MARKETISATION Flashcards
Definition of marketisation
Refers to the process of introducing market forces of consumer choice and competition between suppliers into areas run by the state, such as education
How has marketisation become an ‘education market’?
- By reducing state control over education
2. By increasing competition between schools and parental choice at school
What act has made marketisation become a central theme of government education policy?
The 1988 Education Reform Act, introduced by the Conservative government of Margaret Thatcher
How was marketisation shown in 1997 through the New Labour government?
Blair and Brown followed similar policies as Thatcher, in that their policies emphasised standards, diversity and choice
How was marketisation furthered by the 2010 Conservative-Liberal Democrat government?
They created academies and free schools
Parentocracy: Examples of policies to promote marketisation
- Publication of league tables and Ofsted inpection reports
- Business sponsorship of schools
- Specialist schools
- Formula Funding
- Schools being allowed to opt out of local authority control, e.g. become academies
- Competition to attract pupils
- Introduction of tuition fees for higher education
- Allowing parents and others to set up free schools
What do supporters of marketisation argue happens in an education market?
a. They argue that power shifts away from the producers (the teachers and schools) to the consumers (parents)
b. They claim that this encourages diversity among schools, gives parents more choice and raises standards
Marketisation; how has it increased inequalities?
a. Ball (1994) and Whitty (1998); marketisation policies reproduce class inequalities by creating inequalities between schools
Inequalities caused by league tables and cream-skimming:
Bartlett (1993), cream-skimming and silt-shifting;
- Cream-skimming
- ‘Good’ schools can be more selective, choosing their own customers and recruit high achieving, mainly middle-class pupils
- As a result, these pupils can gain an advantage - Silt-shifting
- ‘Good’ schools can avoid taking less able students who are likely to get poor results and damage the school’s league table position
Inequalities caused by the Funding Formula
a. Schools are allocated funds by a formula based on how many pupils they attract
b. As a result, popular schools get more funds and so can afford better-qualified teachers and better facilities which allows them to be more picky, resulting in higher intakes of middle-class students
c. Poorer quality schools struggle to match their rivals and fail to attract pupils and their funding is further reduced
d. Institute for Public Policy Research (2012); competition-oriented education systems, like Britain’s, produce more segregation between children of different social backgrounds
Gewirtz (1995); parental choice
a. Gewirtz’s study of 14 London secondary schools
b. Found that differences in parents’ economic and cultural capital lead to class differences in how far they can exercise choice of secondary school
c. 3 types of choosers:
1. Privileged-skilled choosers
- Mainly professional middle-class parents who used their economic and cultural capital to gain educational capital for their children
- Parents knew how school admissions systems work, had time to visit schools and the skills to research the options available
- They could afford to move houses to get into the best catchment areas
2. Disconnected-local choosers
- Found it difficult to understand school admissions and were less confident in their dealings with school
- More importance attached to safety and the quality of long-term ambitions
- Distance and cost of travel were major restrictions on their choice of school
3. Semi-skilled choosers
- Mainly working-class parents but these parents were ambitious for their children
- However, they lacked cultural capital and couldn’t make sense of the education market
- They often relied on other people’s opinions about schools
The myth of parentocracy;
a. Ball; marketisation gives the appearance of a ‘parentocracy’
b. Gewirtz shows how middle-class parents are better able to take advantage of the choices available
c. Leech and Campos; middle-class parents can afford to move into the catchment areas of more desirable schools
New Labour Policies aimed at reducing inequality;
- Education Action Zones
- Aim Higher programmr
- EMA’s
- National Literacy Strategy
- Fresh start given to failing inner-city schools
- Increased funding for state education
Criticisms of New Labours’ Policies;
a. Benn (2012); there’s a contradiction between Labour’s policies to tackle inequality and its commitment to marketisation. The ‘New Labour paradox’.
b. Despite the introduction of EMA’s, Labour also introduced tuition fees for higher education
c. New Labour governments didn’t abolish fee-paying private schools nor removed their charitable status (estimated to be worth over £165 million per year)
