The New Right

• New Right perspective on education


  The government should not provide services such as education, health care and welfare
• Value of education


  How well it enables the country to compete in the global marketplace
• New Right view of education

  • Schools should become like a business, empowering parents, and pupils as consumers
  • Competition should be used to drive up the standards
• Central principle of the New Right


  The state cannot meet the needs of people and they should be left to meet their own needs, through the free market
• New Right view


  The marketisation of education
• Similarities between the new right and functionalism


  • Both believe that some people are naturally more talented than others
  • Both favour an education system run on meritocratic principles of open competition, this system should prepare young people for work
  • Both believe that education should socialise pupils into shared values such as competition, and instil a sense of national identity
• Key difference between new right and functionalism


  The new right does not believe the current education system is achieving these goals, the reason for this is because the school system is run by the state
• New Right view of state education

  • It takes a one size fits all approach, this imposes uniformity and disregards local needs
  • State education systems are unresponsive and inefficient, schools that waste money or get poor results are not answerable to their consumers
  • This means lower standards of achievement for pupils, a less qualified workforce and less prosperous economy
• New Right solution


  Education should be marketised creating an education market, competition between schools and empowering consumers will bring greater diversity, choice, and efficiency to schools – this will mean the school will be able to meet the needs of the pupils, parents, and employers
• Chubb and Moe's argument


  State-run education in the US is failing because: 1) It had not created equal opportunities and it had failed the needs of disadvantaged groups, 2) It is inefficient because it fails to produce pupils with the skills needed to support the economy, 3) Private schools deliver higher quality education because unlike state schools they are answerable to paying consumers
• Chubb and Moe's proposal


  Introduction of a market system in state education that would put control in the hands of the consumers, each family would be given a voucher to spend on buying education from a school of their choice
• Two main important roles of the state (according to the New Right)


  • The state imposes a framework on schools, within which they must compete. By publishing Ofsted reports and league tables of schools it provides parents with information to make a choice.
  • The state ensures that school transmits a shared culture. The national curriculum seeks to guarantee that schools socialise pupils into a single cultural heritage.
• The New Right believes that education should affirm the national identity, the curriculum should emphasise the positive aspect of Britain in history
• Criticism of the New Right view

  • Competition between schools benefits the middle class who can use their cultural and economic capital to gain access to more desirable schools
  • The real cause of low educational standards is not state control but social inequality and inadequate funding of state schools
  • There is a contradiction between the New Rights support for parental choice on the other hand the state imposing a compulsory national curriculum on all its schools
  • Education does not impose a shared national culture, it imposes the culture of a dominant minority ruling class and devalues the culture of the W/C and other ethnic minorities