Marketisation

• Reduce direct state control over education
• Increasing both competition between schools and parental choice of school
• Policies that promote marketisation include:

  League tables

  OFSTED

  Business sponsorships of schools

  Open enrolment, allowing successful schools to recruit more pupils

  Specialist Schools

  Formula Funding, where schools receive the same amount of funding for each pupil

  Academies

  Tuition fees for higher education

  Allowing parents and others to set up free schools
• Cream-skimming - 'Good' schools can be more selective, chose their own customers and recruit high achieving, mainly middle class pupils
• Silt-Shifting - 'Good' schools can avoid taking less able pupils who are likely to get poor results and damage the schools league table position
• Gewirtz (1995) study of 14 London schools:

  Identified 3 types of parents-

  Privileged skilled choosers - Mainly professional middle-class parents who use their economical and cultural capital for their children.

  Disconnected-local choosers - Working-class parents whose choices were restricted by their lack of economical and cultural capital.

  Semi-skilled customers - Working-class parents that are ambitious for their children's education. However, they too lacked cultural capital and found it hard to find a good school