‘Markets’ in education - a good thing? at teaching.mrbelshaw.co.uk

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 This website is no longer actively maintained.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

Many educators’ initial reactions to the market reforms which were introduced in western education systems in the late 1980s/early 1990s were negative. They put forward many arguments which I’ve looked at in a previous post, ‘Markets’ in education - a bad thing? However, advocates of marketization have fairly convincing arguments at times which we, as educators should be willing to look at with an open mind. So, with you having read at least ‘Markets’ in education - an introduction for background, here goes…

Common sense seems to tell us that education is a ‘public good’ which should be available to all. In fact, most societies have gone so far as to say that education is so important that, whether or not an individual or family recognises this fact, they should be compelled to undergo some type of formal education and/or training up to a specified age. A public good is one which could not be provided an individual (or even individuals) working alone but must be co-ordinated by a central body for the benefit of all. The example frequently given is that of national defence: everyone agrees it is necessary, it benefits all, but it is only possible through state intervention. If education is a public good, therefore, it should be regulated and controlled by the state for the benefit of all. Under this conception, creating an educational ‘market place’ would threaten individuals’ access to this public good and therefore be a bad move.

Grace (1994: 128) sets out four interrelated argument which he has extracted from a 1987 New Zealand Treasury brief which, he believes, has been at the centre of education marketplace debates worldwide:

The public believes education is a ‘public good’ but has an uninformed notion of the latter.
Economic science can provide a more robust definition of a public good to inform debates
When the insights of economic science are applied to education, it becomes clear that it is a commodity and not a public good.
State intervention in the provision of education weakens the ability of the marketplace to generate greater efficiency and equity in education.

These four arguments are found in the following almost manifesto-like quotation from the New Zealand Treasury briefing mentioned above:

Education’s investment benefits, which bring long-term benefits to society as well as the individual, may lie behind the feeling that education does not belong in the market place. Education tends to be thought of as a natural sphere for government intervention because it is a social or public good and because of concerns about equity in the private costs and benefits flowing from education… In the technical snese used by economists, education is not in fact a ‘public good’…

This notion of education not being a public good is an interesting one. As Tooley (1994: 141) notes, economists define a public good as satisfying ‘up to’ three conditions:

Indivisibility - the ‘good’ can be made available to every member of the public (e.g. constructing a bridge to cross a river)
Non-rivalness - the benefits of the ‘good’ must be available to everyone (i.e. the value of the good must not diminish depending on the number of people involved - e.g. hiking in the wilderness would be spoiled if lots of tourists turned up)
Non-excludability - individual members of the group should not be able to be excluded from the benefits of the ‘good’ (e.g. providing a lighthouse helps everyone, not just the ships of the company who built it)

Under this conception, education would not be a public good as individuals can certainly be prevented from receiving the ‘good’ (by being excluded), and the non-rivalness and indivisibility conditions are broken given the example of some children having an excellent teacher whilst others do not. Those opposed to market reforms have therefore attempted respond by re-defining what is meant by a pubilc good, but it would seem impossible to do so without allowing some things into the definition of a public good which would be undesirable and/or nonsensical. Education, therefore, must not be a public good. And if it is not a public good, Tooley (1994: 143) states, the argument goes something like this:

If a good is a public good then it is not amenable to market provision (by definition).
Education (in terms of schooling and other educational opportunities) is not a public good.
Therefore, education is amenable to market provision.

If opponents to marketization agree (as they must) that attempts to formulate education as a public good are somewhat problematic, then they need a separate argument as to why education is not amenable to market provision. Tooley (1994: 149) goes on to flip round the question ‘Why have markets in education?’ to focus on ‘Why have state intervention in education?’ This forces opponents of marketization onto the back foot as they no longer have the ‘education is a public good’ defence - at least not in the way it has been previously conceptualized. These opponents also have to deal with the positive arguments put forward by advocates of markets in education - namely the three that Gorard and Taylor (2002: 5-6) identify as:

The Libertarian notion of choice for its own sake (e.g. Erickson, 1989)
The argument from equity - the possibilities for social mobility (e.g. Cookson, 1994)
The argument that market forces will drive up educational standards (e.g. Chubb & Moe, 1990)

These are added to arguments against ‘public monopoly education’ which Ball (1994: 103-4) identifies as:

Financial support for schools (via taxation) is not directly linked to the satisfaction of clients.
The absence of profit and loss in education leads to conservatism and minimalist survival strategies by school managers.
The decision-making procedures of public monopoly schools are dominated by self-interest.
Public monopoly schools are inefficient and bureaucratic which inhibits their responsiveness to parental concerns.
The preceding four points mean that standards remain low.
The ’sameness’ of public monopoly schools and restrictions on enrolment removes the possibility of parental choice.
A system where the state interferes creates ‘winners’ and ‘losers’ through the imposition of policies which favour dominant interest groups and office-holders.
Parents and students are not well-organized enough in the public monopoly system to take on powerful interest groups and organizations such as teachers unions.

It would appear that the major ’sticking point’ between advocates and critics of market-based reforms in education is one surrounding the notions of ‘equity’ and ‘equality’. As Tooley (1994: 145) notes, this depends what you mean by these terms. There are many different forms of ‘equality of opportunity’, something hinted at in the ‘needs-based’ vs. ‘merit-based’ conceptions of equity discussed in a previous post (for a lengthy discussion of different conceptions of equality opportunity, visit the Encyclopedia of Philosophy’s entry on it). Instead of equality, Tooley 1994: 146) instead believes we should be loking at the concept of ‘adequacy’ in education. This would shift the emphasis, for example, when looking at the results of the 11+ exam from criticizing its fairness because middle-class children had an unequal chance of passing it, to criticizing the education of working-class children as being inadequate to pass the examination (note, however, that he does not discuss the equity of choice based reforms).

Tooley (1994: 147) then attempts to defend market-based reforms against the Rawlsian ‘veil of ignorance’ and the ‘difference principle’. John Rawls wrote an influential book entitled A Theory of Justice in which he posited a pre-societal ’state of nature’ in which the participants of a future society have to choose what that society will look like before they enter into it. He concludes that the only inequalities which would be allowed under such a system would be those which ‘enhance the opportunities of those with the lesser opportunity’. That is to say, if you did not know what you would be and which ‘class’ you would be in when entering into a society, the only differences in equality of opportunity you would want to exist would be those that favour the disadvantaged and the least well-off. As Tooley rightly states, such a conception would lead to a wholehearted rejection of marketization. However, he attempts to counter this by arguing that this may lead to a society where no-one has the minimum standard required for various occupations and pursuits which we value as a society, either for their outputs or in and of themselves:

It would seem to follow that our society could be incredibly poor, and although we might find it the case that we are all equally free and the inequalities are arranged so that they do benefit the poorest of all, we might find that no one has the satisfactory minimum standard, or that only some reach that level. (147)

Tooley (1994: 148) then goes on to argue that the Rawlsian conception of justice is flawed as it does not guarantee minimum standards. The market, however, does - he believes - give everyone a ‘minimum adequate education’ and therefore satisfy the ‘equality of opportunity’ criterion.

In another paper, Tooley (1996: 52) argues that not only are theoretical arguments against marketization invalid, but practical ones are as well. Pointing to, for example, the experience of students, parents and schools since market-based reforms were introduced and the inherent inequalities produced as a direct result is not a knock-down argument, Tooley believes, as the state is still very much in control of education. The ‘market’ in education is not ‘authentic’:

The point is that it is not surprising if there is inequality in current ‘choice’ systems. This has nothing to do with ‘markets’, but everything to do with rigid state intervention which discourages innovation and enterprise… we have no evidence about the impact of markets on educational equality, because nowhere is there a market in education operating.

Not only is the concept of equality ‘elusive’ (Barr, 1993) but it was never a feature of ‘public monopoly schools’ in any case. As Smith and Tomlinson (1989) reported before choice reforms were introduced:

different secondary schools achieve substantially different results with children who are comparable in terms of background and attainment at an earlier time. They also show that these school effects are far more important than any differences in attainment between black and white children.

The previous system whereby students went to a school based on ‘catchment areas’ was unfair in that it meant - at least to some extent in some areas - covert ’selection by mortgage’ whereby house prices increased in the catchment area of schools deemed to be ’successful’ and ‘desirable’. At least, advocates of market reforms would argue, school choice is explicit and based (to a much greater extent) upon form-filling than home location.

In conclusion, then, those who argue that the marketization of education is a ‘good thing’ have had to argue against the almost common-sense assumption that education is a ‘public good’. They have done so remarkably well which, to some extent, has put critics of the reforms on the back foot. The positive arguments that advocates of marketization put forward are based around the assumption that if education is not a ‘public good’ then it is a ‘commodity’, meaning that it is parents who - as both (indirect) financers of the insitution and proxy school choosers - should decide on the institution which they deem best for their children. It is believed that giving parents this power will lead to an increase in standards as educational institutions vie for their ‘custom’. Certainly on one reading of GCSE results since the introduction of marketization it would seem that the claims of advocates of marketization have some validity. However, to what extent this is a function of the continued significant state presence in education and whether an ‘authentic market’ would lead to a rise or decline in equality of opportunity continues to be debated.

References:

Ball, S.J. (1994) Education Reform (Buckingham)
Barr (1993) - cited in Tooley (1996: 55)
Gorard, S. & Taylor, C. (2002) ‘Market forces and standards in education: a preliminary consideration’ (British Journal of Sociology in Education<, vol.23, no.1)
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)
Smith & Tomlinson (1989) - quoted in Tooley (1996: 51)
Tooley, J. (1994) ‘In defence of markets in educational provision’ (in Bridges, D. & McLaughlin, T. (eds.) Educaiton and the Market Place, London)
Tooley, J. (1996) ‘Equality, equity and educational markets’ (in Education without the state, London)