WARNING! This website is no longer actively maintained. It is an archive of 2 years work by Doug Belshaw who now blogs at [1] dougbelshaw.com... [2]

This week I’m writing my Policy Studies essay as part of my [3] Ed.D. at the University of Durham. Every time I write an essay I seem to do the bit leading up to it in a slightly different way. This time I’ve gone for the approach taken by Bill Nighy’s character (a writer) in the film [4] I Capture the Castle. That’s to say I’ve put my thoughts and the (relevant) thoughts of others on scraps of papers (read: Post-It’s) around my study and am letting them ’soak’. Whilst they’re doing that, I’m going to write a quick introduction to the concept of ‘markets’ in education which will precede posts (hopefully helpful to the essay-writing process) on the positive and negative aspects…

Article 26 (3) of the [5] Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that:

Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children.

[6] Neo-liberals in positions to influence government policies in education have used this as part of their argument that the market is most equitable and fair way of ensuring everyone receives the education they deserve in society. The market is proposed in alternative to ‘public monopoly education’, where the state decides (in the majority of cases) the school which each child goes to, usually through proximity to their place of residence. Under the market system the parent, as the child’s proxy, is forced into making a choice (through an application process) as to which school they wish their child to attend.

The market reforms or the ‘marketization’ of education took place at the end of the 1980s in many western countries including the UK, New Zealand, the USA and Canada, and were part of wider policy reforms (certainly in England and New Zealand).

But what is meant by a ‘market’ and can the term be used to accurately describe the situation in western education? Le Grand, et al (1992) define a market as:

a form of economic organisation in which the majority of allocaiton decisions are made through the ostensibly uncoordinated actions of large numbers of individuals and private firms. The co-ordination of activities… comes about because each factor of production (land, labour and capital) and each commodity has a price to which diverse groups respond in a way that reconciles their separate actions. (p.21)

Educational markets, it has been argued, are not ‘authentic’ markets because they are highly regulated by the state. As Tooley (1996, p.54) states, schools are never simply ‘closed down’, government ‘task forces’ are sent in first in order to try and prop them up. In an authentic market, however, unsuccessful institutions are simply left to die. This has led many educational thinkers to speculate upon what kind of ‘markets’ are operational in western educational systems if they are not ‘authentic’ ones. Woods and Bagley (1996: 642) list the following:

• Saltman and van Otter (1992) - ‘Planned market’
• Ranson (1993) - ‘Administered market’
• Thomas (1994) - ‘Mixed economies’
• LeGrand and Bartlett (1993) - ‘Quasi market’

Woods and Bagley settle on the term ‘public market’ to describe the effect of choice reforms in education - ‘market’ because of the element of choice, diversity, competition, demand-driven funding and self-determination, and ‘public’ because the state takes collective action on behalf of the public, because the system is supposed to foster democratic representation, and because the state oversees education on behalf of the public. The term ‘quasi market’ is, however, perhaps evokes more of the ’spirit’ of the educational landscape, suggesting as it does that the educational market is both a market and not a market at the same time. LeGrand and Bartlett (1993) give the following reasons for calling current educational markets ‘quasi’ markets:

• The service provided is free at the point of delivery.
• Producers (schools) are not out to maximize profits.
• Schools are not privately owned.
• Consumer demand is not expressed in monetary terms.

For such quasi markets to be successful, they believe, there must be elements of competition in the system with those making choices having adequate available to them. The ‘transaction costs’ must be minimal but there must be some motivation (at least in part) provided by financial aspects. Finally, there must be an avoidance of ‘cream-skimming’ in order to make sure that the market continues to operate successfully and equitably. (Woods & Bagley, 1996: 642-3)

This notion of ‘equity’ is something which has been discussed at length by educational philosophers, theorists and economists since the proposals for marketization were first mooted in the 1980s. In essence, these arguments boil down to two factors: the role of the state and what is meant by a ‘public good’. The latter has been intelligently argued in the literature and I shall deal with the different conceptions and definitions of public goods in subsequent posts detailing the pros and cons of marketization. The former - what the role of the state consists in - depends on one’s ideological position, resulting in many writers ‘talking past’ one another. Something that most writers agree upon, however, is that the market-based reforms were the result of a mixture of neo-liberal economic theories (especially those of [7] Hayek) and developments in management theory (e.g. [8] In Search of Excellence) and business methods (Bowe, Ball & Gold, 1992: 24).

The ‘New Right’ is made up of neo-liberals and neo-conservatives who have formed an alliance based upon a merit-based definition of equity (Gewirtz, Ball & Bowe, 1995: 9) and a belief in [9] Public Choice Theory that posits the ‘inevitable self-interest of economic and social actors’ (Levin, 2001: 9). Lawton (1992: 84) believes the New Right to make the following assumptions:

• Choice automatically means better quality.
• Some kinds of choice are desirable, therefore most kinds of choice should be catered for.
• Parents choose ‘good’ schools and reject ‘bad’ ones.
• Pupils choosing what they want to study increases their motivation.

The New Right compact of [10] neo-conservatism (rejection of ‘big government’) and [11] neo-liberalism (focus on free market methods) argue that in post-compulsory education, market-based mechanisms mean a much closer match between supply and demand (Brown & Lauder, 1997: 178). Whether a ‘marketplace’ is appropriate to, and indeed the purpose of, initial education is something I shall consider in other posts.

References:

• Bowe, R., Ball, S.J., & Gold, A. (1992), Reforming Education and Changing Schools (London)
• Brown, P. & Lauder, H. (1997) ‘Education, Globalization, and Economic Development (in Halsey, A.H., et al (eds.), Education: culture, economy, society, Buckingham)
• Gewirtz, S., Ball, S.J. & Bowe, R., (1995) Markets, Choice and Equity in Education (Buckingham)
• Lawton, D. (1992) ‘Problems of Choice: the market and educational planning’ (in Education and Politics in the 1990s)
• Le Grand, et al (1992) - quoted in Bullock, A. & Thomas, H. - Schools at the Centre? A Study of Decentralization (London, 1997)
• LeGrand and Bartlett (1993) - quoted in Woods, P.A. & Bagley, C. (1996)
• Levin, B., Reforming Education: from origins to outcomes (London)
• Tooley, J. (1996) ‘Equality, equity and educational markets’ (in Education Without the State, London)
• Woods, P.A. & Bagley, C., (1996) ‘Market Elements in a Public Service: an analytical model for studying educational policy’ (Journal of Education Policy, Vol.1, No.6)

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