The market alternative in education is gaining ground in policy‐making circles on both sides of the Atlantic. Parental choice and school competition are seen as ways of achieving reform and raising standards while at the same time reducing State intervention into education planning. This paper interrogates the arguments made for markets and against public monopoly schooling; and it is argued that on both counts the claims of advocates are partial and flawed. The failure to address the bases and effects of inequalities of the market are given particular attention. It is argued that markets in education provide the possibility for the pursuit of class advantage and generate a differentiated and stratified system of schooling. 1I am indebted to my colleagues Sharon Gewirtz, Richard Bowe and Alan Cribb, and Barry Troyna, Manfred Weiss and two referees for their contributions to the arguments in this paper. The paper also benefited from ongoing discussions with Richard Bowe and Sharon Gewirtz related to two re...

Education Markets, Choice and Social Class: the market as a class strategy in the UK and the USA

School improvement, as Ruth Jonathan (1990, p. 568) has said, is not merely a matter of 'rapid response to changing market forces through a trivialised curriculum', but a question of dealing with the deep structures of school and the habits of thought and values they embody. To manage school improvement we need to look at schools from the pupils' perspective and that means tuning in to their experiences and views and creating a new order of experience for them as active participants.

Pupil Participation and Pupil Perspective: 'carving a new order of experience'

This paper seeks to identify some of the key issues involved in the question of inclusive education. This includes conceptual, ideological and practical difficulties. Part of a realistic approach to the topic necessitates an understanding of the context in which the struggle for inclusion takes place. Particular consideration is given to the marketization of education and the challenges it presents to those seeking to remove exclusionary practices. The paper argues for an understanding that can contribute to change and thus advocates the urgent need for a theory of political agency.

Inclusive education: romantic, subversive or realistic?

This article considers notions of the market in UK higher education. It is argued that the economic market commoditises higher education as the accreditations earned at higher education institutions. The author suggests that, if this is the consequence of the market, then the notion is inadequate to represent the achievements of higher level learners. In its place the author conceives of a mechanism that is built on higher education being a conversation by respectful and involved colleagues, who seek to develop educational relationships rather than transactional deals between traders.

Higher Education as a Market: A problem or solution?

(1993). Education policy, power relations and teachers’ work. British Journal of Educational Studies: Vol. 41, No. 2, pp. 106-121.

Education policy, power relations and teachers’ work

State education service or prisoner's dilemma: The ‘hidden hand’ as source of education policy 1

(1990). State Education Service or Prisoner's Dilemma: The ‘Hidden Hand’ as Source of Education Policy1. Educational Philosophy and Theory: Vol. 22, No. 1, pp. 16-24.

State Education Service or Prisoner's Dilemma: The ‘Hidden Hand’ as Source of Education Policy1

This paper asks what sort of criteria we should use to evaluate those aspects of recent changes in educational policy and legislation which are represented as reducing bureaucratic control and devolving choice and power to the consumer. In most such policy change of the past decade - whether in education or in other areas of social life - any regrettable effects of altering our social and economic arrangements are seen as sufficiently offset by concomitant increases in personal freedom and responsibility. The larger questions that stance raises, of the adequacy of a revived classical liberalism in metaphysical and epistemological terms as well as its moral acceptability as the ground of socio-political theory, cannot be treated here. I shall merely argue that in this one instance - choice and control in education - policy change which makes appeal to individual rights entails retreat from an earlier implicit consensus commitment to social justice. For only by ignoring the fact that individuals are socially located can we suppose that the welfare ofeach may be unproblematically aggregated to result in the welfare of all. Some of the issues raised in this paper - of the justificatory status of varying orders of rights, of the 'postional' nature of many social goods in a complex but stratified society, of the relation of individual freedoms to formal and actual opportunities in a pre-existing social setting - are pertinent to the broader critique which lies beyond the scope of this paper. That critique can profitably be pursued both at the level of high theory and by examining changing social arrangements and their proffered justifications. Since education both reflects and reproduces the society in which it is embedded, as well as preparing individuals for that society, educational policy and practice is a particularly fruitful area for the study of changing social values. And an understanding of these, in turn, is crucial to a proper understanding of educational policy and practice, and hence to its amelioration. This paper therefore examines whether, in education, the primafacie benefit of more choice and power for the consumer is sufficient to

Choice and control in education: Parental rights, individual liberties and social justice

This paper suggests that liberal philosophy of education, which shares the implicit commitments of modern neutralist liberalism, also exhibits that political philosophy's theoretical inadequacies and inability to guide practice. It argues that neither theoretical perspective can redeem its claims to equally respect the demands of liberty and equity, when those claims rely only on arguments of procedural value. Consequent implications, for both educational theory and educational aims, are discussed.

Ruth Jonathan

Papers

State education service or prisoner's dilemma: The ‘hidden hand’ as source of education policy 1

State Education Service or Prisoner's Dilemma: The ‘Hidden Hand’ as Source of Education Policy1

Choice and control in education: Parental rights, individual liberties and social justice

Liberal Philosophy of Education: a paradigm under strain1

Liberalism and Education