This paper explores the relationship between changing forms of the governance of education and the growth and uses of data in the context of England – a context that can be described as the most ‘advanced’ in Europe in terms of data production and use. The paper links the shifting relations between the central department of education (variously known between the 1980s and the time of writing as the Department of Education and Science [DES], Department for Education and Skills [DfES] and the Department for Children, Schools and Families [DCSF]), the local education authorities and the schools to the growth and development of data‐based systems of inspection and performance management, and suggests that the massive growth of data has unbalanced the relations of governing and created highly centralised system steering. Recent attempts to ‘rebalance’ steering through ‘intelligent accountability’ invoke network principles and self‐regulation through self‐evaluation, and thus give the appearance of deregulation...

Governing education through data in England: from regulation to self‐evaluation

Since this paper was conceived the Modernising Blair government has come into power in the United Kingdom and Gerhard Schroder has been elected to lead an SPD coalition in Germany. Initially it appeared that both were singing from the same hymn sheet extolling the virtues of a Third Way, as implied by their recent joint publication. However, what the Third Way means in practice has always been difficult to define. Tony Blair extols the virtue of shareholder capitalism, Schroder appears to remain wedded to a politics of social partnership. In relation to education and training the distinction between the two remains crucial if we see the Dual System as integral to a political economy based on ‘stakeholder’ values and practices. The fact is that, although the Dual System is confronted with a set of important challenges, training levels are still far superior in Germany to those of the UK. Moreover, from our research in Germany, it seems that the multinational German corporations also appear committed to the Dual System. In our view if nations are to thrive in the twenty-first century it will be through the skills and understandings of the population, what we call ‘collective intelligence’ in a book to be published soon (Brown/Lauder 2000). But the Third Way as defined by New Labour in Britain precludes such a possibility. The tolerance of extremes of wealth and poverty, flexible labour markets which ensure that profits can be made out of cheap unskilled labour, and the reduction in elfare provision which has led to the democratisation of insecurity and fear throughout much of society, cannot be the way forward.

Education, Globalization and Economic Development

The printing press was the great innovation in early modern information technology, but economists have found no macroeconomic evidence of its impact. This article exploits city-level data. Between 1500 and 1600, European cities where printing presses were established in the 1400s grew 60% faster than otherwise similar cities. Cities that adopted printing in the 1400s had no prior advantage, and the association between adoption and subsequent growth was not due to printers choosing auspicious locations. These findings are supported by regressions that exploit distance from Mainz, Germany—the birthplace of printing—as an instrument for adoption.

http://pscourses.ucsd.edu/ps200b/Dittmar%20QJE%20Economic%20Impact%20Printing.pdf

Information Technology and Economic Change: The Impact of The Printing Press

Foreword, List of tables and figures 1.Deindustrialisation, global capital and the crisis in teachers' work 2.Towards a labour process theory of teachers' work 3.The critical case study method 4.Teachers' work in a Post-Fordist Era: The case of the teacher-managers of Gallipoli High School 5.Teachers' work-stories account of professionalism and intensification: The case of Appleton College 6.Towards a revitalisation of a critical theory of teachers' work 7.Struggling with 'global effects': teachers as pedagogical-political workers, References

Teachers' Work in a Globalizing Economy

Education, globalisation and economic development

Schooling in Western Europe

This article uses social movement theory to analyse campaigns against a new type of government-sponsored school – the Academy – in four areas of England. It seeks to identify the social composition of anti-Academy campaigns, to track their encounters with proponents of the new schools and to describe the characteristic forms of their campaigning strategies. In doing so, the article aims to help place research into educational opposition and contestation closer to the centre of researchers’ agendas.

Researching resistance: campaigns against academies in england

This article discusses some recent attempts to develop an economic case that can justify proposals for curricular and institutional reform in education of a radical kind. It investigates the claim, which underpins current debates around a Labour Party alternative to Conservative education policy, that a new phase of development, often referred to as ‘post‐Fordism’, of the dominant economies of the western world provides the basis, and the necessity, for a new system of education which would realise a programme of egalitarian and democratic reform.

Educational progress and economic change: notes on some recent proposals

No country for the young : education from New Labour to the coalition

We write in this book about the remaking of schooling in Western Europe, and the policy orthodoxy — promoted by supranational organisations, shared across frontiers — that is so powerful an influence upon it. We draw much from others who have worked in this field before us — from theorists who have analysed the scalar shift in policymaking from national to supranational level; from sociologists who have traced both the classic patterns of schooling’s regulation and their new forms; and from those who have delineated the repertoire and discursive nuances of the new world order in education.1 To this now-abundant literature, we bring something of our own. Our particular interest is in the contestation that attends supranational policy orthodoxy — how its arrival within the major countries of Western Europe has been the occasion for widespread criticism, discontent and mobilisation. This terrain, on which are fought out disputes central to the ways in which Europe’s present is understood and its future imagined, has not been so well explored by researchers, even when their sympathies have been engaged by those who challenge the new order.

Richard Hatcher

Papers

Schooling in Western Europe

Researching resistance: campaigns against academies in england

Educational progress and economic change: notes on some recent proposals

No country for the young : education from New Labour to the coalition

An Emerging Order