Education, neoliberalism and the consumer citizen: after the golden age of egalitarian reform

Abstract

In this paper I attempt to explore the implications for education policy arising from aspects of Third Way political thought and its troubled relation to neoliberalism. In particular, the implications for equality arising from Third Way reforms to secondary education are considered. The limits of contestation that mark out the centre ground of UK politics have become increasingly consolidated around neoliberal ideas and principles. I briefly outline a ‘golden age’ of egalitarian reform and its displacement by the emergence of neoliberalism. Neoliberal restructuring is implicated in the emergence of the market state, the establishment of the relation of the individual to the state as one of consumer citizen, the growth of individualism, and a likely increase in competition to fend off downward social mobility. The paper concludes that the future compass for reforms aimed at reducing educational inequality now looks increasingly restricted and narrowed.

Keywords:

• Education policy
• Neoliberalism
• New Labour

Notes

1. Cyril Lodowic Burt (1883–1971) was an influential educational psychologist belonging to the London School of Differential Psychology. Burt was posthumously accused of scientific fraud, see Stephen Jay Gould's the Mismeasure of man (1981).

2. Charles Anthony Raven Crosland (1918–1977) was a Labour Member of Parliament and socialist intellectual in the revisionist tradition (Sassoon, 1997). Crosland was a member of the Fabian Society, one of the authors of the New Fabian essays (his most influential work was The future of socialism, Crosland, 1956). He was a strong supporter of comprehensive schools; and his wife in her biography controversially quoted him as saying, ‘If it's the last thing I do, I'm going to destroy every fucking grammar school in England and Wales and Northern Ireland’ (Crosland, 1982)

3. In one of life's little coincidences I wrote this section of the paper on the day the death of Milton Friedman was announced (16 November 2006). The US economist died at the age of 94 in San Francisco. The phrase ‘there's no such thing as a free lunch’, was typical of Friedman's promotion of the tenets of liberal political economy. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Economics in 1976. He had traveled to Chile in 1975 and met with Pinochet, the junta was being advised by members of the Chicago school, the Chilean episode was for many an indelible stain on his reputation.

4. Antony Fisher (1915–1988) took to heart the advice of Friedrich von Hayek in what was to become his life's work. Over the course of his lifetime, after establishing the Institute of Economic Affairs in 1955, Fisher went on to help establish up to 150 other think‐tanks. Included in this number are the Atlas Economic Research Foundation and such libertarian think‐tanks as: Fraser Institute, Manhattan Institute, Pacific Research Institute, National Centre for Policy Analysis and the Adam Smith Institute.

5. The Foundation for Economic Education was the first modern think‐tank established in the US specifically to promote and disseminate free‐market and libertarian ideas. To this day it continues to promote neoliberal ideas. (See www.fee.org/tradition.)

6. The Adam Smith Institute is a free market think tank founded by Madsen Pirie and Eamonn Butler in 1977 with the assistance of Antony Fisher of the Institute of Economic Affairs. Madsen Pirie, Eamonn Butler and Stuart Butler were students at the University of St Andrews, Scotland and the connection with St Andrew's is an important link to the IEA and a college of New Right Conservative MPs including Michael Forsyth, Christopher Cope, Robert Jones and Michael Fallon members of the No Turning Back Group of Conservative MPs. The Adam Smith Institute operates from a commitment to classical liberal principles and public choice theory; it is distinguished by a focus on policy implementation and the generation and promotion of market solutions and public policy options.

The Centre for Policy Studies (CPS) is a neoliberal think‐tank. It was set up following the 1974 election defeat by Margaret Thatcher, the Tory grandee Keith Joseph and Alfred Sherman (an adviser to Margaret Thatcher, a writer and political analyst). Joseph became a convert to Friedman's theory of monetarism and was instrumental in persuading Thatcher of its importance. The CPS sought to influence the future direction of Conservative Party policy inspired by the German social market philosophy.

The Social Affairs Unit (SAU) is a right of centre think tank started with support from the Institute of Economic Affairs. The founding director was Digby Anderson, a writer and editor of several conservative American and British journals. Initially the Unit concentrated on promoting critical evaluations and alternative ideas to the welfare state. Latterly the SAU is notable for its emphasis on values, the moral order and their relation to a stable society that supports freedom and a classical liberal economic order. It has drawn inspiration from American neoconservatism, notably the critique by Kristol and other neoconservatives of Johnston's Great Society programme, and the role of the ‘New Class’ and their position in welfare statism.

7. The new vocationalism is a descriptive term that emerged in the sociology of education literature in the UK during the 1980s to describe the emergence of a shift in education policy towards the needs of industry and employment. I make use of the term the new knowledge vocationalism to express both the continuity of the economic and vocational imperative over this period and to attempt to capture the intensification of this trajectory in response to the analysis of new times in New Labour's claim's to power; its developmentalism and attraction to endogenous growth theory; and its management of the state toward global economic competition.

8. Under new legislation schools in England can become trusts, with one or more schools entering a partnership with an outside body to form a trust. Trusts would bring a new ethos to schools, as well as controlling admissions, staffing, and assets. This reform has exposed divisions within New Labour over public sector reform. Reformers around Blair claim that this will stimulate innovation, energize management, and engender a positive, can‐do ethos in state schools. Critics within the Labour Party, including Lord Kinnock, have pointed to the danger of a two tier system and the perpetuation of social and education differences.

9. New City Academies:

 • www.standards.dfes.gov.uk/academies/what_are_academies/?version = 1.

 • Excellence in Cities: www.standards.dfes.gov.uk/sie/eic/.

 • Out of School Hours Learning: www.standards.dfes.gov.uk/studysupport/

 • Truancy: www.dfes.gov.uk/schoolattendance/truancysweeps/index.cfm

 • Mentoring: www.standards.dfes.gov.uk/learningmentors/

 • Extended Schools: www.surestart.gov.uk/publications/?Document = 1462

 • Government policy in Scotland has a clear focus on education as part of policy response to social exclusion. See: www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/People/Social‐Inclusion/17415/opportunity. iddell, S. & L. Tett (2004) New community schools and inter‐agency working: assessing the effectiveness of social justice initiatives, London Review of Education, 2(3), 219–228.

10. See: www.dfes.gov.uk/rsgateway/DB/STA/t000657/SocialMobility26Apr06.pdf.