Neoliberal views on education Flashcards
Harvey
- notes neoliberalism is a “political economic practice” that promotes total free will of individuals as economic actors
- neoliberals advocate for “strong private property rights, free markets and free trade” with as little government intervention and regulation as possible
George Monbiot
-argues neoliberalizm is the ideology at the root of our problems because it reduces human relations to cold competitive battles, it relegates individuals to being mere consumers and it assumes that democracy is an exercise in the buyingband selling of goods and services
Market
-neolibwrals suggest that the ‘market’ is a natural and objective force that will solve all our problems if only we leave it up to its own devices
- this assumption fails to acknowledge that the market is “fraught with power relations” and “what ‘the market wants’” tends to mean what corporations and their bosses want”
Stephan Ball
4 key ways in which neoliberalism has transformed the british education system:
- top down performance management
- greater competitiveness and contestability
- choice and voice
- measures to strengthen the capability of public servants to deliver improved public services
Neoliberalism & top down performance management
- origin in the Ruskin Speech; notion that education was no longer seen as fit for purpose in the paradigm that shows the proffesion as both resistantbto change and too progressive
- construction of the untrustworthy teacher and the mediatisation of policy E.g. 1988 Education Act
- this is where the potential unjust, downgrading of teachers begin
Top down performance management examples
- Introduction of league tables in 1992 providing market information to parents and National and local press coverage has now become ritualistic ( Warmington and Murphy 2004)
- public discourse now centres around good and bad schools
- New Labour took these ideas much further standards being one of the buzzwords of 1998
-Ministers started to judge themselves by standards and meeting national targets
Top down performance management
- setting of national targets is indicative of the reconceptualism of the education system as a single entity and as a fundamental component of national economic competiveness
- Ozga ( 2008) describes of audit, inspection, evaluation and testing and the use of measurment and comparisonbas governing by numbers and as form of governing knowledge that constitute a ‘resource through which surveillance can be exercised’
Macguire (2004)
-“ we now have a cycle of problem, solution, success and new problem”
Competition and Contestability
•Hatcher- endogenous and exogenous privatisation
- endo p: emphasised by early conservatives , involved making public sector organisations act in a more business like way, create quasi-market systems : funding & recruitment
•3 main aspects to the quasi market competition
-efficiency
- market failure
-bringing in choice as a competitive force
Choice & Voice
•Involves power being in the hands of service users & system- flexible (Blair)
• suppousedly provides incentives for driving up standards, promotes equality and facilitates personalisation
• choice and voice - part of the move from a producer to consumer culture ; create citizen -consumers ( Clarke)
Personalisation through pariticipation
• 2006 legislation: parents had possibility of ‘p.t.p’ - as part of an ‘agenda’ of gov to reconfigure the environment for learning with new spaces and time frames within/ outside school day & incorporate new tech
- Ball: this- decomposition of a universal system of education moving towards commodification
- student pariticipation: mandatory since 2002 E.A & part of OFSTED investigations
•Choice polices exelarated by New Labour( appeal to individualistic, middle class voters)
- ‘Free schools’: greater choice, more competition, new ways of tackling deprivation, local community involvement & marginalisation
