Marketisation Policies

• What is marketisation?

  • The process of introducing market forces of consumer choice and competition between suppliers into areas run by the state such as education
  • Marketisation has created an 'education market' by reducing direct state control over education and increasing both competition between schools and parental choice of school
  • Central theme of government education policy since the 1988 ERA introduced by the conservative government of Margaret Thatcher
  • New Labour emphasised diversity and choice
  • Coalition government created academies and free schools
  • Attracts customers (parents)
• Parentocracy

  • Publication of league tables and Ofsted inspection reports rank each school based on exam performance and give parents the right information to choose the 'right' school
  • Open enrollment
  • Specialist schools - IT and languages
  • Formula funding
  • Schools being able to opt out of local authority control, eg. to become academies
  • Schools having to compete to attract pupils
  • Tuition fees for higher education
  • Allowing parents to set up free schools
• Evaluation of parentocracy

  • Critics argue that marketisation has increased inequalities
  • Ball and Whitty note that exam league tables and the funding formula reproduce class inequalities by creating inequalities between schools
• League tables and cream-skimming

  • Parents are attracted to schools with good league table rankings
  • Bartlett constructed the idea of cream skimming and silt shifting
  • Cream-skimming - 'good' schools are selective, choose their own customers and recruit high achieving, mainly M/C pupils
  • Silt-shifting - 'good' schools avoid taking less able pupils who are likely to get poor results and damage the schools league table position
  • Poor league table schools cannot afford to be selective and take mainly W/C pupils so results are poorer and remain unattractive
  • Reproduces social class inequalities
• The funding formula

  • Schools are allocated funds by a formula based on how many pupils they attract and as a result, popular schools get more funds and so can afford better qualified teachers and better facilities
  • They can attract more ambitious M/C pupils
  • Unpopular schools lose income and find it difficult to match the teacher skills and facilities of the more successful rivals
• Gerwitz - parental choice

  • Marketisation policies benefit the M/C by creating inequalities between schools - economic and cultural capital puts them in a better position to choose 'good' schools for their children
  • Gerwitz - study of 14 secondary schools discovered priviliged skill choosers, disconnected-skill choosers and semi-skilled choosers
• Priviliged skill choosers

  • Mainly M/C who gained educational capital for their children and were able to take full advantage of the choices available to them
  • They had time to visit schools and afford to move their children around the education system eg. paying extra travel costs
• Disconnected-local choosers

  • Working class parents whose choices were restricted by their lack of economic and cultural capital and found school admission procedures hard to understand
  • They were less aware of school choices available to them and less able to manipulate the system to their own advantage
  • Distance and cost of travel were major restrictions and funds were limited so were placed in the closest school
• Semi-skilled choosers

  • Mainly working class but were ambitious for their children however also lacked cultural capital and found it difficult to make sense of the education market.
  • They relied on other peoples opinions about schools
• The myth of parentocracy

  • Marketisation reproduces inequality and legitimises it by concealing its true causes
  • Ball argues that parentocracy is a myth and the education system only seems to give parents a free choice of schools - all parents have the same freedom
  • It makes inequality seem fair and inevitable in education
  • Tough and Brooks covert selection - schools try and discourage parents from lower socio-economic backgrounds from applying by making school literature harder to understand etc.
• 1988 National Curriculum

  • All schools to teach the same content ages 7-16
  • Core subjects such as Maths, English and Science at GCSE level
  • GCSEs and SATs introduced
  • Easier for parents to compare and choose between schools
  • Every school was assessed using the same type of exam
• New vocationalism

  • Vocational education involves work based/work related study mostly in schools and colleges
  • Practical skill courses where the learners acquire job-specific knowledge
  • Youth Training Scheme aimed at the unemployed
  • OPT OUT - grant maintained schools - opt out of LEA control