Involvement in Education • Character education policy and social mobility Topic 1: What is ‘policy’? • Formal and legislated Policy vs. policy made and remade in many places (Evans et al, 2008) • Legislation, which is enacted in different ways in different contexts Policy cycle 6 A more sociological view of how policy emerges (Policy Sociology) Policy emerges as solution to a ‘problem’ Possible solutions and ‘policy silences’ Changing possibilities over time Compromises between competing interests – incoherence • Building on previous policy • May have unintended consequences • • • • How policy emerges Policy as discourse: • Policy as signalling a problem • Policy as defining solutions to the problem • Policy as limiting other alternatives (see Adams, 2014 p35) 8 Using this topic in the exam • Many questions will involve some discussion of the nature of policy. • It may be enough to comment on a policy ‘problem’ that is solved through the presentation of a particular ‘solution’ • Remember to be critical – there are no given answers to policy problems Using this topic in the exam • Other questions (but especially question 1) may ask more specifically about the nature of policy, so will require more in-depth knowledge of this topic • With these, it would be useful to have examples ready Key Reading for this topic • Chapter 2 ‘Education policy and policymaking’ in Adams, P. (2014). Policy and Education. Abingdon, Routledge. • Ball, S.J. (2017) The Education Debate (third edition). Policy Press: Bristol. Introduction Chapter: the Great Education Debate (1976–2016) - pp. 1-12. Topic 2: Ideology • Role of the state - to control education, to greater or lesser extents (current consensus is that the state should be involved in the education of all children) • Globalisation – power of supranational organisations e.g. OECD (who run PISA tests), World Bank - shift from Westphalian to post-Westphalian conceptions of political authority State control Topic 2: Ideology • Thus policy agendas are set at a national but also global level – policy is multidimensional and multi-layered Topic 2: Ideology • Ideology is ‘“system” of ideas, beliefs, fundamental commitments, or values about social reality’ (Apple, 2013; 34) • Different ideologies can be placed on the political spectrum, left to right • Ideology affects policy in education, e.g. what schools we have, what is learnt, funding, access to types of education, access to higher education Political trends in the UK 17 Using this topic in the exam • Ideology is important throughout the module, particularly in relation to the dominance of neoliberalism. • Links also to the nature of policy – what solutions are offered relate to ideological positions? • May need to include comment on globalisation and supranational decision-making in other discussions, e.g. testing Using this topic in the exam • Questions on this topic specifically will need to comment on the links between different ideologies and different policies • E.g. state education for all under post-war Welfarist consensus; comprehensive education from Left; choice/marketisation from neoliberalism (political Right) • You may also discuss neo-conservatism Key Reading for this topic • Chapter 1: ‘Political Ideology’.Adams, P. (2014) Policy and Education. Abingdon: Routledge. • Robertson, L. & Hill, D. (2014) Policy and ideologies in schooling and early years education in England: Implications for and impacts on leadership, management and equality. Management in Education, Vol 28:4. Topic 3: Neoliberalism and GERM • Dominant ideology since 1980s • Markets and choice are priorities in mission to improve efficiency and reduce ‘producer capture’ • International – e.g. voucher systems are used in Chile, Sweden, US; global scope of marketization/privatization (GERM) Central ideas of neoliberalism 22 The impact on education policy 23 Also, neoconservatism • A ‘return’ to higher standards • ‘a romanticized past of the ‘ideal’ home, family and school’ (Apple 2006 p469) • Rejection of ‘progressive’ education • Need to tighten control of curriculum Neoliberal policy • Introduction of school choice • Local management of schools – budgets to mimic vouchers • Diversification of types of school • In England, present in 80s, 90s, 2000s and 2010s by Conservative, coalition and Labour govts. You can discuss other national contexts! Using this topic in the exam • A question on neoliberalism – be ready to explain it, and the evidence for it in education policy • Also neoliberalism as a key theme of the module, present in many questions • Remember there are other ideologies too Key Reading for this topic • Bailey, P. & Ball, S.J. (2016) 'The coalition government, the general election and the policy ratchet in education: a reflection on the 'ghosts' of policy past, present and yet to come'. In Bochel, H. & Powell, M. (eds) The coalition government and social policy: restructuring the welfare state (Chapter 6). • Fuller, K. & Stevenson, H. (2019) Global education reform: understanding the movement. Educational Review, 71:1, PP. 1-4. • Also see • Chapter 1: ‘Political Ideology’. Adams, P. (2014) Policy and Education. Abingdon: Routledge. • And the chapter on markets. Topic 4: Choice • Neo-liberalism refers to the introduction of market-led economic policies which minimize state intervention. • In education, neo-liberalism is associated with a market-oriented education system in which schools compete for pupils. • Parents are seen as consumers who have the responsibility of choosing an appropriate provider for their child, from a number of different options. Neoliberalism and the idea of the market Topic 5: Choice • Key idea behind choice in education is that the market is the ideal way to allocate resources • Diversification of types of school – key shifts in Cons in 80s/90s; then under New Lab; then coalition and Cons in 2010s. • Social Class effects on choosing – e.g. how school choice is mediated by social class (different choice practices –’willing’, ‘default’ and ‘community’ choosers) • Increased segregation (Allen and Vignoles, 2007) especially in London https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0305 4980701366306 • Pierre Bourdieu and uneven distribution of economic, social and cultural capital. Does choice benefit all equally? Using this topic in the exam • Topic on school choice – need to know the evolution of the policy, the ideology behind it, and the effects it has. • Important to understand the inequalities of choice. • The question might also ask about alternatives to choice. Key Reading for this topic • Vincent, C., Braun, A. & Ball, S.J. (2010) Local links, local knowledge: choosing care settings and schools. British Educational Research Journal, 36:2, pp. 279-298. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01411920902919240 • Angus, L. (2015) School choice: neoliberal education policy and imagined futures. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 36:3, pp. 395-413. • SEE ALSO: Adams, P. (2014) Policy and Education. London: Routledge. Chapter 6: ‘Choice and Diversity’. Topic 5: Policy Enactment • Enactment: – policies are interpreted and ‘translated’ by diverse policy actors in the school environment, rather than simply implemented. – Teachers and education workers are key actors, rather than just subjects in the policy process. • Policy rarely tells schools/teachers exactly what to do (or how to do it) – policy has to be translated from the ‘policy text’ into practice (=enacted). • This means that context, in its various forms, is integral in shaping policy on the ground. • Enactment different to ‘implementation’. Revisiting The Policy Cycle Stephen Ball’s policy cycle (Ball 1994) The Policy Cycle • Context of influence is where interest groups struggle over the construction of policy discourses and where key policy concepts are established; • Context of policy text production is where texts represent policies. Texts have to be read in relation to time and the site of production, and with other relevant texts; • Context of practice is where policy is subject to interpretation and recreation. • Context of outcomes is where the impact of policies on existing social inequalities is seen; • Context of political strategy is where one identifies political activities which might tackle such inequalities. (Lall 2007, p.5) Using this topic in the exam • Important to refer to the idea of policy enactment when discussing how any policy plays out in practice. • Also a question in itself, but need examples (see lecture notes and readings) • Annette Braun discussed different examples, including school responses to Covid policy on the ground. Key Reading for this topic • Wright, J.S. & Kim, K. (2020) Reframing community (dis)engagement: the discursive connection between undemocratic policy enactment, minoritized communities and resistance, Journal of Education Policy, DOI: 10.1080/02680939.2020.1777467 • Lightfoot, N. (2016) Policy research: In defence of ad hocery?, in A. O’Grady & V. Cottle, (eds) Exploring Education at Postgraduate Level. London, David Fulton • ALSO SEE: • Taking context seriously: towards explaining policy enactments in the secondary school - Annette Braun, Stephen J. Ball, Meg Maguire, Kate Hoskins Topic 6: High stakes tests • a key feature of systems where schools are judged through assessments, and progress between assessments • Part of performativity and accountability • Intended to give parents information about quality of schools • Have an impact on practices and priorities, e.g. datafication Topic 6: High stakes tests • Impact on teachers - ‘terrors of performativity’ (Ball, 2003); becoming data collectors • Rational responses? Gaming, fabrication • Impact on children – grouping (e.g. triage), mental health Performance and accountability: Role of state in monitoring education 43 Using this topic in the exam • HST are a neoliberal policy (with league tables, to inform parental choice) – will feature in other topics too • As a topic, need to know some basic information on what HST there are, the impact and why they are in the system • Need to define HST. Key Reading for this topic • Bradbury, A., & Roberts-Holmes, G. (2017). The Datafication of Early Years and Primary Education: Playing with numbers. ‘Schools’ responses to datafication and the visibility of performance’ (Chapter 5) • https://www.morethanascore.org.uk/wpcontent/uploads/2019/09/SATs-research.pdf - pages 1-11. • Briefing paper on testing after COVID here: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/ioe/research-projects/2020/oct/primaryassessment-turbulent-times • ALSO SEE: Lingard and Sellar (2013) on ‘perverse systemic effects’ of HST https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02680939.2012.758815 Topic 7: Teachers & Teacher training • Teacher training policy evolved from informal to day training colleges (from 1890) to PGCEs in universities (and polytechnics), to Teach First and other routes • Debates over status (related to the gendered dimension), and pay and professional status Topic 7: Teachers & Teacher training • A semi-profession? Shifts in discourse from professional to skilled or innate teacher • Political debates over need for theory or technical instruction The status of teaching • Reasons for the lower status of teaching in comparison to other professions: – High number of women in the profession – Teaching as less ‘glamorous’ than medicine or law – People’s familiarity with teachers, e.g. from their own schooling, demystifies the job – Teachers (in Britain) tend to have lower qualifications than members of other professions – Teaching often viewed as something ‘anyone can do’, a ‘default’ occupation people slip into (Adapted from Bates at al., 2011, p.140) Topic 7: Teachers & Teacher training • Policy has an impact on teachers, especially performance related pay; HST and performativity • Current teacher training shortage and high leaving rate from teaching – made by policy? Using this topic in the exam • Question on topic – policy, debates • Also performativity features in HST topic and relevant to other topics involving teachers. • Teacher resistance?? Key Reading for this topic • Ball, S.J. (2016) Neoliberal education? Confronting the slouching beast. Policy Futures in Education 14, 8: 1046-59. • Adams, P. (2014) Policy and Education. London: Routledge. Chapter 7: ‘Professionalism’. • ALSO SEE: • Chapter 8: Performance and accountablity - P. Adams Policy and Education Topic 8: Privatisation • Ongoing process of public sector reform – ‘selling off’ national industries and services • Shift from state ownership to private • Neoliberal ideology • Different forms, including retailisation • IMPORTANT – while you can note the existence of private/fee-paying education, this topic is more focused on the privatisation of state education (globally) Endogenous and exogenous privatisation in education ENDOGENOUS – internal reforms to organisation, relationships, methods and values of the public sector – marketisation and competition EXOGENOUS – replacing public sector providers by ‘selling off’, deregulating or contracting out public service delivery or infrastructure Interrelated and mutually reinforcing – endogenous first, e.g. 1988 Education Reform Act, followed by exogenous, e.g. contracting out of services in 1990s A policy settlement? Policy ratchet? Is education a public or a private good? These approaches to education also work together to make education more like a ‘commodity’ owned by and benefiting the individual and her/his employer than a public good that benefits the society as a whole. While policy accounts of education matched to the needs of employment and the economy – a human capital approach – argues that this benefits society as a whole by creating a strong economy as well as individual wealth, it is difficult to see this in practice. Furthermore, there is a conceptual shift from education as an intrinsically valuable shared resource which the state owes to its citizens to a consumer product for which the individual must take first responsibility, as it is this individual who reaps the rewards of being educated. This conceptual shift changes fundamentally what it means for a society to educate its citizens. --Ball and Youdell 2007, p. 53: https://pages.eiie.org/quadrennialreport/2007/upload/content_trsl_images/630/Hidden_privatisation-EN.pdf Using this topic in the exam • A key part of neoliberal policy • Need examples of privatization as well as explanation for why it has happened/been encouraged by policy • Remember that this topic is about the privatization of state education (there is a fee-paying, private/independent system in England, which you can refer to, but you should focus on state education) Key Reading for this topic Ball, S. (2017) ‘Policy technologies and the UK government’s approach to public service reform’, in The Education Debate (3rd Ed.) Bristol: The Policy Press. Sellar, S. & Lingard, B. (2013) The OECD and the expansion of PISA: new global modes of governance in education. British Educational Research Journal, 40:6, pp. 917-936. Topic 9: Character Education and Social Mobility • Character/values education = An umbrella term for broadly describing the teaching of children in a manner that will help them develop variously as moral, social, civic, behaved, healthy, successful, critical, compliant or socially acceptable beings • Lickona (1993) argues that the purposes of education have almost always been to ‘help people become smart, and to help them become good’ – the shaping of an educated and moral self • This session explored the (re)emergence of character education in England, including how this was connected to the social, political and economic context (i.e. neoconservatism, the financial crisis and the London riots) • BUT important to also note the global scope of this discourse. Character Education and Social Mobility • • • Important to examine the ways in which one of the more dominant forms of CE reflects neoliberalism. For example, critically discuss the discursive individualization of social problems, such as inequality and social (im)mobility – with particular policy focus on the poor, vulnerable and disadvantaged. The promotion of a self-responsible, resilient and ‘post-welfare’ neoliberal self in some versions of character education Character education, in some contexts such as England, is a good example of neoliberal policy and policy as discourse: – Individual character suggested as policy solution to social immobility. – Can relate to the policy cycle (contexts of influence, text production and practice) – The ‘Character and Resilience Manifesto (text production) https://www.character-uk.org/wp-content/uploads/character-and-resilience.pdf – And the pilot study by Bailey described in the slides (context of practice) • Can situate the return to character education, socially, economically and politically, within the context of austerity and welfare reform • Proposed as both policy ‘problem’ and ‘solution’ in the aftermath of the ‘London Riots’ in 2011 in England – Cameron’s neo-conservative ‘Broken Britain’ narrative • • • • • • • Whilst there is a wider salience and field of application to character education, there is a particular policy focus on vulnerable and disadvantaged children/young people (and their parents). Social mobility, ‘achievement gap’ and ‘bad parenting’ as policy problems. Constructs individual and wider social problems in terms of individual failings – a deficit discourse. Undermines/silences structural explanations of social immobility and poverty. Advances and normalises therapeutic and disciplinary interventions, over and against more redistributive/economic solutions Essentialises ‘good character’ (are values/virtues universal?) and potentially reinforces a diminished view of human agency Important to discuss some of the criticisms of CE, i.e. see the key reading by Bull and Allen (2018): – Introduction: Sociological Interrogations of the Turn to Character - Anna Bull, Kim Allen, 2018 (sagepub.com) Using this topic in the exam • Need to critically examine CE as a form of neoliberal policy • A good opportunity to bring in ideas on the policy cycle and policy as discourse (construction of policy problems/solutions) • Can relate back to ideology. Key Reading for this topic • Saltman, K. (2014) The austerity school: grit, character, and the privatization of public education. Symploke, Volume 22 (1-2), pp. 4157. • Bull, A. & Allen, K. (2018) Introduction: sociological interrogations of the turn to character. Sociological Research Online. 23(2), pp. 392398 Educational Review ISSN: 0013-1911 (Print) 1465-3397 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cedr20 Global education reform: understanding the movement Kay Fuller & Howard Stevenson To cite this article: Kay Fuller & Howard Stevenson (2019) Global education reform: understanding the movement, Educational Review, 71:1, 1-4, DOI: 10.1080/00131911.2019.1532718 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/00131911.2019.1532718 Published online: 03 Dec 2018. Submit your article to this journal Article views: 11291 View related articles View Crossmark data Citing articles: 14 View citing articles Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=cedr20 EDUCATIONAL REVIEW 2019, VOL. 71, NO. 1, 1–4 https://doi.org/10.1080/00131911.2019.1532718 EDITORIAL Global education reform: understanding the movement It is several years since Pasi Sahlberg used the term Global Education Reform Movement, or GERM, to describe the emergence of a new global orthodoxy in education policy. The acronym-as-analogy worked perfectly to describe a phenomenon that Sahlberg identi?ed as both spreading and destructive, behaving “like an epidemic that spreads and infects education systems through a virus” (Sahlberg, 2012, no page). The power of such acronyms lies in the extent to which they take hold in the social imaginary and act as a signi?er for a complex amalgam of policies and practices that students and educators experience as an education system that feels “cracked” (Ball & Olmedo, 2013, 85). Sahlberg has identi?ed the principal features of the GERM as increased standardisation, a narrowing of the curriculum to focus on core subjects/knowledge, the growth of high stakes accountability and the use of corporate management practices as the key features of the new orthodoxy. The early indications of the policies that have given rise to this orthodoxy can be traced back at least three decades and became visible in the education reforms introduced in the United States, Chile and the UK. The development of the GERM in these three countries was no coincidence because the political leaders of the countries that have acted as a laboratory for the GERM were all intimately connected in the 1970s and 1980s (Harvey, 2007). It was during this time that the ideological work undertaken by New Right think tanks on both sides of the Atlantic was able to secure expression in the political programmes of Premiers Pinochet, Reagan and Thatcher. This was not, however, a battle of political ideas that was disconnected from wider developments. Rather, it was an ideological agenda that emerged from the crisis of capital in the late 1960s and 1970s and the subsequent abandonment of Keynesian economic orthodoxy. As faith in Keynesian demand management diminished, so too did con?dence in welfarism as a?ordable and sustainable. At this time of crisis and uncertainty, it was the political right that was on hand to o?er the solutions. As Milton Friedman asserted: Only a crisis – actual or perceived – produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That, I believe, is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes the politically inevitable. (Friedman, 2002, p. xiv) It was at this time that the ideas underpinning the GERM assumed practical expression in Pinochet’s school privatisation programmes, A Nation at Risk in the USA and the 1988 Education Reform Act in England. Since that time, the policies that emerged in Chile, the USA and England in the 1980s have become increasingly common around the world, hence Sahlberg’s adoption of the term GERM, with all its connotations of something malignant – spreading apparently uncontrollably. However, this is a GERM that has mutated in di?erent forms – assuming di?erent features and developing at a varied This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article. © 2018 Educational Review 2 EDITORIAL pace. Some parts of the world have appeared more resistant to the GERM than others, although such patterns have not always followed the form book – see, for example, Sweden’s development of for-pro?t Free Schools. Although the notion of the GERM works well as a shorthand for a set of linked policies and practices, the danger is that the label hides the nuance and complexity that is the reality of neoliberal restructuring of public education systems which looks di?erent in di?erent jurisdictions and which is propelled forward by myriad drivers, many of which are contextually speci?c. In this special issue of Educational Review, the contributing authors seek to deepen our understanding of the GERM as it has developed and as it is experienced by students and educators. The various articles explore di?erent features of the GERM, but also analyse its existence in di?erent jurisdictions and in di?erent phases of education. The scope of the articles allows for a more nuanced understanding of the GERM in its contemporary form, but also raises methodological questions of analysis and measurement. The opening article by Toni Verger, Lluís Parcerisa and Clara Fontdevila focuses on testing and the central role that National Large Scale Assessments (NLSAs) play in the global spread of the GERM. The authors’ analysis demonstrates how standardised testing has often acted as the vanguard of global education reform, in which comparison, ranking and competition have provided the foundation on which other elements of reform have been built. The huge testing machine has not only provided substantial opportunities for private actors to further penetrate the education “market”, but the competitive pressures that testing fuels have often acted as a spur to wider privatisation and marketisation of education systems. In the face of such powerful global pressures it is easy to become pessimistic about the possibilities for resistance and the opportunities to create counter movements. Two of the articles address precisely these issues and seek to understand where there are opportunities for agency and resistance in relation to the neoliberal restructuring that is so widespread. Kay Fuller’s article explores issues of resistance in school leadership and focuses on a section of the educational labour force whose apparent co-option and mobilisation by those driving reforms has often been seen as central to bringing about change on such a substantial scale. Fuller rejects a simple dichotomy between compliance and resistance and argues that our understanding of how school leaders “resist” needs to be more nuanced and more sympathetic. In her study of school principals in England, she argues that resistance is common, but it is not always clearly visible. Drawing on post-colonial theories, she presents an alternative approach to understanding what school principal resistance looks like and the forms it can assume. The article by Guopeng Fu and Anthony Clarke is also concerned with questions of agency and resistance, with a focus on classroom teachers in China. The extent to which the policies associated with the GERM have spread in China highlights that this is a phenomenon that can develop in very di?erent contexts. However, despite the degree of system centralisation, and the lack of autonomous worker organisation, Fu and Clarke still ?nd evidence that classroom teachers in China are able to create spaces in which they are able to challenge the logic of a harsh external accountability system and assert the primacy of students’ interests. There is no doubt that privatisation, in its myriad forms, is a de?ning feature of the GERM and several of the articles highlight this. The contribution by Alessandro Carrasco and Helen Gunter focuses on Chile, which has already been identi?ed as one of the EDUCATIONAL REVIEW 3 countries where the GERM can be considered to have been developed. Recent political reforms o?er some reason for optimism, but the country’s education system remains one badly dis?gured by aggressive policies of privatisation and marketisation. The article by Carrasco and Gunter focuses on the speci?cs of how the market for school education functions, and how the interaction of supply and demand pressures are privatising the decisions of both parents and the private providers of “public education” in Chile. The article demonstrates how decisions that were previously collective and democratic have been largely removed from the public sphere, with a concomitant impact on inequalities in the system. Emily Winchip, Howard Stevenson and Alison Milner are similarly concerned with system privatisation, but argue that researchers need to draw on a broader range of research methodologies in order to address key questions in the ?eld. Critical scholars have tended to eschew quantitative methodologies when researching phenomena like privatisation, arguing that such approaches are unable to re?ect the complexity of the issues under consideration. In this article, the authors argue there are quantitative methodologies that can provide critical scholars with useful tools of analysis and which open up the possibility of providing measures for complex phenomena such as privatisation. Viv Ellis and Sarah Steadman focus on a critically important, but often neglected aspect of the GERM, which is teacher education. Many of those who have driven neoliberal reforms in education have recognised the role of independent teacher educators in promoting ideas considered as antithetical by GERM reformers. As a consequence, in many jurisdictions, teacher education has found itself in the eye of the storm as powerful policy actors have sought to re-engineer the teaching profession as one that is more favourably disposed to the new educational landscape and which is less willing, and less con?dent, to push back. The authors analyse these developments in England and show how new privatised institutions are being developed to spearhead change and challenge traditional notions of university-based teacher education. The ?nal article by Matt O’Leary and Philip Wood argues that key features of the GERM have long been evident in higher education, but largely in relation to the data?cation of research activity. They argue that such approaches are now becoming increasingly evident in the management of teaching and demonstrate how the UK’s “Teaching Excellence Framework” further embeds GERM practices in the higher education sector. They highlight how these developments threaten the quality of provision in universities and also pose a threat to academic freedom and the notion of the university as a site of independent and critical thought. They conclude by o?ering an alternative framework which provides a much more optimistic analysis of how teaching and learning might be developed in higher education institutions. All of these articles deepen our understanding of how neoliberal restructuring of public education systems continues to have a huge impact on the institutions where we study and work. Di?erences are signi?cant – whether between di?erent countries, or di?erent education phases within countries. Appreciating di?erence and nuance is essential and this collection of articles seeks to shed light on these di?erences, but it is also important to recognise the unifying aspects of forces that are shaping public education systems across the world. However, this collection of articles is not only intended to deepen our understanding of the world, but also to help change it. Many 4 EDITORIAL of the articles point to the possibilities of hope and resistance as students and educators seek to speak back to a system that is visibly “cracked”. From the student movement in Chile, to the “Red States” strike waves of teachers in the USA, the Global Education Reform Movement discussed in these articles is being challenged in many of the sites where it has been most deeply embedded. We hope that this collection of articles can make a modest contribution to building that movement of hope and possibility. Disclosure statement No potential con?ict of interest was reported by the authors. References Ball, S. J., & Olmedo, A. (2013). Care of the self, resistance and subjectivity under neoliberal governmentalities. Critical Studies in Education, 54(1), 85–96. Friedman, M. (2002). Capitalism and freedom (40th anniversary ed.). Chicago: Chicago University Press. Harvey, D. (2007). A brief history of neoliberalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Sahlberg, P. (2012). How GERM is infecting schools around the world? Retrieved from https:// pasisahlberg.com/text-test/ Kay.Fuller@Nottingham.ac.uk Kay Fuller University of Nottingham, UK http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5531-7553 Howard.Stevenson@nottingham.ac.uk Howard Stevenson University of Nottingham, UK http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5172-1807 See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/303864239 The coalition government, the general election and the policy ratchet in education: A re?ection on the ‘ghosts’ of policy past, present and yet to come Chapter · March 2016 DOI: 10.1332/policypress/9781447324560.003.0006 CITATIONS READS 7 2,377 2 authors: Patrick L. J. Bailey Stephen Ball University College London University College London 9 PUBLICATIONS 152 CITATIONS 300 PUBLICATIONS 32,507 CITATIONS SEE PROFILE Some of the authors of this publication are also working on these related projects: I have just finished a book "Foucault as Educator" and working on "Edu.Net" View project Edu.Net View project All content following this page was uploaded by Patrick L. J. Bailey on 14 June 2016. The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file. SEE PROFILE page 125 Six 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 The coalition government, the general election and the policy ratchet in education: a reflection on the ‘ghosts’ of policy past, present and yet to come 12 13 14 Patrick L.J. Bailey and Stephen J. Ball 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 Introduction This chapter offers a general overview of the Conservative–Liberal Democrat coalition government’s education policy (2010–15) and attends to some specific features and trends. It has not been possible to comment directly on early years, further and higher education as our emphasis here is on the compulsory sector. However, the main trends and emphases with coalition policy were played out in those other sectors in specific ways.1 We also point to some of the relationships between coalition education policy and that of the Conservative government elected in May 2015 and offer some initial thoughts on the first 100 days of the new government. One of the key things that we emphasise is continuity and change, that is, how coalition policy both built upon the policies of New Labour and also shifted the rhetorical and discursive problem-space of policy along some different lines. Related to this, we also address some of the continuing tensions within education policy that, while long and fraught, in the current context, can in part be traced back to the ‘landmark’ Conservative education reforms in the 1980s, and the Education Reform Act 1988 in particular. One way of thinking about continuities and changes is through the notion of the ‘policy ratchet’ (Ball, 2008). This refers to the small and incremental moves whereby certain modes of policy thinking and practice become naturalised and necessary, the ways in which policy is colonised and informed by logical rationalities in which certain discursive and practical possibilities are opened up, embedded and 125 page 126 The coalition government and social policy 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 intensified, with the consequence that what may have once seemed impossible or simply unthinkable becomes sensible, obvious and inevitable. This colonisation of thought is not simply epistemological; it is also a material process whereby certain voices and educational purposes are attributed value and legitimacy over and against others, and includes the posing and enactment of particular policy solutions for tackling social problems. These social problems are themselves mediated discursively, and a general election is one ‘event’ where ‘policy windows’ (Kingdon, 1995) are opened for new ideas and new trajectories, but also for further ratcheting. Indeed, the ratcheting of policy is perhaps never more apparent than around the time of a general election, although what was significant this time around was that education was not a key battleground for political positioning and point-scoring, and not a key arena over which the election was fought. One important caveat that must be borne in mind at the outset is the wider context within which education policy is embedded and that it is subject to. On the one hand, there are the exigencies and opportunities of globalisation, the public discourse around which is both ‘descriptive’ and ‘normative’ (Furlong, 2013; Rizvi and Lingard, 2010). As we will demonstrate, the coalition was quick to position its educational policies and reform agenda within the context of a competitive and inevitable global order, including the role of education towards this end (see later), although, in some ways, this has proved to be more rhetorical than practical (Furlong, 2013). On the other hand, but relatedly, coalition policy and rhetoric also needs to be understood in relation to the economic context, and especially the public spending cuts that followed the financial crisis – the new ‘age of austerity’. Although spending in the compulsory sector has maintained recent historic levels to a large extent, money has been ‘saved’ and/or ‘rerouted’ from other areas of educational planning and spending, and from other areas of welfare provision – although many schools have seen a drop in their budgets and, on recent projections, this is only set to become more pronounced: School costs could rise by 16% between 2014–15 and 2019–20. The Conservatives propose the smallest increase in spending of the major parties: a 7% nominal increase from 2016–20 – a cash-terms freeze per pupil. This would be for 4–16 year-olds only. Labour, meanwhile, proposes a 7.7% nominal increase by keeping the budget rising in line with inflation – and for all 3–19 year-olds. The Liberal Democrats have been keen to talk schools, in part because 126 page 127 The coalition government, the general election and the policy ratchet in education 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 they are proposing a rise in line with prices and pupils – a 15% rise – for the full age range. This is, they say, a “red line” for them to join any coalition. There will be big regional differences in the likely effects of this: different areas of England are funded at quite different levels. But the big picture is that the two main parties are proposing plans which imply the next five years may be harder to manage than the past five. (Cook, 2015) The question of where and how money was spent (and ‘saved’) in education is thus a crucial one, and we will have something to say about this later on. Following on from this, then, are the implications of the economic context for the specific directions and forms of policy and rhetoric under the coalition, especially the ways in which the responsibility for social well-being and social mobility was allocated through a skilful but dubious re-territorialisation of the debate around equality and social justice. It is also worth briefly pointing out that we view coalition education policy as very much dominated by the Conservatives, although this is not to say that the Liberal Democrats had no influence. Not only did the Liberal Democrats specifically claim responsibility for the Pupil Premium (see later), but they also blocked some of the Conservatives’ 2010 manifesto pledges, including the introduction of reading tests for six year olds and the proposed organisation of the primary curriculum more rigidly around subjects like maths, science and history. On the other hand, while the Liberal Democrats pledged in their manifesto to replace the National Curriculum with a ‘minimum curriculum entitlement’, and to reduce class sizes, both of these key policies were left out of the coalition agreement (for a full breakdown of the Liberal Democrat and Conservative pledges that did and did not form part of the coalition agreement, see Lupton and Thomson, 2015, pp 55–60). These differences in policy notwithstanding, the two parties formed an agreement underpinned by the following approach to education: The Government believes that we need to reform our school system to tackle educational inequality, which has widened in recent years, and to give greater powers to parents and pupils to choose a good school. We want to ensure high standards of discipline in the classroom, robust standards and the highest quality teaching. We also believe that the state should help parents, community groups and 127 page 128 The coalition government and social policy 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 others come together to improve the education system by starting new schools. (Cabinet Office, 2010, p 28) It should also be said that neither party developed an extensive education policy agenda in their election manifestos. Coalition education policy Coalition education policy was characterised by both continuity and change from New Labour. However, this framing device is a little misleading in that the continuities were in some respects also characterised by change, and the changes were in some ways characterised by continuity. This rather counterintuitive argument will make more sense following a brief discussion of the key philosophical influences on coalition policy, and by providing some historical context. Philosophy and historical context Two dominant philosophical seams or rationalities underpinned coalition policy. On the one hand, there was the continuing neoliberal emphasis on the minimal state and a belief in the sanctity, efficiency and effectiveness of the market – to which both partners of the coalition were wedded and in agreement. In this sense, the coalition was ‘guided by a [New Right] vision of the weak state. Thus, what is private is necessarily good and what is public is necessarily bad’ (Apple, 2000, p 59). The marketisation and privatisation of education was ratcheted up by the coalition with the further mobilisation of new actors and agencies in the policy process – begun by New Labour – and there was a continuing move to open up service delivery to new providers and to offer some schools greater freedom and autonomy in order that they may innovate, diversify and ‘drive up standards’, and offer greater choice to parents and students as consumers. However, Furlong (2013) makes the point that this continuity has also taken a somewhat different form under the coalition, which he suggests has articulated a different ‘version’ of neoliberalism to New Labour. He suggests that, ‘[l]ike New Labour, neoliberalism is central to government thinking. It is the market that will deliver greater equality, global competitiveness, and more traditional (neoconservative) forms of teaching and learning’ (Furlong, 2013, p 42) – the latter clearly reflecting a version of ‘one nation’ conservativism. However, he also notes that: 42 128 page 129 The coalition government, the general election and the policy ratchet in education 1 2 3 4 5 6 now, rather than being the means whereby government can impose its will in a centralized way, neoliberalism is understood in more traditional terms. It is being presented as the key to localism, with an aim to abolish centralised bureaucracies and allow a wide variety of agencies to deliver state services. (Furlong, 2013, p 42) 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 The coalition also continued to invoke the exigencies and opportunities of globalisation, positioning education, schools and teachers as vital to ensuring economic competiveness in the ‘global race’. The White Paper The Importance of Teaching (Department of Education, 2010), published shortly after the 2010 general election, opens: So much of the education debate in this country is backward looking: have standards fallen? Have exams got easier? These debates will continue, but what really matters is how we are doing compared with our international competitors. That is what will define our economic growth and our country’s future. The truth is, at the moment we are standing still while others race past. (Department of Education, 2010, p 3) On the other hand, coalition policy was characterised by neoconservatism, evident in the continued central command and control over knowledge and values, and the ongoing mistrust and surveillance of the teacher. In this way, the coalition government was ‘guided by a vision of the strong state. This is especially true surrounding issues of knowledge, values, and the body’ (Apple, 2000, p 67). Schools and teachers continued to be told what and how to teach through a prescriptive and narrow curriculum, and there was a particular emphasis on more traditional forms of pedagogy, ‘real subjects’ and ‘facts’ – what Michael Gove called a move away from ‘soft’ and ‘airy fairy’ subjects, and towards more ‘rigour’ and ‘the best which has been thought and said’ [[refs?]]. Michael Gove also argued for more ‘patriotic history’, the restoration of times tables and more work on British authors in English Literature courses – resulting in the dropping of To kill a mockingbird and Of mice and men from GCSE English examinations: Exam boards were issued with strict guidance by the Department for Education (DfE) when drawing up the new English literature GCSE, which has no coursework element, instead testing teenagers through two exams at the end of 129 page 130 The coalition government and social policy 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 year 11. Students taking the OCR [[please spell out the abbreviation in full in square brackets]] exam from 2015 will be required to study a pre-20th century novel, Romantic poetry and a Shakespeare play. (The Independent, 2014 [[citation not referenced. Please add/correct]]) Bethan Marshall, a senior lecturer in English at King’s College London, told The Sunday Times: ‘It’s a syllabus out of the 1940s and rumour has it Michael Gove, who read literature, designed it himself. Schools will be incredibly depressed when they see it’.2 The coalition also invoked a decidedly Conservative narrative of moral atrophy and social malaise, which was re-emphasised following the ‘London riots’ in 2011. This formed a part of the government’s ‘broken society agenda’, which, in education, among other things, centred on ‘poor pupil behaviour’ as a policy problem, with a related call for stronger discipline and authority in schools, classrooms and the wider society. There has also been a focus on ‘troubled families’ and ‘bad parenting’, a point we return to again later with reference to specific policies (see also Chapters Eleven and Twelve): 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 Do we have the determination to confront the slow-motion moral collapse that has taken place in parts of our country these past few generations? Irresponsibility. Selfishness. Behaving as if your choices have no consequences. Children without fathers. Schools without discipline. Reward without effort. Crime without punishment. Rights without responsibilities. Communities without control. Some of the worst aspects of human nature tolerated, indulged – sometimes even incentivised – by a state and its agencies that in parts have become literally de-moralised.… In my very first act as leader of this party I signalled my personal priority: to mend our broken society. (Speech by David Cameron, 20113) We will increase the authority of classroom teachers and support them to discipline pupils appropriately. We will strengthen powers to search pupils, issue detentions and use reasonable force where necessary. We will support head teachers to maintain a culture of discipline and respect. (DfE, 2010, p 33) 42 130 page 131 The coalition government, the general election and the policy ratchet in education 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 Together, this ostensibly contradictory philosophical approach constituted a key tension in coalition policy, but also articulates, naturalises and embeds what Apple (2000) calls ‘conservative modernisation’ in social policy, a phenomenon that has a global significance. However, this tension between a weak but strong state, and between freedom and control, liberty and authority, is not new and can, in fact, be traced back, in its current iteration, to the ‘landmark’ Education Reform Act in 1988. This key event in the recent history of education sutured together an ideological mix – sometimes referred to as the New Right – which set in motion a pronounced commitment to both marketisation and central command and control, constituting the new ‘common sense’ of policy (Apple, 2014). This ‘common-sense’ approach continued through New Labour, albeit in some different ways and with some divergent emphases, and again through the coalition’s time in office. Stevenson (2011, p 179) describes this as ‘the realisation of the “1988 project”’, and the ‘long shadow’ of Thatcherism in social and educational policy. While the neoliberal influences on coalition policy can be attributed to both the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats, as noted, with both parties’ pre-election manifestos in 2010 being rather similar in their emphasis on market freedoms as an organisational and moral principle, the renewed and reinvigorated one nation neo-conservatism that has been seen over the past five years can be credited to the more dominant Conservative bloc of the coalition. This has been particularly significant given that it was Conservative ministers who occupied most of the major posts in the cabinet, including the ministerial position of Secretary of State for Education (initially held by Michael Gove and towards the end of the coalition government by Nicky Morgan). Other key individuals in the DfE included: the Conservative politician Nick Gibb, the Minister of State for Education, who courted some controversy when he declared shortly after his appointment that ‘I would rather have a physics graduate from Oxbridge without a PGCE [[please spell out the abbreviation in full in square brackets]] teaching in a school than a physics graduate from one of the rubbish universities with a PGCE’ (Williams, 2010); the former businessman and financier, and Conservative Party donor, Lord Nash, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Schools and particularly involved in the Academies and Free Schools programmes (Nash also sits on the board of the Conservative think-tank the Centre for Policy Studies, and is cofounder of the charity Future, which sponsors academies); and David Laws, the Minister of State for Schools, alongside his predecessor Sarah 131 page 132 The coalition government and social policy 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 Teather, the only Liberal Democrat politicians who occupied highranking positions in the department (Laws’s tenure was also rather brief). Policy (dis)ensemble and policy (dis)continuity One of the first things that the coalition did was to rebrand the central department responsible for education, broadly conceived. New Labour’s more holistic Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF) was replaced by the ‘Department for Education’ and the other areas of responsibility were redistributed to other departments. This was a significant initial development in that it embodied a further shift away from New Labour’s arguably more social-democratic Every Child Matters framework for child and family support services, and towards a more narrowed focus on educational ‘outcomes’. Stewart and Obolenskaya (2015) describe this as a shift in approach from ‘wellbeing’ to ‘achievement’. Despite earlier pledges by the Conservatives to maintain support for Sure Start, a New Labour initiative to improve child and family welfare through local and joined-up support services, spending on this programme has been reduced since 2010, following the removal of its ring fence shortly after the election in 2010, and a number of centres have closed and/or been merged and reorganised – reducing both accessibility and interventionist scope (for a detailed analysis, see Stewart and Obolenskaya, 2015). On the other hand, there has also been a shift towards more punitive family interventions, over and against economic and resource distribution. As noted, there has been a policy emphasis on families and parenting, with the rolling out of a ‘Troubled Families Programme’ in 2012, and the publishing of the Allen Report (2011 [[citation not referenced. Please add/ correct]]), an ‘independent’ and cross-party review into the social and emotional well-being of children in the early years (0–5), with recommendations for evidenced-based interventions, especially into the home environment (see Chapter Twelve): Troubled families are those that have problems and cause problems to the community around them, putting high costs on the public sector. The government is committed to working with local authorities and their partners to help 120,000 troubled families in England turn their lives around by 2015. We want to ensure the children in these families have the chance of a better life, and at the same time bring down the cost to the taxpayer. (DfE, 2012) 132 page 133 The coalition government, the general election and the policy ratchet in education 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 In July 2010, the Prime Minister asked me to lead a review on Early Intervention. I was glad to accept. I have a long-standing personal interest in policies to break the cycle of deprivation and dysfunction from generation to generation.… Getting this wrong has impacts way beyond the individual and family concerned: every taxpayer pays the cost of low educational achievement, poor work aspirations, drink and drug misuse, teenage pregnancy, criminality and unfulfilled lifetimes on benefits. But it is not just about money – important as this is, especially now – it is about social disruption, fractured lives, broken families and sheer human waste. (Allen Review, 2011 [[citation not referenced. Please add/correct]], p ix) Although the more punitive and authoritarian focus on dysfunctional families, communities and individuals is an example of the coalition’s neo-conservative agenda, this apparent change in policy trajectory was also characterised by continuity with New Labour’s Every Child Matters initiative. While the latter did frame the pursuit of social justice and equity within a wider narrative of common goals, commitments and rights, it was also a ‘composite’ economic and disciplinary policy (Ball, 2010, p 190), which both problematised ‘troublesome’ sections of the population as requiring moral intervention, and subsumed equity (and education) within economic goals and purposes. Lister (2000 [[citation not referenced, but see 2001. Please add/correct]], p 97) described New Labour’s approach as ‘a marked retreat from greater equality as an explicit goal.… In their place [was] the objective of “redistribution of opportunity”, through education, training and paid employment’. Other early moves included cancelling New Labour’s Building Schools for the Future (BSF) programme and abolishing the Education Maintenance Allowance (EMA), which provided up to £30 a week for students from low-income households to encourage their participation in further education. Nonetheless, money has been invested in other areas, and especially into the Free Schools programme and the Pupil Premium, the latter of which has been saved from other areas of spending (see the coalition government’s Programme for government [Cabinet Office, 2010]). Following their introduction by New Labour in 1998, tuition fees in higher education were raised by the coalition, with higher education institutions now able to charge up to £9,000 a year. The raising of tuition fees was particularly damaging for the Liberal Democrats as it broke their pre-election manifesto pledge 133 page 134 The coalition government and social policy 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 to abolish them. The teaching of synthetic phonics in schools was extended, and a new statutory phonics test was introduced for children at the end of Year One – a key influence here being the Conservative Education Minister, Nick Gibb (see later). Despite some differences in approach and rationalisation,4 the coalition vastly expanded New Labour’s academies programme, with over half of state-maintained schools in England now ‘enjoying’ the ‘freedoms’ of academy status, operating outside of local government control – the new Conservative government has also published its Education and Adoption Bill in 2015 to make it easier to academise schools in ‘special measures’ or considered to be ‘coasting’, and without any form of local consultation. The first free schools – schools that can be established by civil society groups and outside of local government control – were approved shortly after the general election in 2010, with a handful opening their doors in the autumn of 2011, and in 2015, despite a number of well-publicised problems, David Cameron announced their further expansion alongside more academies: Over 4,000 schools are already benefitting from academy status, giving them more power over discipline and budgets. And nearly 800 of the worst-performing primary schools have been taken over by experienced academy sponsors with a proven track record of success. This is improving education for our children. So we will continue to expand academies, free schools, studio schools and University Technical Colleges. Over the next parliament, we will open at least 500 new free schools, resulting in 270,000 new school places. And we will introduce new powers to force coasting schools to accept new leadership. (Conservative Party, 2015) There were also significant policy developments in teaching and teacher training, with further moves towards more school-based teacher preparation (Schools Direct, Teach First) and a continuing deregulation of teacher supply (see later) – all of which have begun to residualise the traditional higher education route into teaching. Coalition education ministers made considerable use of performance management and governance-by-numbers techniques to steer the system. They changed key performance indicators, both introducing the English Baccalaurate (E-Bac) and eliminating over 2,000 courses that had previously contributed to the General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) indicator, and raised the benchmark targets for 134 page 135 The coalition government, the general election and the policy ratchet in education 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 all schools. A-levels were restructured and their system of grades was changed, and a new set of applied and technical A-level programmes were introduced. These changes have had a very direct impact on the school curriculum and classroom pedagogy (Ball et al, 2012 [[citation not referenced. Please add/correct]]). The coalition also increased the funding for apprenticeships and launched Studio Schools and University Technical Colleges.5 This very brief overview of policy developments under the coalition gives a sense of the policy terrain across some of the different educational sectors. We now focus down on some specific areas and attend to them in some more detail. This will include the academy and free school programmes, and teacher and teacher training policy. Free-er and Free-er? In neoliberal mode, the coalition began its term in office by introducing a range of supply-side measures designed to ‘set education free’, introducing yet more new providers and new choices, wresting yet more schools away from local authorities by creating many more academies, cutting red tape, scrapping quasi-autonomous nongovernmental organisations (quangos), and creating a streamlined funding model where government funding follows the learner and is dispensed directly to schools from central government. As noted earlier, much of this was signalled in the Conservatives’ election manifesto in 2010. Forms of alternative provision have been dramatically expanded in a drive to introduce further ‘flexibilities’ into the education system. This has been mainly done by gradually enabling all schools (including primary schools and those judged as ‘outstanding’ and ‘good’ by Ofsted), if they wish, to become academies in a series of policy moves initiated with the Academies Bill of July 2010. In November 2010, the possibility of schools applying for academy status was extended to those deemed ‘satisfactory’ by Ofsted, if partnered by an ‘outstanding’ school – with similarities here to New Labour’s Foundation Trust policy, which awarded ‘earned autonomy’ in finance and decisionmaking to hospital trusts deemed by the government to be performing well. Subsequently, many ‘poor-performing schools’ have been forced into academisation and some have been ‘brokered’ to sponsors. In turn, ‘outstanding’ schools have been encouraged to form relationships with poorly performing schools and executive heads have been parachuted in to ‘save’ such schools through the creation of federations. Former Secretary of State Michael Gove (2010–14) expected that academies would become the norm among English schools, an expectation 135 page 136 The coalition government and social policy 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 enhanced by the fact that where a need for a new school is identified, local authorities must now seek proposals for academies or free schools, as legislated in the coalition’s Education Act 2011.6 As of February 2015, there were 4,461 academies open in England.7 These figures are compared to a total of 203 academies open in May 2010. Academies are not bound by national agreements on pay and conditions, they have greater freedom to vary the National Curriculum than other schools, and they receive additional funding (which in surveys is shown to be the primary reason for most head teachers to consider academy conversion): In England, the current Conservative-led coalition has taken the academies programme initiated by Labour and greatly expanded it, meanwhile ratcheting up Labour’s regime of a narrow curriculum, high stakes testing, school league tables and heavy handed external teacher inspection for schools that refuse to join the academies club. (Alexander, 2014, p 10) In addition to academies, the government legislated for the creation of free schools (Academies Act 2010 and Education Act 2011). Free schools are ‘all-ability state-funded schools set up in response to what local people say they want and need in order to improve education for children in their community’.8 They may be set up by a wide range of proposers – including charities, universities, businesses, educational groups, teachers and groups of parents – with the same freedoms and flexibilities as academies. The introduction of free schools synthesises a number of aspects of coalition education policy: both greater choice for parents and more competition between schools, but also a further iteration of traditionalism (inasmuch as a significant number of schools celebrate traditional pedagogies, curricula and relationships, although others make a point of innovation and experimentation – and, again, there is a tension evident here between neoliberal and neoconservative ideology). Both programmes have also opened up new opportunities for education businesses.9 What is also significant about the academies and free schools programmes in governance terms is that they are specifically intended to bring about a further diminution and residualisation of local authorities, in continuity with the Education Reform Act 1988. At the same time, they also contribute to a general change in the labour conditions of teaching, that is: the ‘remodelling’ and ‘flexibilisation’ of the teaching profession begun by New Labour, which under the coalition, involved the establishing of a relationship 136 page 137 The coalition government, the general election and the policy ratchet in education 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 between pay and performance; the devolution of contract negotiations to the institutional level; and the deregulation of the work of teaching to allow non-registered, non-qualified staff to undertake classroom activities (a ‘freedom’ originally granted to free schools that was extended to academies in 2012): Unlike local authority schools and academies, free schools can employ teachers without teaching qualifications and, like academies, they can ignore national agreements on pay and conditions. Stem Academy Tech City near the Angel in London came to attention last year when some of its staff went on strike after the school announced its intention to introduce zero-hours contracts for teachers. The enormous amount of time teachers spend marking and planning lessons would go unpaid, and they would only receive a salary at all during term-time. (Foster, 2015, p 9) At the same time, universities have lost their monopoly of teacher education as various new kinds of entry into teaching have been established – in particular, Schools Direct (schools-based training) and Teach First (a social enterprise funded by the DfE and corporate sponsors).10 Arguably, the coalition’s academies and free schools programmes articulate with different aspects of the overall Conservative project of reform: on the one hand, the Big Society, as ‘a power shift away from central government to the people, families and communities of Britain’ (Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, quoted in HM Government, 2010, p 1); and, on the other, a free market, business orientation and the possibility of schools run for profit by large corporations. There are parent and teacher and community groups founding their own free schools, as against the development of academy chains, some of which are aiming to run dozens of schools – Academies Enterprise Trust (AET) is the largest provider, with 80 schools. Both academies and free schools were created as responses to what has been presented, by all governments since the 1980s, as the low standards of performance of some state schools, especially in areas of social disadvantage. These new kinds of schools, it is argued by their sponsors,11 will bring creativity and energy to bear upon entrenched social and educational inequalities. Some of these new schools perform well, but: a number of academies and free schools have been deemed by inspection and performance outcomes as ‘underperforming’; some chains of academies have been found to be unable to manage their 137 page 138 The coalition government and social policy 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 schools effectively; some chains of academies and free schools appear to be indulging in dubious financial practices; the free schools were supposed to be targeted at areas of social disadvantage, but recent research by Higham (2014) indicates that their distribution does not reflect this aim –indeed, DfE figures indicate that the majority of the 24 free schools that opened in 2011 have a lower proportion of children eligible for free school meals than the local average (The Guardian, 2012 [[citation not referenced. Please add/correct]]); 18 academy chains are now ‘paused’ – that is, concerns related to their performance and management abilities mean they cannot take on further schools (the list includes AET, the largest academy chain, with 80 schools, and E-Act, which runs 34); and 68 academies have received pre-warning letters and seven warning letters from the DfE about their poor performance. Indeed, Lupton and Thomson (2015, p 5) note that this will be a key issue for the new government: ‘Ways of managing the new fragmented system are still evolving and will be a key challenge for the next government.… The next government will inherit a school system in flux and key issues of equity and achievement still unresolved’. The Ofsted assessment of E-Act academies reported an ‘overwhelming proportion of pupils … not receiving a good education’. Inspectors visited 16 of E-Act’s 34 academies over a two-week period – one was judged outstanding, four were good, six were judged as requiring improvement and five, including Hartsbrook E-Act Free School in London, were deemed inadequate. Hartsbrook has now been closed twice and has its third sponsor. Key weaknesses in the 16 academies inspected included: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. poor-quality teaching; work not matched to pupils’ abilities; weak monitoring; poor use of assessment data; and insufficiently challenging lessons for more able pupils. Inspectors also discovered that E-Act had deducted a proportion of Pupil Premium funding from each Academy until 1 September 2013. Ofsted was unclear how the deducted funding was being used to help disadvantaged pupils. Four free schools of the 41 that had judgements published as of April 2014 have been rated ‘inadequate’ by the inspectorate – this is 9.7%, compared with the national average for all schools of 3%. Overall, 79% of state schools are rated good or outstanding, compared with only 138 page 139 The coalition government, the general election and the policy ratchet in education 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 68% of free schools (watchsted.com, 2014 [[citation not referenced. Please add/correct]]). In December 2014, the Chief Inspector of Schools, Sir Michael Wilshaw, a one-time academy ‘superhead’, stated in his annual report that struggling schools are ‘no better off’ under academy control and that there could be little difference in school improvement under an academy chain or a council. Imagining the position of a head teacher of a newly converted academy, he said: ‘In fact, the neglect you suffered at the hands of your old local authority is indistinguishable from the neglect you endure from your new trust’ (The Guardian, 2014). In response to these deficits, a new layer of school governance made up of Regional Commissioners, appointed by the Secretary of State, and Boards, elected by local head teachers, has been established. The Regional School Commissioners (RSCs) and their Boards (made up mostly of head teachers) are intended to act as regulators, interveners, advocates and animators, and are responsible for both managing and growing the academies programme, towards ex-Secretary of State Michael Gove’s goal that every school become an academy. The RSCs also mark another move in the almost total displacement of local authorities from education policy responsibility, while mimicking some of their previous roles. They also suggest an odd and unclear relationship to Ofsted. Very briefly, there were also a complex set of changes to Ofsted and other forms of regulation under the coalition. While the scope and complexity of these changes cannot be mapped here, it is worth noting that there was dissatisfaction with the quality and consistency of Ofsted inspections throughout the coalition’s time in office, and Sir Michael Wilshaw announced in 2014 plans to renationalise them (through a curtailment of third-party contracting). The coalition also proposed a renewed ‘core purpose’ for Ofsted, with inspections now focused on a more limited set of educational concerns: pupil achievement, teacher quality, leadership and management, and the safety and behaviour of pupils. This was set against the Ofsted framework under New Labour, which graded schools against a wider set of outcomes, including the cultural, moral and social development of pupils. There were also changes to the terminology of school grading – ‘requires improvement’ replacing ‘satisfactory’ – and a new ‘proportionate’ approach to inspection was proposed. According to Clarke and Lindgren (2015, p 150), the latter is about ‘releasing outstanding schools from the burden of inspection but intensifying inspection for weaker/inadequate schools’. These actual and proposed changes, and the relationship 139 page 140 The coalition government and social policy 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 between Ofsted and the new Conservative government, deserve further and ongoing scrutiny. From ‘great expectations’ to ‘managing expectations’? Alongside the coalition’s emphasis on moral decline and social entropy was a skilful but myopic colonisation of the debate around social (in)justice and social (im)mobility. This was arguably a form of ‘compassionate conservatism’ – part of the rebranding exercise undertaken by the Conservatives following their election failure in 2005 – which has seen educational reform and social mobility reframed within a rhetoric of moral necessity, even moral outrage. In particular, The importance of teaching (DfE, 2010) White Paper outlined the coalition’s ‘compassionate’ commitment to addressing the link between economic deprivation and educational attainment, with a particular focus on the ‘soft bigotry of low expectations’ in schools: 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 [N]o country that wishes to be considered world class can afford to allow children from poorer families to fail as a matter of course. For far too long we have tolerated the moral outrage of an accepted correlation between wealth and achievement at school; the soft bigotry of low expectations. Children on free school meals do significantly worse than their peers at every stage of their education. They are just half as likely to get good GCSEs as the average. More children from some private schools go to Oxbridge than from the entire cohort of children on free school meals. (DfE, 2010, p 4) In 2012, Nick Gibb delivered a speech on the 200th anniversary of Charles Dickens’s birth, in which he played on the title of Great expectations to enforce this point, while, at the same time, championing the cause of curriculum reform, including the introduction of synthetic phonics in primary schools: We need – if you’ll forgive the Dickens pun – much greater expectations of children in reading. And this is why the Government is absolutely determined to help all children, from all backgrounds, to become fluent and enthusiastic readers. We already know how to tackle reading failure from the youngest ages. High quality international evidence 140 page 141 The coalition government, the general election and the policy ratchet in education 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 has demonstrated that the systematic teaching of synthetic phonics is the best way of making sure young children acquire the crucial skills they need to read new text, so driving up standards in reading. Children are taught the sounds of the alphabet and how to blend those sounds into words. Taught as part of a language rich curriculum, systematic synthetic phonics allows problems to be identified early and rectified before it is too late. (Gibb, 2012) While the coalition positioned tackling inequality as a key policy focus, its approach was to allocate responsibility for this to individual schools and teachers, and families themselves, at the same time as undertaking other reforms to the welfare system that saw incomes reduced for the most disadvantaged families (changes to the benefits system and tax credits) and local government support services severely curtailed. In a certain sense, the moral debate around education and inequality has been appropriated by and subsumed within the ‘skills debate’ and the logics of the market – what Shamir (2008) calls the ‘moralisation of the economic action’, and Brookes et al (2009) call the shift from ‘correcting for’ to ‘connecting to’ the market: The CBI surveyed 500 employers and found that 42 per cent were dissatisfied with school leavers’ use of English. While at the end of last year, army recruiting officers revealed that hundreds of would-be soldiers are being turned away because they cannot pass the most basic literacy and numeracy tests – that is, because they have a reading age of less than an 11-year-old. The net result? We have tumbled down the world rankings for literacy from 7th to 25th and the reading ability of GCSE pupils in England is now more than a year behind the standard of their peers in Shanghai, Korea and Finland. And at least six months behind those in Hong Kong, Singapore, Canada, New Zealand, Japan and Australia.… The government is determined to change what we expect of young people and schools that teach them. Great Expectations may have come to Philip Pirrip – but it’s high expectations that we need for every child in the country regardless of background or ability. (Gibb, 2012) 42 141 page 142 The coalition government and social policy 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 Not only is the need for ‘basic skills’ increasingly promoted as a form of human capital development (for the poor), but the market is also on hand to provide the resources and expertise necessary for its effective implementation, with further implications for the work of the teacher and teacher training. In her review of the form and costing of the coalition’s literacy policy, Margaret Clark (2014, p 14) noted the commercial opportunities being opened up for various educational companies: Over the period September 2011 to October 2013 DfE made match-funding available for schools that either purchased commercial materials or training courses from ‘The Importance of Phonics’ catalogue. The match-funding programme was managed for the Government by a group of five organisations known as Pro5; an agreed commission was included in the catalogue sale price.… Over that period a total of £23,593,109 match-funding was provided for schools. A breakdown of those receiving the largest amounts within the training programme of approximately £1,095,733 showed that £546,614 went to Ruth Miskin Literacy Ltd. Sounds Write Ltd received £129,734 and Ann Foster Literacy £73,654. The remaining 27 providers listed received the rest of the money. Together with curriculum changes and school reform, the coalition also rolled out its flagship Pupil Premium policy, which initially formed a cornerstone of the Liberal Democrats’ election manifesto in 2010. The Pupil Premium is designed to provide extra money to schools in the form of per capita funding for students eligible for Free School Meals, a proxy indicator of deprivation. The government did not dictate how this money is to be used by schools, and there is a lack of clarity over how this is actually being spent, with some concerns that it may be being used to offset the effects of other budget cuts. It is worth noting that the Pupil Premium, while ostensibly a more social-democratic form of policy intervention that aims to distribute extra resources according to need, can also be viewed as a form of economisation. Ball (2006) has noted that one of the outcomes of the Education Reform Act 1988 has been the emergence of an ‘economy of student worth’, whereby schools compete to attract students deemed capable of adding ‘value’ in the form of good test scores. These (largely middle-class) students pose less risk to schools and are less likely to require additional support, which might be expensive. The Pupil 142 page 143 The coalition government, the general election and the policy ratchet in education 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 Premium is interesting in this respect as it assigns a market value to those students who are less attractive to schools, and can hence be considered an instance of neoliberal policy.12 However, as noted earlier, tackling inequality, for the coalition, was the responsibility of schools and teachers, rather than the state, and it is for this reason that the Pupil Premium must be contextualised within the wider process of welfare and educational reform: But despite the passion, to date there has been only one policy directly focused on addressing inequality, and that is the so-called ‘pupil premium’, which provides additional school funding for students from poorer backgrounds. But because of overall cuts in school budgets as a result of the recession, the vast majority of schools, even those with large numbers of disadvantaged students, are facing substantial cuts rather than increases in their budgets. Therefore, if a reduction in inequality is to be achieved, it will be done as an outcome of other strategies aimed at more general educational improvement. (Furlong, 2013, p 41) There is real irony, then, in the coalition’s attempt to manage expectations around social mobility, which has also been on the agenda in the first 100 days of the new Conservative government. This can be observed in the Conservatives’ ‘character education’ policy, which is being piloted in a number of schools and could be rolled out over the course of the new administration. The push and pull to ‘upskill’ the disadvantaged student through academic rigour and tougher examinations is now being coupled with an ethico-disciplinary policy that aims to impart character and behaviour traits that will supposedly enable them to ‘thrive in modern Britain’ (DfE, 2015). While ‘character education’ is to include virtues such as civic engagement and community spirit, it also, and perhaps disconcertingly, includes valued capabilities like ‘resilience’ and ‘grit’, and equally disturbing is the new government’s commitment to finding ways to measure character.13 Thriving in modern Britain appears to be being premised upon an ability to negotiate and ‘survive’ an uncertain and unpredictable future where work, opportunity and social mobility are not guaranteed, and in which the provision of security and well-being is no longer seen as a task of the state. Indeed, character education is another aspect of the coalition’s clever but strategic redefinition of social justice and equity in that it constructs the individual – their aspirations, personal worth 143 page 144 The coalition government and social policy 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 and ethical character – as both the causes and solutions to intractable social problems. As Michael Apple (2014, pp 19–20) puts it: Equality, no matter how limited or broadly conceived, has become redefined. No longer is it seen as linked to past group oppression and disadvantagement. It is now simply a case of guaranteeing individual choice under the conditions of a ‘free market’.… [Underachievement] once again increasingly is seen as largely the fault of the student. 10 11 12 Conclusions: looking ahead 13 As noted earlier, the new Conservative government indicated that it would further pursue many of the Conservative-dominated coalition’s education policies – from more free schools and academies, and the continued emphasis on ‘tougher standards’ and ‘rigour’, to Nicky Morgan’s interest in character education. Having achieved a modest majority in the 2015 general election, the Conservatives have continued the drive towards further fragmentation and disarticulation of the education state. This has been pursued in the first 100 days of the new Conservative administration, with the Queen’s Speech introducing the previously noted Education and Adoption Bill, which will make it easier for the government to convert schools judged to be ‘inadequate’ or coasting’ into academies by removing, according to Nicky Morgan (2015), ‘bureaucratic and legal loopholes’. The Conservatives’ 2015 manifesto signalled their intention to further expand and accelerate academisation and to open more free schools. It also continued the emphasis on ‘standards’ and ‘rigour’, in part, through an expectation that 11 year olds ‘know their times tables offby-heart’ (Conservative Party, 2015, p 33), tackling ‘grade inflation’ by making examinations more difficult, and requiring pupils to take ‘core’ subjects – english, maths, science – at GCSE. Schools that ‘refuse’ to teach these subjects at GCSE will now be unable to achieve the highest Ofsted rating. Perhaps what is most notable, however, is the relative inattention to education issues in the Conservative election campaign and the government’s initial plans, aside from a pledge to protect per pupil funding and ‘Zero tolerance for failure’ – with renewed attention on ‘failing’ and ‘coasting’ schools. Little or nothing that is new appears to be being considered. An agenda is already in place based on dissolution, disarticulation and diversity, on the one hand, and a moral centrism, on the other – a political approach that further embeds and nourishes 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 144 page 145 The coalition government, the general election and the policy ratchet in education 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 the orthodoxy of the New Right in educational thinking, practice and governance (as detailed in Table 1.1 in Chapter One of this volume). What is also striking is the total disconnect between inequality, educational disadvantage and austerity. In this sense, the attempt to disconnect education from the economy in terms of ‘inputs’ is matched by a thoroughgoing reconnect between education and the economy in terms of ‘outputs’, or human capital. The new governing space of education in England is an incoherent, ad hoc, diverse, fragile and evolving network of complex relations. It contains possibilities, inconsistencies and contradictions – both business and religion, localism and corporatism, equity and privilege. New Right market policies, and ‘freedoms’ of various sorts, are set alongside a traditional One Nation values-driven vision of the curriculum – the latter now increasingly inflected by concerns about security and radicalisation. Conservative education policy rests on a ‘messy’ combination of regulation, competition and performance management. The process of public sector ‘modernisation’ or transformation involved here is both creative and destructive, a process of attrition and reinvention. Although the transformation process may sometimes appear to be disjointed, it has an internal logic, a set of discernible, if not necessarily planned, facets. Notes 1. Brown and Carasso (2013) explore recent developments in higher education, and 25 especially its ongoing marketisation. Stewart and Obolenskaya (2015) present a detailed 26 account of the coalition’s record in the early years. Daley, Orr and Petrie’s (2015) edited 27 volume explores further education policy and its ideological context. 28 29 2. See: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/education [[page not 30 found?]] 31 32 3. Available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/pms-speech-on-the- 33 fightback-after-the-riots 34 35 4. New Labour’s academies programme was initially targeted at struggling secondary 36 schools, particularly in deprived urban areas. The Coalition’s approach was different in 37 that it extended the policy to primary schools and encouraged ‘good’ and ‘outstanding’ 38 schools to convert. 39 40 5. Both are distinctive forms of free school that have a vocational/technical emphasis. 41 University Technical Colleges must be sponsored by a university, which has input into 42 145 page 146 The coalition government and social policy 1 2 curriculum and staff professional development. Studio Schools are designed for students between the ages of 14 and 19, and are an alternative to Further Education Colleges. 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Under the Academy/Free School Presumption of the said Act. The new Conservative government changed this to the Free School Presumption, which signals their post-election regard for all new academies as free schools. This presumes that most new schools will be free schools/academies but does not discount the possibility of community schools being opened where a suitable proposal for an alternative has not been identified. 6. 10 11 12 13 7. Department for Education, Transparency data. Open academies and academy projects in development, last updated 20 February 2015. Available at https://www.gov.uk/ government/publications/open-academies-and-academy-projects-in-development 14 15 8. 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 See: https://www.gov.uk/government/policies/ The Confederation of British Industry (CBI, 2010 [[citation not referenced. Please add/correct]]) has called for chains of schools to be set up and managed by businesses, but the role of profit-making in direct schools provision remains controversial and unclear. There is a considerable interest from business in the possibilities of profit from involvements, of various kinds, in free schools, and there is a list of ‘approved providers’ of services to free schools. Secretary of State for Education Michael Gove indicated that he had ‘no ideological objection’ to private firms running schools. However, on 4 September 2014, current Secretary of State Nicky Morgan told a TES [[please spell out the abbreviation in full at first mention]] webchat: ‘I think we are very clear and that the sector is very clear about the importance of not for profit. [For profit] is something I’m happy to have lots of further advice and emails on. I suspect that most people may not be very keen on it, but it’s something … well, you’d have to think very carefully’. Three weeks later, Ms Morgan seemed to indicate that the idea is completely off her agenda: ‘I don’t think that there is a place for the profit element in education’, she told the Financial Times on 26 September. 9. 32 33 34 35 36 More of the training of teachers is intended to be based in schools. The coalition piloted a programme called Schools Direct to enable Teaching Schools to bid for teacher training places, and increased the funding to Teach First to facilitate the expansion of the scheme into primary schools, the early years and across the country. 10. 37 38 11. See, for example: http://www.arkschools.org/our-six-pillars [[page not found?]] 39 40 41 42 The Pupil Premium can be traced back to Chubb and Moe’s (1990 [[citation not referenced. Please add/correct]]) proposals for an education market in the US, which suggested using ‘premium’ payments to make students with educational ‘deficits’ 12. 146 page 147 The coalition government, the general election and the policy ratchet in education 1 more attractive to providers. A similar approach has also been advocated as a form 2 of ‘market socialism’ by Julian Le Grand (1989 [[citation not referenced. Please 3 add/correct]]), Professor of Public Policy at the London School of Economics and 4 former senior policy advisor to Tony Blair. 5 6 13. For an analysis of resilience as an approved capability in relation to the teacher, see 7 Bailey (2015). 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 References Alexander, R. (2014) ‘Visions of education, roads to reform: PISA, the global race and the Cambridge primary review’. Available at: http://www.robinalexander.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/ Alexander-Malmo-140204.pdf (accessed 15 March 2015). Apple, M.W. (2000) ‘Between neoliberalism and neoconservatism: education and conservatism in a global context’, in N.C. Burbules and C.A. Torres (eds) Globalization and education: critical perspectives, Abingdon: Routledge, pp 57–77. Apple, M.W. (2014) Official knowledge: democratic education in a conservative age, London: Routledge. Bailey, P. (2015) ‘Consultants of conduct: new actors, new knowledges and new “resilient” subjectivities in the governing of the teacher’, Journal of Educational Administration and History, 47(3): 232–50. Ball, S.J. (2006) Education policy and social class. The selected works of Stephen J. Ball, New York, NY: Routledge. Ball, S.J. (2008) ‘The legacy of ERA, privatization and the policy ratchet’, Educational Management Administration & Leadership, 36(2): 185–99. Ball, S.J. (2010) The education debate, Bristol: The Policy Press. Brooks, S., Leach, M., Lucas, H. and Millstone, E. (2009) Silver bullets, grand challenges and the new philanthropy, STEPS Working Paper 24, Brighton: STEPS Centre. Brown, R. and Carasso, H. (2013) Everything for sale? The marketisation of UK higher education, Abingdon: Routledge/Society for Research in Higher Education. Cabinet Office (2010) The coalition: our programme for government, London: Cabinet Office. Clark, M. (2014) ‘Whose knowledge counts in government literacy policies and at what cost?’, Education Journal, 186: 13–16. Clarke, J. and Lindgren, J. (2015) ‘The vocabulary of inspection’, in S. Grek and J. Lindgren (eds) Governing by inspection, Abingdon: Routledge, pp 137–58. 147 page 148 The coalition government and social policy 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 Conservative Party (2015) Stronger leadership, a clear economic plan, a brighter, more secure future, London: Conservative Party. Cook, C. (2015) ‘A coming budget squeeze on schools’. Available at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-32595377 (accessed 17 September 2015). Daley, M., Orr, K. and Petrie, J. (eds) (2015) Further education and the twelve dancing princesses, Stoke-On-Trent: Institute of Education Press. DfE (Department for Education) (2010) The importance of teaching: the schools White Paper, London: The Stationery Office. DfE (2012) [[‘Title’.?]] Available at: https://www.gov.uk/ government/policies/helping-troubled-families-turn-their-livesaround DfE (2015) ‘Character education: apply for 2015 grant funding’. Available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/charactereducation-apply-for-2015-grant-funding (accessed 18 September 2015). Foster, D. (2015) ‘Free schools’, London Review of Books, 37(9): 8–9. Furlong, J. (2013) ‘Globalisation, neoliberalism, and the reform of teacher education in England’, The Educational Forum, 77(1): 28–50. Gibb, N. (2012) ‘Speech by Nick Gibb: greater expectations’. Available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/nick-gibb-onreading-greater-expectations Higham, R. (2014) ‘Free schools in the Big Society: the motivations, aims and demography of free school proposers’, Journal of Education Policy, 29(1): 122–39. HM Government (2010) Decentralisation and the Localism Bill: an essential guide, London: The Stationery Office. Kingdon, J.W. (1995) Agendas, alternatives, and public policies, New York, NY: Harper-Collins. [[Reference not cited, but see 2000. Please cite/correct/delete as appropriate]] Lister, R. (2001) ‘Work for those who can, security for those who cannot’, in R. Edwards and J. Glover (eds) Risk and citizenship: key issues in welfare, London: Routledge, pp 96–110. Lupton, R. and Thomson, S. (2015) The coalition’s record on schools: policy spending and outcomes 2010–2015, working paper, London: The University of Manchester/London School of Economics. Morgan, N. (2015) ‘Up to 1,000 failing schools to be transformed under new measures’, Department for Education press release, 3 June. Available at: www.gov.uk/government/news/up-to-1000failing-schools-to-be-transformed-under-new-measures (accessed 15 September 2015). 148 page 149 The coalition government, the general election and the policy ratchet in education 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 Rizvi, F. and Lingard, B. (2010) Globalizing education policy, Abingdon: Routledge. Shamir, R. (2008) ‘The age of responsibilization: on market-embedded morality’, Economy and Society, 37(1): 1–19. Stevenson, H. (2011) ‘Coalition education policy: Thatcherism’s long shadow’, Forum, 53(2): 179–94. Stewart, K. and Obolenskaya, P. (2015) The coalition’s record on the under fives: policy, spending and outcomes 2010–2015, Social Policy in a Cold Climate Working Paper WP12, London: Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion, LSE. The Guardian (2014) [[‘Title’,?]] 10 December. Available at: http:// www.theguardian.com/education/2014/dec/10/ofsted-sir-michaelwilshaw-struggling-schools-academy-neglect Williams, R. (2010) ‘New minister Nick Gibb upsets teachers – already’, The Guardian, 17 May. Available at: http://www.theguardian. com/education/mortarboard/2010/may/17/nick-gibb-upsetsteachers (accessed 11 July 2015). 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 149 View publication stats NEOLIBERALISM AND THE GLOBAL EDUCATION REFORM MOVEMENT Week 3: Policy and Politics in Education January 2021 Key Readings (Week 3) ? Bailey, P. & Ball, S.J. (2016) 'The coalition government, the general election and the policy ratchet in education: a reflection on the 'ghosts' of policy past, present and yet to come'. In Bochel, H. & Powell, M. (eds) The coalition government and social policy: restructuring the welfare state (Chapter 6). ? Fuller, K. & Stevenson, H. (2019) Global education reform: understanding the movement. Educational Review, 71:1, PP. 1-4. Overview ? What is neoliberalism? Introduction to this ideology and some key concepts/theory ? Neoliberalism and educati...
