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‘Markets’ in education – a bad thing?
82 CommentsI’m going to start off with arguments against the marketization of education due to the overwhelming amount of literature which attacks neo-liberal conceptions of education as a ‘commodity’. In fact, as Tooley (1994) states it’s almost ‘politically incorrect’ to be for markets in education. The arguments I shall consider here involve the purpose of schooling, the nature of education as a ‘public good’ and the effects marketization has upon schools.
Beginning on a general note, then, what is the purpose of schooling in today’s society? Lawton (1992: 99-100) lists ten ‘items of general agreement’ regarding education from which we can extract three general themes:
- Education should develop socially, morally and intellectually the young people in our society.
- There are some things which every person should know in order to be able to interact with the world and other people effectively.
- Every young person should have an equal opportunity to learn.
The first two are unproblematic: problems arise with the third point, mainly to do with what is understood by ‘equality of opportunity’. As mentioned in ‘Markets’ in education – an introduction, the New Right, neo-liberal conception of equality is merit-based rather than needs-based . That is to say that they believe goods should be distributed according to merit or desert as this will ‘provide an inventive for individuals to behave in productive ways’ (Gewirtz, Ball & Bowe, 1995: 9). A needs-based conception of equity, on the other hand, eschews competition and promotes instead the distribution of goods according to the ‘capacity’ or ’status’ of participants. The results of merit-based conceptions may therefore look inequitable on the surface but in reality they allow each the same opportunity. Needs-based conceptions, on the other hand, seek an equal distribution of goods in practice, not just the opportunity for all to reach the same level.
Opponents of the marketization of education argue that a merit-based equity is inappropriate with schooling due to the status of education as a ‘public good’. Jonathan (1997: 78) defines as public good as:
…something of benefit to all which cannot be subdivided into individual shares and can thus only be effectively provided by all, for all.
The most often-given example of this, she states, is national defence: although all would deem national defence necessary it would be impossible for individuals to act without the state in a way in which provided such a system. As we shall see in a subsequent post, it can be successfully argued that, from an economists point of view, education is in fact not a public good. Critics of educational markets, however, would reject the concomitant claim that this makes education a ‘commodity’, instead preferring to call it a ‘quasi public good’. This is the stance taken by, amongst others, Bullock and Thomas (1997: 22) who argue that there are ’substantial externalities’ associated with education. ‘Externalities’ are benefits which are linked to a good but which are not directly obtained by the individual. As we ‘all benefit from the qualities associated with living in a more educated society’ there is therefore ‘a case for subsidising the cost of education to individuals to that demand increases.’ (23)
If education is a quasi-public good then it follows that it should be available to everyone, regardless of status (religion, gender, race, etc.) If one of the most important things we are trying to develop in all citizens through education is a moral sense of responsibility towards others (Grace, 1994: 132) then markets are not simply an inefficient way of doing this, they are harmful to the whole enterprise. Jonathan (1997: 77) argues that proponents of the market conflate the ‘good of each’ with the ‘good of all’ with the assumption that prioritising the former is supposed to affect the latter. This, it would seem, has all the problems which attach to the ‘prisoner’s dilemma’. Just as it is the best interests for prisoners not to betray one another to reap the biggest reward (freedom) it is in the best interests of society for each set of parents to act in such a way that promotes equality. However, being rational choosers both the prisoner and each set of parents chooses in their own self-interest. Whilst this does not lead to the optimum result it guarantees that they are not disadvantaged.
If each participant in the process had perfect knowledge and access to resources – that is to say if all parents began on a ‘level playing field’ – then self-interested motivation could lead to an equitable result. However, this can never be the case. As George Orwell so deftly put it in Animal Farm, ‘All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.’ Middle-class parents in particular gain an advantage in an educational marketplace.
Why is this? Why should an educational market advantage middle-class families? Brown and Lauder (1997: 177) believe it is through the transmission of ‘cultural capital’ that not all social groups come to the marketplace as equals. Due to this cultural capital, middle-class parents are more likely to make ‘better’ educational choices than their working-class counterparts. This adds up to a covert system of educational selected according to class and, eventually (unless artificially rectified), polarization. As Lane (1993: 179) notes, it is implausible to represent all people as completely rational economic agents who are ‘infinitely clear-headed’. This is even more the case given pre-existing inequalities in the education system, working-class parents are likely to have been less successful themselves at school than middle-class parents. There is no reason to structure society exclusively in the interests of those who have parents who have the time, resources and motivation (i.e. the ‘cultural capital) to make ‘better’ decisions. (Olssen, Codd & O’Neill, 2004: 180; Dale, 1989: 38-9)
The problem with markets in education is the fundamentally different qualitative nature of education to other ‘goods’. As Barr (1987) notes, it is not enough to say that dissatisfied parents can move their child to another school, for two reasons. Firstly, parents may not have enough information to know that their child is receiving a bad education. And secondly, education is not a repeatable experiment: one can steer clear of a restaurant where a bad meal has been had or bad service experienced, and this will not affect anything in the future. Schooling is not like this – to stretch the analogy, it is like getting food poisoning from that restaurant – education is something that shapes who you are as a person.
Choosing a child’s school is an extremely important decision in that it will affect the rest of that child’s life. That is why proponents of the market have quite convincingly argued that the people best placed to make that decision are the child’s parents. Some critics of marketization have questioned this, however. Jonathan (1997: 109-113) raises three problems with the system of a child’s parents being their proxy educational choosers:
- Some children have more effective proxy-agents than others (problem of equity)
- Individuals cannot achieve the best outcomes for themselves by pursuing their own interests directly and exclusively (prisoners dilemma)
- A system of rational self-interested choice changes the social ethos for the worse (problem of social cohesion)
Jonathan, concludes therefore:
However counter-intuitive it may seem, the parent turns out to be particularly badly placed to weigh alternative notions of the child’s eventual interest even-handedly, and that not through any defect of agent motivation or ability. (112)
Finally, even without theoretical objections to marketization, there are practical objections which centre mainly around the effects upon schools. Just as businesses may appear to be run in the best interests of customers whilst remaining committed to a ‘higher’ interest (i.e. profit), so schools in the marketplace have different emphases and focii than those in ‘public monopoly education’. This shift can be subtle (e.g. the marketing of open evenings) or more obvious (e.g. the rise in the number of pupil exclusions). Woods, Bagley & Glatter (1998) have noted three aspects of how schools have responded to marketization:
- More of a focus on ‘the academic’
- A trend towards ‘traditionalism’
- Differentiation, diversity and hierarchy
Whilst some of these can be seen as relatively benign (e.g. choice of uniform) some have huge repercussions, such as a focus on public examination results. Although some small changes have been made to the way, for example, that examination results are published there is nevertheless a focus by schools on the number of pupils gaining ‘good’ (i.e. A*-C) grades at GCSE. This is despite the fact that many studies have found that it is more likely to be issues such as location, transport and the ‘warmth’ of a school which influences parental choice. (Bowe, Ball & Gold, 1992: 36) That is to say parents make more holistic decisions than schools give them credit for. (Slaughter & Schneider, 1986)
But it is not simply the assumed wishes of parents towards which schools cater which is the problem. A large source of inequality in educational markets comes through the mechanisms themselves. There are five issues relating to the mechanisms of educational markets which recur in the literature:
- The ‘logic of confidence’ – schools only have to appear to be successful (Levin, 2001: 29)
- Schools share ideas and resources less due to competition (Bottery, 1998)
- Covert ways of selecting pupils have been devised by schools (West & Ingram, 2001: 6)
- Educational standards have become less important to schools than their overall ‘image’ (Ball, 1994: 107)
- Schools withdraw from areas of uncertainty and ’stick with what they know’ (Kaufman, 1985)
As Ball (1994: 107) states, points such as these are often glossed over – especially the negative aspects of competition. Both advocates and critics of marketization have overestimated the extent to which schools will ‘go for growth’ because of marketization: in reality, most are content to ‘market what they have got’. (Bowe, Ball & Gold, 1992: 46) Markets, therefore, instead of coaxing socially-beneficial behaviour out of rational self-interested individuals and institutions, actually encourage the kind of manipulation of ‘realities’, bending of rules and narrow focus that can be seen in some sectors of the business world.
References:
- Ball, S.J. (1994) Education Reform (Buckingham)
- Barr (1987) – quoted in Lawton (1992)
- Bottery (1998) – cited in Levin (2001)
- 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)
- Bullock, A. & Thomas, H. (1997) Schools at the Centre? A Study of Decentralization (London)
- Dale, R. (1989) The State and Education Policy (Buckingham)
- Gewirtz, S., Ball, S.J. & Bowe, R., Markets, Choice and Equity in Education (Buckingham)
- Grace, G. (1994) ‘Education is a public good: on the need to resist the domination of economic science’ (in Bridges, D. & McLaughlin, T. (eds.) Education and the Market Place (London)
- Jonathan, R. (1997) Illusory Freedoms: Liberalism, Education and the Market (Oxford)
- Kaufman (1985) – cited in Levin (2001: 28)
- Gewirtz, S., Ball, S.J. & Bowe, R. (1995) Markets, Choice and Equity in Education) (Buckingham)
- Levin, B. (2001) ‘A Cross-national Analysis of the Impact of School Choice’ (paper presented at the American Educational Research Association, Seattle)
- Lawton, D. (1992) ‘Problems of Choice: the market and educational planning’ (in Education and Politics in the 1990s
- Olssen, M., Codd, J. & O-Neill, A-M. (2004) Education Policy: globalization, citizenship & democracy (London)
- Slaughter & Schneider (1986) – cited in Gewirtz, Ball & Bowe (1995)
- Tooley, J. (1994) ‘In Defence of Markets in Educational Provision’ (in Bridges, D. & McLaughlin, T. (eds.), Education in the Market Place, London)
- West, A. & Ingram, D. (2001) ‘School Admissions in England: cream skimming and quasi-regulation’ (paper presented at the American Educational Research Association, Seattle)
- Woods, A., Bagley, C & Glatter, R. (1998) ‘School Responsiveness in a Competitive Climate: the public market in England’ (Educational Administration Quarterly, vol.34)
Published on August 26, 2006 · Filed under: Uncategorized;
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