Marketisation

• Marketisation


  The process of introducing market forces of consumer choice and competition between supplies into areas usually run by the state
• Marketisation of education


  1. Reducing direct state control over education

  2. Increasing competition between schools

  3. Increasing parental choice of school
• Parentocracy


  Policies that promote marketisation in education
• Policies promoting parentocracy


  • Publication of league tables and Ofsted reports
  • Business sponsorship of schools
  • Open enrolment, allowing successful schools to recruit more pupils
  • Specialist schools, specialising in IT, languages
  • Formula funding, schools receive the same amount of funding for each pupil
  • Schools being allowed to opt out of local authority control – they can then become academies
  • Schools must compete to attract pupils
  • Introduction of tuition fees for higher education
  • Allowing parents or other to set up free schools
• Miriam David's view of marketised education


  Parentocracy, the power is given away to the parents who have more choice and can thereby raise the standards
• Ball and Whitty note how marketisation policies such as exam league tables and funding formula reproduce class inequality by creating inequalities between schools
• Cream-skimming


  Good schools can be more selective, choose their own customers and recruit high achieving M/C pupils – these pupils then gain an advantage
• Silt-shifting


  Good schools can avoid taking in less able students who are likely to get poor results and damage the schools league table position
• Most popular schools get the most amount of funding, they can therefore go and get the most qualified teachers allowing them to remain the most popular schools
• Non-popular schools lack funding and are therefore stuck unable to compete with their successful rivals
• Privileged-skilled choosers


  Professional middle-class parents who use their economic and cultural capital to gain educational capital for their children
• Disconnected-local choosers


  Working-class whose choice is restricted by their lack of economic and cultural capital
• Semi-skilled chooser


  Working class parents who are ambitious for their children but lack cultural capital and find it difficult to make choices of schools
• Gewirtz concludes that impact middle-class, parents, possess, cultural and economic capital, allowing them to make the best choices
• Ball believes that marketisation gives the appearance of an education system based on parents having a free choice of School, but this is just a myth
• Leech and Campos argue that middle-class parents can afford to move into catchment areas for more desirable schools
• The myth of parentocracy makes inequality in education appear as fair and inevitable
• New Labour policies to reduce inequality


  • Education action zones were designated for deprived areas with additional resources
  • The aim higher program was to raised aspirations of groups who were under representative in higher education
  • Education maintenance allowance. These were payments done to students from low-income background to encourage them to stay on after 16 to gain better qualifications
  • The introduction of the national literacy strategy
  • City academies
  • Increased funding in state education
• Critics such as Benn see contradiction between labour policies to tackle in a quality and its commitment to monetisation something she caused the new labour paradox
• Despite introducing educational maintenance allowances to encourage poor students to stay in education, the Labour government also introduced tuition fees for higher education that may deter them from wanting to attend