The new right - The role of education in society

• Proponents of New Right perspective

  • Chubb and Moe
• Chubb and Moe's proposal

  1. Education Vouchers

  2. Parentocracy
• Influence of Education Policy

  • 1980's Vocational Education
  • 1988 Education Reform Act: Funding formula, League Tables
  • New Labour - Academies
  • Coalition Government - Free Schools, Privatisation of Education
• The New Right have a similar perspective on education to functionalists


  However, they tend to think that contemporary state education fails to perform the role it should perform because of centralised state control and policies that seek to standardise and improve equality
• New Right's perspective on education


  Education needs to be more competitive, more about choice and winning and losing and less about collaboration and fairness
• For the New Right, there should be competition within schools, competition between schools


  This will drive up educational standards as schools try to attract customers (parents) with impressive results
• The more the education system could follow the private school model, the better they would become
• New Right's concern about local authorities with left-wing councils


  Children might learn history that was not sufficiently patriotic or there might be radical ideas about gender or sexual orientation that would not reflect the views of the children's parents
• New Right's solution


  Reorganise education to put the parents in control (to create a parentocracy) so the value consensus would be set by the parents, and not by politicians who were often far from the mainstream