Public policy failure and fiasco in education: perspectives on the British examinations crises of 2000–2002 and other episodes since 1975

Abstract

In recent years there has been a re‐appraisal within political science of the characteristics of various kinds of public policy failure. At the same time, the political significance of education has grown in most liberal democracies. The present paper examines public policy in British education since the mid‐1970s and asks: What goes wrong in policy‐making and when does manageable failure slide into full‐scale crisis? Various episodes of policy are explored and set against the theoretical framework developed by Mark Bovens and Paul t’Hart in an attempt to distinguish those policies in recent British education that have been controversial, those that have been manageable failures and those that turned into disabling fiascos.

Notes

1. Figures for the number of individual students across all age groups attempting one or more ‘full’ A levels in Britain are not published with consistency across countries or completeness. 258,126 17‐ and 18‐year‐olds attempted one or more ‘full’ A level in England in 2002 (DfES, 2003, Table 1) but the number of individuals aged 19+ in further education attempting A levels and number for all age groups in Wales and Northern Ireland have to be approximated from various statistical tables published by the respective authorities.