The market versus the state

• New Right arguments


  The state cannot meet people's needs, and inevitably ends up as 'one size fits all' that does not meet individual and community needs, or the needs of employers for skill and motivated workers
• State-run schools


  • Not accountable to those who use them (pupils, parents and employers)
  • Inefficient
  • Schools with poor results do not change because they are not answerable to their consumers
  • Result is lower standards and a less qualified workforce
• Marketisation


  The introduction into areas run by the state (such as education or the NHS) of market forces of consumer choice and competition between suppliers (such as schools or hospitals)
• Marketisation of education


  • Forces schools to respond to the needs of pupils, parents and employers
  • Competition with other schools means teachers have to be more efficient
  • A school's survival depends on its ability to raise the achievement levels of its pupils
• Chubb and Moe's data

  Pupils from low-income families do about 5% better in private schools, suggesting state education is not meritocratic
• State education


  • Has failed to create equal opportunity because it does not have to respond to pupils' needs
  • Parents and communities cannot do anything about failing schools while the schools are controlled by the state
  • Private schools deliver higher quality education because they are answerable to paying consumers-the parents
• Chubb and Moe's solution

  Introduce a market system in state education by giving control to consumers (parents and local communities) via a voucher system
• New Right's view on the state's role in education

  • The state should create the framework for competition between schools (e.g. by publishing league tables of exam results and by setting a national curriculum that all schools must teach)
  • The state still has to ensure that schools transmit society's shared culture through a curriculum that emphasises a shared national identity (e.g. through the teaching of British history)
• Although school standards - as measured by exam results-seem to have risen, there are other possible reasons for this improvement apart from the introduction of a market
• Critics argue that low standards in some state schools are the result of inadequate funding rather than state control of education
• Gewirtz argues that competition between schools benefits the middle class, who can get their children into more desirable schools
• Marxists argue that education imposes the culture of a ruling class, not a shared culture or 'national identity' as the New Right argue