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Role of Education: Neoliberalism and the New Right - Coggle Diagram
Role of Education: Neoliberalism and the New Right
Neoliberalism
Neoliberal ideas have influenced all governments since 1979- whether Conservative, Labour or Coalition.
The state should not provide services such as education, health and welfare. They should not dictate to individuals how to spend their own money or try to regulate a free-market economy. They should instead encourage competition, privatise state-run businesses and deregulate markets.
The value of education lies in how well it enables the country to compete in the global marketplace. This can only be achieved if schools become more like businesses, empowering parents and pupils as consumers and using competition between schools to drive up standards.
Chubb and Moe (1990)
Compared achievements of 60,000 pupils from low-income families in over 1000 state and private high schools, found that pupils from low-income families consistently do ~5% better in private than in state schools.
Call for introduction of a market system in state education that puts control in the hands of the consumers. This would allow them to shape schools to meet their own needs, improving quality and efficiency.
State-run education in the US has failed because:
it has not created equal opportunity and has failed the needs of disadvantaged pupils
inefficient as it fails to produce pupils with skills needed by the economy
private schools deliver higher quality education as they are answerable to paying consumers (parents)
To do this, they propose a system where each family gets a voucher to spend on buying education from a school of their choice. This forces schools to become more responsive to parent's wishes as the vouchers would be their main source of income. Schools would have to compete to attract customers by improving their product- just like private businesses.
New Right
Believe the state cannot meet people's needs- people are best left to meet their own needs through the free market. Thus they are in favour of the marketisation of education (creating an education market) where competition between schools and empowering consumers will create greater diversity, choice and efficiency to schools, increasing their ability to meet needs of consumers.
Similar to the Functionalist view in some ways:
both believe some people are naturally more talented than others
both favour an education system with meritocratic principles of open competition, that also serves the economy by preparing young people for work
both believe education should socialise pupils into shared values such as competition, and instil a sense of national identity
However, New Right sees the current education system as failing to achieve these goals due to the fact it is run by the state.
State education system takes a "one size fits all" approach, imposing uniformity and disregarding local needs. Local consumers who use the schools (parents, pupils employers) have no say in how schools are run= state education systems are unresponsive and inefficient.
Schools that waste money or get poor results do not have to answer to their consumers for shortcomings= lower standards of achievement for pupils, a less qualified workforce and a less prosperous economy.
Role of the State
The State imposes a framework on schools that they have to compete in. By publishing Ofsted inspection reports and league tables of school's exam results, the state gives parents information to make a more informed choice.
The state ensures that schools transmit a shared culture. By imposing a single national curriculum, it guarantees that schools socialise pupils into a single cultural heritage.
New Right still sees an importance for the state in fulfilling 2 roles:
Education should affirm the national identity e.g. curriculum should emphasise Britain's positive role in world history, teach British literature, and schools should include Christian worship as Christianity is Britain's main religion. This integrates pupils into a single set of traditions and cultural values. Thus, they oppose multicultural education.
Evaluation
Real cause of low educational standards is not state control, it is social inequality and inadequate funding of state schools.
Marxists: education does not impose a shared national culture, it imposes the culture of the dominant minority ruling class, devaluing the culture of the w/c and ethnic minorities.
Gerwitz and Ball:
competition between schools benefits the m/c who can use their cultural and economic capital to gain access to more desirable schools.