David Halpin

Bio: David Halpin is an academic researcher from University of Warwick. The author has contributed to research in topics: Education reform & Local education authority. The author has an hindex of 5, co-authored 11 publications receiving 154 citations.

Implementation research and education policy: Practice and prospects

Abstract: This paper offers a brief guide to implementation research and some of the conceptual and methodological issues it raises. In the course of reviewing investigations of the import of aspects of the 1988 Education Reform Act, it also considers the issues posed for education policy studies in a context where the ‘centre’ is connected to a dispersed and differentiated periphery.

Parents, Pupils and Grant-maintained Schools

Abstract: The 1988 Education Reform Act allows schools to ‘opt out’ of local education authority (LEA) control and become ‘grant‐maintained’ (GM). Advocates of the policy claim that ‘freeing’ schools from LEAs will enable them to become more responsive to parents and, through diversifying the education ‘market’, expand parental choice. The policy's critics, on the other hand, fear that it will contribute to a divisive system of education and ultimately diminish choice and opportunity. Five years on, it is possible to begin to evaluate some of these claims. Drawing on interview data from parents and pupils who use GM schools, as well as parents and pupils in LEA and independent schools, this paper explores the extent to which GM schools have diversified educational provision and expanded parental choice. The paper argues that there is little evidence to suggest that GM schools offer either a ‘new’ alternative or a ‘new’ educational experience. Neither do they appear to offer parents greater participation in...

Opting into State Control? Headteachers and the Paradoxes of Grant‐maintained Status

Abstract: This paper reflects on the significance of two paradoxes of opting out within which grant‐maintained (GM) school headteachers are entangled, and to which they contribute. Discussion of the first paradox focusses on the way GM status, rather than eliminating ‘producer interests’, creates a new one in the form of headteacher control which assists the policy's implementation and the realisation of other educational reforms. Examination of the second addresses the government's willingness to offer an expensive financial subsidy to GM schools when one of its aims is to demonstrate that the administrative and managerial efficiencies that accrue from opting out can improve the quality of education provision in ways that do not entail any increase in public expenditure on schools. The paper suggests that the government is happy to give preferential financial treatment to GM schools because it regards opting out as a necessary condition for increasing its control of state education. It also argues that, w...

Local Education Authorities and the Grant-Maintained Schools Policy

Abstract: In this paper David Halpin of the University of Warwick and John Fitz and Sally Power of Bristol Polytechnic report on part of their larger ESRC-funded study of the origins, implementation and immediate effects of the government's grant-maintained policy The data upon which it is based were obtained from 21 of the 25 local education authorities which up to the beginning of the academic year 1990-91 were having to come to terms with one or more opted-out schools within their administrative boundaries

New modes of control in the public service

Abstract: Controversy exists regarding whether recent changes in the organization of the public services in the UK and elsewhere constitute a paradigm shift towards a post-bureaucratic form. This article argues that in Britain three fundamental but interlocking strategies of control have been implemented over the last decade. First, there has been a pronounced shift towards the creation of operationally decentralized units with a simultaneous attempt to increase centralized control over strategy and policy. Second, the principle of competition (often attached to the development of market relations but sometimes not) has become the dominant method of co-ordinating the activities of decentralized units. Third, during the most recent period there has been a substantial development of processes of performance management and monitoring (including audits, inspections, quality assessments and reviews), again a phenomenon largely directed towards operationally decentralized units. Taken together these three strategies do not describe a simple movement from a bureaucratic to a post-bureaucratic form, rather they combine strong elements of innovation with the reassertion of a number of fundamentally bureaucratic mechanisms. This may be a peculiarly British phenomenon, certainly the excessive elements of centralization and formalization appear to depart from the ideal-type of the post-bureaucratic organization. It is argued that this‘British trajectory’can best be understood in terms of the continued relative decline of the British economy and the Conservative response to it, i.e. the drive to create a‘high output, low commitment’workforce.

Education Policy as a Practice of Power Theoretical Tools, Ethnographic Methods, Democratic Options

Abstract: This article outlines some theoretical and methodological parameters of a critical practice approach to policy. The article discusses the origins of this approach, how it can be uniquely adapted to educational analysis, and why it matters—not only for scholarly interpretation but also for the democratization of policy processes as well. Key to the exposition is the concept of appropriation as a form of creative interpretive practice necessarily engaged in by different people involved in the policy process. Another crucial distinction is made between authorized policy and unauthorized or informal policy; it is argued that when nonauthorized policy actors appropriate policy they are in effect often making new policy in situated locales and communities of practice.

Abordagem do ciclo de políticas: uma contribuição para a análise de políticas educacionais

Abstract: This paper discusses the contributions of the 'policy cycle approach' to analyze educational policies. Formulated by Stephen Ball and Richard Bowe, such approach has been applied in different contexts as a theoretical and analytical framework to examine educational policies. This paper presents the main ideas of this approach, the debate surrounding it, and its contribution to the analysis of educational policies. Based on the five contexts of the policy cycle, namely: influence, text production, practice, outcomes and the political strategy; this paper also presents a set of questions to the trajectory analysis of educational policies or programs. It argues that this approach is a useful analytical framework that allows a critical and contextualized analysis of programs and educational policies from their formulation to their implementation in the context of practice as well as the policy effects.

Teacher stress in the Low-Trust Society

Abstract: Stress is a widespread feature of work in teaching. Recent accounts of teacher emotions and cultures of teaching have noted that unsatisfactory social relationships with adults, e.g. colleagues, headteachers, parents and inspectors, elicit hostile emotions from teachers and appear to be a source of stress in teaching. This article examines why this should be the case. Some commentators have used labour process theory to argue that the intensification of work and government policies promoting managerialism in schools are the roots of the problem. This article uses qualitative data from a study of primary teacher stress to examine staff relationships in the primary school. It argues that while intensification of teachers' work is certainly involved in eroding positive staff relationships, it is also the changing trust relations in high modernity that are shaping the social relations of low-trust schooling, and impacting negatively on teachers' physical and emotional well-being and their collegial profession...