Primary schooling under New Labour: The irresolvable contradiction of excellence and enjoyment

This article aims to provide both an account and an assessment of the most significant policies adopted by New Labour on primary schooling since its victory in the election of 1997. A secondary intention is to determine what these policies reveal about New Labour and its political project. A key policy objective in New Labour’s two terms of office since 1997 has been the retention of the electoral support it received from voters who had benefited from policies pursued by the Thatcher governments.     

New Labour and teacher education: the end of an era

This paper traces the development of teacher education policy during the first two terms of the New Labour government. It argues that there is substantial evidence to support the claim that during their two terms of office, New Labour forged a policy on teacher education that was distinctively different from the Conservative administrations that preceded them. Like the Conservatives, they have seen the maintenance of a competitive market as essential for the governance of the system. But beyond that, they have significantly moved away from a concern with individual professional formation; individual professional formation has been seen as far less critical than it was, especially at the level of initial training. In the lives of young teachers, the state now provides far greater direct guidance than ever before in the definition of effective teaching, learning and assessment in both primary and secondary schools. And at more senior levels, opportunities for extended professional development are increasingly focused on and achieved through the school as an institution. Teacher education itself is no longer seen as a key site for the ‘re‐formation’ of professionalism. As a result, teacher education is no longer accorded the key political significance that it had under the Conservatives. In this sense, New Labour policies mark ‘the end of an era’.     

Race,ethnicity and education under New Labour

From 1997 the New Labour government was eager to affirm a commitment to social justice and racial equality, and initially there were moves to address some long‐standing educational grievances. But a continuation of Conservative market policies of choice and diversity in schooling and a targeting of ‘failing’ schools exacerbated school segregation and racial inequalities. Policies intended to improve the achievement of minority groups have had some success, but the higher achievements of Indian and Chinese groups have led to facile comparisons which further pathologise young people of African‐Caribbean and Pakistani origin. Failure to develop a curriculum for a multiethnic society has contributed to an increase in xenophobia and racism, and there were no educational policies to deal with increased hostility towards young Muslims. Home Office policies targeting refugees and asylum seekers have encouraged racial hostility towards their children despite amended race relations legislation.     

The Labour Party and Higher Education: The Nature of the Relationship

Higher education policy has rarely been a major concern of the Labour Party in the second half of the twentieth century. This article explores the reasons for this and analyses the ideological coalition of the Labour Party in the context of the Welfare State and the commitments to moderate social democratic reformism. Three strands in particular are explored: the dominance of vocational, technological and professional priorities in HE expansion; the influence of utilitarian thinking, broadly construed; and the various social purpose, equality perspectives of those on the Left of the Party. Alongside these strands, has been Labour's reluctance to adopt interventionist policies especially in relation to the so‐called elite Universities, and the persistent advocacy of ‘modernisation’. Finally, the article considers, within a context of the debate in general political analysis, the potential of the Labour Party within this period to achieve significant reform in the field of higher education, drawing inter alia on the work of Ralph Miliband.     

Education policy and social class in England and New Zealand: an instructive comparison

This article explores the ‘middle-class pressure thesis’, the extent to which recent education policy in England under New Labour may be shaped by the need to respond to an increasingly large and anxious middle class. It discusses why the intensification of middle-class pressure on education policy in England could be expected and outlines how New Labour's education policies can be seen as a response to that pressure. In the latter part of the article the case of New Zealand is used to ‘speak back’ to the middle-class pressure thesis in England. New Zealand highlights the potent influence of England's historic and recent class context on policy by demonstrating a setting where market policies have been embraced by policy makers but where class has played a less important role. The article suggests that although the means by which social class at the local level might act back on and help shape the direction of national education policy will be difficult to investigate, it would be a rewarding direction for future policy research related to social class.     

New Labour policy and school leadership in England: room for manoeuvre?

This paper investigates whether predictions about a greater centralization and control in educational policy‐making, made after New Labour's election to power in 1997, have been realized since that time, and particularly with respect to educational leadership. It also asks whether recent changes in New Labour policies are likely to provide greater freedom for head teachers in English schools. It does this by means of investigating evidence at global, national and school levels, and in particular draws upon recent interview research by the author with head teachers. The article suggests that whilst the architecture of central steerage and control is still very much in evidence, there are strands of greater policy flexibility, though these may be as much about empowering external sponsors as anything to do with greater professional discretion. However, the research suggests that, whatever happens, there will almost certainly be room for resistance and personal manoeuvre at the school level, which is ultimately dependent upon context and personality.     

New Labour and Higher Education: Dilemmas and Paradoxes

David Blunkett's Greenwich speech (2000) set out what have become the main themes of New Labour's engagement with higher education, themes which were elaborated in the recent White Paper ( DfES, 2003a ). This paper draws attention to the dilemmas and paradoxes which arise from the difficulties of simultaneously satisfying the objectives which were set out in the aftermath of the 2001 general election, and from the trade off solutions and policies actually identified. The most fundamental conflict is between the desire to expand the system and the costs of that expansion. The author also identifies a conflict between institutional diversity and hierarchy and between exclusionism and accessibility. The paper concludes by suggesting that exclusionism is still alive and well under the government of a party that still has ‘Labour’ in its title.     

英国工党与英国两党政治

英国工党诞生后镜意向政坛进军，取代自由党进入英国两党制轨道。二战后工党上台执政推行国有化和福利政策，取得很大成就，迫使保守党向工党政策趋同。70年代末，英国爆发经济危机，保守党经先改革，推行新自由主义政策，激活了经济。为摆脱18年在野的困境，工党进行政策革新，从而赢得1997年大选的胜利，重新上台执政，现在是工党向保守党政策趋同。     

新西兰海外留学生新政策简析

为了发展教育出口经济,也为了提升新西兰大学在国际上的地位,新西兰政府最近推出了一系列吸引海外留学生的新政策,加大了对海外留学生的资助力度,实行国际博士研究奖学金计划,下调海外留学博士生的学位费用,并特别出台了一些吸引中国留学生的新举措.     

Lifelong learning as bungy jumping: In New Zealand what goes down doesn't always come up

From 1984 until 1999, New Zealand's economic ‘reforms’ were a model for others, particularly Canadians. At the centre of this model was lifelong learning which bore little relationship to the social democratic ethos embedded in Faure Report conceptions of lifelong education. In New Zealand, lifelong learning slept in the same bed as the ‘marketization’ of education. The radical excesses of the New Zealand Experiment might have ended with the December, 1999 election of a Labour/Alliance government. This paper traces the genesis of the post-1984 brand of lifelong learning in New Zealand, identifies consequences for universities and shows how educational policy needs to go backwards and forwards at the same time.     

More policies,greater inclusion? Exploring the contradictions of New Labour inclusive education policy

The era of New Labour government has witnessed unprecedented growth in inclusive education policies. There is, however, limited evidence that policies have increased disabled children’s inclusion. This article explores reasons for this contradiction. Drawing on sociological insights, it is argued that New Labour policies on inclusive education take their cues from wider neo‐liberal constructions of social exclusion; ideas that point to the personal deficits of the excluded rather than social barriers and inequalities that systematically exclude. Increasingly narrow definitions of educational success are likely to add to this exclusion. This mirrors New Labour’s broader social inclusion agenda in emphasising ‘conditional’ inclusion and an increasingly utilitarian approach to social policy. New Labour, it is argued, needs to review the lessons of history in reducing disabled children’s educational exclusion if real progress is to be made. Warnock’s recent attack on the principle of inclusive education makes this review all the more urgent.     

Welfare Labourism versus the New Right: the struggle in New Zealand's education policy

ABSTRACT

New Zealand's radical education reforms (1987‐1990) provide a valuable case study for the examination of the politics, ideology and process of educational change. This paper examines the strategy of New Right agencies in attacking the established education settlement which embodies principles of Welfare Labourism. The crucial role of the New Zealand Treasury and of other agencies in bringing this settlement to crisis in the 1980s is analysed and discussed as is the response of the Labour Government. Many of the elements of struggle between Welfare Labourism and New Right market doctrines in education show similar features to struggles in other contexts such as the United Kingdom. However, the struggle in New Zealand makes visible and explicit the political and ideological features in a distinctive way. It also makes visible the significance of both race relations and of gender relations in the formation of education policy.     

Home,work, families and children: New labour,new directions and new dilemmas

This article considers the relationships between children, parents and the state in the context of changing global, social and family structures and policy developments, providing a case study of New Labour policies in Britain. It first considers the changing ideological discourses about families, parents, especially lone mothers, children, 'home' and 'work'. Secondly, it reviews the evidence about the changing socio-economic context and for what has been termed the fragmenting family. Thirdly, it provides an analysis of the New Labour government's approach to education, welfare and family policies, including the national child care strategy and supporting families consultation document. It sets this analysis in the context of changing political discourses and from a feminist perspective, arguing that the policies are not 'joined up' but fragmented and diverse, deriving from a variety of sources and targeted on a number of different groups. Thus it is difficult to argue that there is but one modernisation project or 'third way' being espoused by New Labour. However, the underlying theme of all the policy developments is economic and oriented to work. This involves a rebalancing of home and work and the involvement of parents, especially mothers, in work rather than education or child care. The measures taken to achieve this have been both coercive and controlling and involve new methods of surveillance and regulation through standards. Whilst New Labour has developed a new direction for families in balancing home and work, this is fragmented and diverse and covers a variety of policies from education - early childhood through to lifelong learning - and social services, to fiscal measures, to health and welfare and finally involving the Home Office in new parenting initiatives. The balancing of home and work has become the central business of government in its various and diverse activities.     

Clare Soper's hat: New Education Fellowship correspondence between Bloomsbury and New Zealand, 1938–1946

Broadening horizons beyond nations, transnational histories trace global flows connecting people and places. Historians have studied the New Education Fellowship (NEF) as a global network. Focused within the nation, research on New Zealand's involvement with NEF has emphasised how its activities before the Second World War impacted on the Labour Government's postwar policies. This paper's focus is NEF's transnational networking during the war. While previous discussions of correspondence between NEF's Headquarters and New Zealand have emphasised its New Zealand side, my focus is on its London correspondent, Clare Soper, NEF's International Secretary. Historians have studied NEF's theorists, leaders and progressive teachers, but office staff who effected its circulation of texts, objects and people have not been researched. Locating Soper in her Bloomsbury Headquarters at the hub of NEF's global web, I trace what her correspondence with two New Zealand Branch Secretaries reveals about everyday operations of NEF as a wartime educational resistance movement.     

New Labour,new leaders? Gendering transformational leadership

Transformational leadership is widely recognised as being central to the implementation of educational reform. In this paper I draw on selected educational speeches made by New Labour politicians in order to locate shifting discourses of leadership within the broader accountability framework through which the terms of the relationship between central government and head teachers have been re/configured in the United Kingdom. The gendered politics of transformation are examined, highlighting new and renewed forms of masculinity embedded within new leadership ideals. It is suggested that a gendered critique of transformational leadership offers an important contribution to critical analyses of the neo‐liberal and managerialist educational project.     

School monitoring and quality assurance in the New Zealand school system

This article reports on the New Zealand education quality assurance and school monitoring system, including its framework, and responsibilities of agencies. It first gives an outline of the education system in New Zealand, and then introduces the role of school charters and levels of schooling. To ensure the quality of schools, the methods of school self-review and external reviews of schools are used by the New Zealand government. Schools are given a list of obligations that they have to follow. Assessment policies and the school curriculum are designed to support learning. Fubuki Sakura formerly called William Leung     

New Labour and higher education

The essay does not seek to add to the scholarly literature on UK higher education, so much as to give a sympathetic account of the dilemmas confronting a progressive government of almost any political stripe and especially one that faces the constraints of New Labour. It begins paradoxically by pointing out that serious investment in higher education requires an extension of Sure Start rather than Foundation Degrees, accepts that no government can wait 16 years for its plans to come to fruition, and examines some familiar issues about funding, quality management and the nature of ‘mass’ as opposed to ‘élite’ systems of higher education. Like some recent writers (Alison Wolf and Ewart Keep and Ken Mayhew most notably), the author is sceptical of the claimed productivity benefits of an expansion of higher education and even more doubtful than they whether in the long run degree‐level qualifications will retain their value even as a positional good.     

Bicultural education policy in New Zealand

Abstract

Bicultural educational policy is part of a much broader ensemble of bicultural policies that were first developed by the Fourth Labour Government elected in 1984. These policies were an acknowledgement of, and response to, the historical injustices suffered by Māori people as a consequence of colonisation. Bicultural education policy is thought to be a means of addressing the ongoing challenge of educational underachievement of Māori students in the compulsory schooling sector. At present, the dominant discourse in New Zealand education frames the educational underachievement of Māori as a problem associated with cultural differences; however, this tends to obscure explanations that focus on socio-economic disparities. This paper shows how the dominant discourse relating to the underachievement of Māori students is established in policy and maintained through various auditing systems, and how this leaves little space for other explanations or solutions. The paper advocates a move away from an either/or approach to the problem of the educational underachievement of Māori and argues for greater critical engagement with bicultural education policy in order to open up space for conversations that address both the cultural and the socio-economic factors which may affect achievement.     

New Labour and higher education

This paper is the second part of an edited version of a Keynote Presentation delivered at the 2006 AUA Annual Conference at Queen’s University Belfast on 11 April. The first part was published in perspectives 10.3 in July 2006.

In the Presentation Sir David commented on three areas of unfinished business with which New Labour has struggled; in the first paper he considered the funding and organisation of the sector, and concluded with the question: ‘What will this mean for expansion and fairness?’; this paper concentrates on participation and social justice, and higher education and the public interest.     

University continuing education in a neoliberal landscape: developments in England and Aotearoa New Zealand

This paper explores the impact of changing higher education policies and funding on university adult and continuing education in England and Aotearoa New Zealand. It discusses some of the contextual factors contributing to sustaining continuing education in New Zealand, against the tide of developments elsewhere, and in spite of its subjection to the influence of neoliberal policies since the 1980s: an ethos of public knowledge dissemination, acknowledgement of the universities' role as ‘critic and conscience’ of society, a broad commitment to educational equality and a strategic as well as pragmatic approach. The paper describes developments in one New Zealand continuing education department as it experiences institutional and political change. The author concludes that, in spite of demonstrating considerable resilience, the structures and activities of continuing education departments in New Zealand are as fragile as they have been in England. ‘Radical hope’ is advocated as the university‐based adult educator's response in difficult times. It involves challenging the assumptions of neoliberalism, and reaffirming the political nature of adult education.