From a ‘Sketchy Policy’ to a ‘Workable Scheme’: the DES and grant‐maintained schools

ABSTRACT

This paper examines how initial proposals for grant‐maintained (GM) schools were developed by the Department of Education and Science (DES) as it took them forward into legislation. Drawing on interviews conducted with officials involved in creating a statutory framework for GM schools, the paper addresses wider issues of policy generation including the extent to which civil servants influence the content of education policy. In the case of GM schools policy, this study suggests that the DES developed the original policy proposals in ways unforeseen by its early advocates. It concludes by reviewing the significance of recent changes to the policy and argues that these have to be interpreted in light of the government's ideological commitment to bring ‘market principles’ to the education service.     

Information technology in education: policy and provision in Hong Kong schools

Abstract

This article reviews the Hong Kong policy (1998) on information technology in education (ITE). Key proposals in the policy and the rationales presented for introducing new technology in schools are examined. It is suggested that initiatives presented would have been difficult to implement fully without more far-reaching changes in education policies and school practices. Now, other proposals for reform of education in Hong Kong have been released. The ways in which these recent proposals for reform support existing initiatives in ITE are identified and discussed. Available data on the implementation of ITE are also reviewed. It is suggested that while a comprehensive policy framework has now been developed, the ‘vision’ for ITE may take some time to be realised.     

The ‘McDonaldization’ of Higher Education: food for thought?

Abstract

Having completed its reform of the schools and colleges of further education, government is now set to reform higher education. At issue here is higher education in Scotland, but the analysis has wider applicability. It operationalises Ritzer's concept of ‘McDonaldization’, and the latter's dimensions of efficiency, calculability, predictability, and control (both formally bureaucratic and informally fraternising). The analysis is set in relation to the government's earlier educational reforms, particularly of further education, and argues that its plans for higher education are of a piece. All this is related to current economic and cultural change: that is, to the fiscal pressures on the welfare state, and to the emergence of post‐modern culture. In conclusion, it is argued that policy for higher education will come to express what Charles Jencks has called (in relation to architecture) ‘double‐coding’: a mix of the bureaucratic form of modernity, tempered by appeals to post‐modern culture.     

Education and school‐to‐work transitions in post‐communist Poland∗

Abstract

Unemployment in Poland rose throughout 1990, 1991, 1992 and 1993 but the proportion of school‐leavers among the unemployed peaked in 1990. Unlike in most western market economies, the best‐ educated young people in Poland did not prove the least vulnerable to unemployment. This paper uses evidence from studies of young people in Gdansk, Katowice and Suwalki to argue that one reason why young people from professional and vocational secondary schools have not borne a heavier share of Poland's unemployment since 1990 has been the flexibility and responsiveness of these schools to Poland's new labour market conditions. Since the reforms many of these schools have contracted drastically. Some have closed. But others have thrived The latter have often benefited from favourable local labour market conditions, but their success has usually been at least equally due to their own resourcefulness in introducing new courses which teach skills that are in demand, and securing various kinds of sponsorship from employers. Three reasons are offered to explain the responsiveness of education in Poland to the changing labour market conditions: general support for ‘the reforms’, the schools’ experience of making informal deals with employers under communism, and the post‐communist authorities’ willingness to force unsuccessful schools to close and to see teachers made redundant.

     

Initial teacher training students' attitudes to use of information technology and individual locus of control

ABSTRACT

In England and Wales initial teacher education (ITE) is becoming more school‐based. This study considers some implications for information technology (IT) in the primary school years (4–11). The results of a survey of primary school teaching practice placements are examined and the outcomes are related to other recent findings. The pattern which emerges is of a wide variability in teacher expertise, of outdated hardware and software still in use in a substantial proportion of classrooms and of many students – themselves lacking in IT capability – not receiving informed and effective support for their IT activities in schools. As these problems appear to be widespread and not capable of easy or rapid solution, the utility of the move to greater school‐based training is called into question at least for IT.     

John Dewey and Character Education

Abstract

Some of the character education programmes that were implemented in American public schools during the first three decades of this century are examined. The educational theory underlying these programmes is contrasted to John Dewey's ideas on moral education. Character education programmes reflected a trait‐inspired approach to morality: character was assumed to be a structure of virtues and vices. Dewey's conception of morality was broader; he held that character embraced all the purposes, desires, and habits that affect human conduct. Dewey's recommendations for moral education differed significantly from those put forward by the advocates of character education, as Dewey,’s proposals were basically proposals for school reform. Because character education programmes were aimed at developing specific virtues in students, the programmes were narrowly conceived and were unable to affect major changes in educational practice.     

Market as metaphor in central and East European higher education

Markets constitute the very centre of the post-communist reforms in the countries of Central and East Europe and the former Soviet Union. The two alternative approaches available for framing the market reform conceptually are, however, both inadequate. Those in favour of revolutionary theories fail to see the strong inertia of the academe and its desire for stability. Proponents of evolutionary theories of market reforms do not recognise qualitatively new relationships in many areas. Those eager to demonstrate the success of the market reforms as well as those presenting the success of the centralised higher education in a number of areas fail to realise the lack of legal framework for market reforms and missing political decisions on which the reforms could be based on. This article discusses the role of labour markets, markets of degrees and qualifications as well as the market of educational services as related to higher education reforms. It is proposed that downsizing the State has shifted many of its previous functions to random, often external agents. This creates a meta-level market - the market of market reforms in higher education. Through this quasi market formerly unified higher education systems and even institutions are broken into segments often ignoring each other's existence and seeking individual short term goals. As a result markets' pressure on higher education has taken extremely aggressive forms limiting access to quality higher education while the systemwide enrolment is rapidly growing through theactivities of new low calibre universities and diploma mills.     

Curriculum Reform in South Africa: a critical analysis of outcomes‐based education

Since South Africa's first national democratic elections in 1994, the Government of National Unity has issued several curriculum‐related reforms intended to democratise education and eliminate inequalities in the post‐apartheid education system. The most comprehensive of these reforms has been labelled outcomes‐based education (OBE), an approach to education which underpins the new Curriculum 2005. While the anticipated positive effects of the new curriculum have been widely heralded, there has been little criticism of these proposals given the social and educational context of South African schools. In this article the philosophical, political and implementational dilemmas of OBE are systematically analysed and assessed.

     

Mutuality Meets the Market: Analysing Changes in the Control of Quality Assurance in United Kingdom Higher Education 1992–2012

There has been a tendency in the literature to see changes in quality assurance as part of a process of increased state control. This article suggests a more nuanced approach that also takes account of the different trajectories of the pre‐ and post‐1992 sectors. It finds that whilst there have been increases in both state oversight and market coordination since 1992, mutuality (self‐regulation) remains the dominant mode of control of quality assurance in the United Kingdom. However the present government's higher education reforms, coming on top of a series of market‐based policies for structure, funding and governance going back at least to 1980, as well as a growing emphasis on students' rights as consumers through the courts, may change the picture.     

‘Tomorrow's Schools’ in New Zealand: from social democracy to market managerialism

This paper uses one national case to illustrate how diverse ideological agendas of central state agencies contest the discursive space within which major education policy reforms are developed. In Aotearoa New Zealand in 1988, ‘self‐managed’ schools were promoted ostensibly to allow parents more say in their children’s education and local school administration. The Tomorrow’s Schools reform policy texts included an existing social democratic partnership rhetoric, positioning principals as professional leaders working collaboratively with elected parent boards of trustees. However, the new ideology of ‘parental choice’ of school within a local schooling marketplace, underpinned by a chief executive or market managerial model of principalship, was later operationalised through mechanisms of ‘steerage’ from the centre. To explain this shift, we examine selected policy text pre‐cursors to the reforms and identify how contrasting forms of ‘principal’ and ‘teacher’ identity emerged within social democratic, neo‐liberal and market managerial ideologies. We further show that while radical (Treasury) market liberal arguments for labour market deregulation and consumer choice failed to gain widespread support, the State Services Commission preferred market managerialist strategies for promoting public accountability of schools (based on aggregate student achievement outcome data and centrally determined national educational priorities) were successfully embedded during the 1990s.     

Catholic and Protestant Schools,a Better Choice in the Netherlands?

Abstract

This paper focuses on the influence of the sector of education (Catholic, Protestant and public) on the success of their pupils in tertiary education and on the labour market in the Netherlands. In the United States Coleman and Hoffer (1987) could hardly find any differences between the job prospects of pupils of private and public schools, but they did find effects of Catholic secondary education on success in tertiary education. In this study, which is based on longitudinal data of a nationally representative cohort of Dutch primary school leavers in 1965, an analogous comparison is made between the success in tertiary education and the job careers of the pupils who attended Dutch Catholic, Protestant or public secondary education. Differences are found between success in tertiary education and on the labour market of those who attended Catholic, Protestant or public Dutch schools. Pupils of public schools enter the university more often than pupils of private schools and pupils of Catholic schools enter the lower valued tertiary vocational education more often than pupils of Protestant or public schools. Significant effects of school sector were only found for those job characteristics which indicate the kind of job (sector of the job, nature of the job) but not for job characteristics which indicate the level of job. Especially pupils of Protestant schools less often have jobs in the administrative‐financial sector and the medical‐social sector than pupils of non‐Protestant schools. They also less often have jobs which have an exact or social nature. These differences in success in tertiary education and on the labour market are not systematically in favour of the private Catholic and Protestant schools.     

Primary schools and network governance: A policy analysis of reception baseline assessment

Primary school reception baseline assessment was designed to produce a single ‘baseline’ data figure on the basis of which young children's progress across primary school could be measured and accounted for. This paper suggests that within the context of punitive performativity, head teachers might be considered ‘irresponsible’ if not engaging with the new accountability measure in its voluntary year. Using DfE‐accredited baseline assessment providers blurred the distinctions between not‐for‐profit social enterprises, digital policy innovation labs, edu‐business, and the state. It is argued that through a process of networked governance, these cross‐sectoral organisations successfully enticed some primary schools with the ‘moral economy’ of using baseline assessment. It is argued that baseline's simplistic reductionism allowed for the economisation of early years education assessment and for its commercialisation of comparison. This paper reports on a sample of five head teachers, taken from a much larger study that used a mixed‐methods approach involving a nationwide survey (n=1131) and in‐depth interviews with reception staff and head teachers in five geographically disparate primary schools. Baseline assessment was ‘withdrawn’ by the DfE in April 2016, quite possibly because of campaigns by early years organisations, the government's own report showing that the three separate baseline datasets were incompatible, and national research funded by the teachers’ unions, a small part of which is reported upon here.     

University–School Partnerships in English Pre-service Teacher Education: A Dialogic Inquiry into a Co-teaching Initiative

Evidence has been accumulating for some time about the impact of standards-based education reforms on schools and schooling, but there has been little research investigating the influence of these reforms on university-based initial teacher education (ITE). This article critically inquiries into the effects of these reforms on an ITE co-teaching project where a secondary English teacher in a school was seconded to work for a year as a teacher educator in an Australian university in a praxis-based partnership. Using Cavarero’s framing of ‘who’ and ‘what’ narratives, and Bakhtinian discourse theory, the authors present three autobiographical narratives exploring different perspectives on their experiences in the co-teaching partnership. The article affirms the value of school–university praxis partnerships for speaking back to standards-based reforms, but acknowledges that this speaking back involves complex relational and dialogic work in grappling with institutional and system-wide policies and practices.     

Marketized education: how regulatory failure undermined the Swedish school system

ABSTRACT

In a radical school choice reform in 1992, Sweden’s education system was opened to private competition from independent for-profit and non-profit schools funded by vouchers. Competition was expected to produce higher-quality education at lower cost, in both independent and public schools. This two-pronged study first examines to what extent the consequences of this reform deviate from the predicted results. It demonstrates increasing discrepancies between absolute test results and grades, suggesting grade inflation. Secondly, the study investigates whether the school choice reform was institutionally secured against school competition based on phenomena that are unrelated with educational quality, such as grading. It reveals that the architects of the school choice reform overemphasized the potential positive implications of market reforms and, therefore, did not deem it necessary to establish appropriate rules and institutions for school competition. Instead, grading and curriculum reforms had unintended consequences such as grade inflation and similar forms of school competition in dimensions other than school quality. The analysis of how the objective of raising the quality in Sweden’s schools through competition and choice was inadvertently undermined contains practical lessons for policymakers with regard to the use of privatization and co-production both in schools and in other fields.     

Special education in Macedonia

ABSTRACT

This paper provides an overview of educational opportunities currently available for young people with disabilities in the (former Yugoslav) Republic of Macedonia. Information about Vygotsky's theory of defectology is presented, and its influence on the current service delivery system for persons with disabilities is described. Since independence in 1991, a series of reforms, some initiated by the signing of international declarations, have been introduced into mainstream and special education. The challenges posed by these reforms are discussed in the context of the need for East‐West partnerships based on mutual understanding and respect     

Changing the culture: The governance of the Australian pre-millennial university

Australian universities have undergone considerable reform in the past decade. What is seen as the 'unkindest cut of all' has been a more conservative federal government's substantial economic cut-backs in higher education from 1996 onwards. They have precipitated profound changes in its culture as the university becomes privatised, marketised, globalised and increasingly student-driven. In these shifts, the deregulated higher education sector is operating out of a 'busnocratic' rationality where choice and positional advantage are integral to market logic. This paper explores how universities are responding rapidly to fiscal stringency through the adoption of tactics and strategies which appropriate the operation of business for the governance of university culture     

Making connections: a conference approach to developing transformative environmental and sustainability education within initial teacher education

Abstract

Children today face significant challenges in response to living in a globalised world and the predicted environmental threats to the planet. However, implementing environmental and sustainability education (ESE) within schools can be complex and is often ignored within initial teacher education (ITE). In response, this project aimed to evaluate pedagogies for developing transformative learning for ESE within the context of university-based ITE. We ran a conference for trainee teachers informed by critical, participatory and arts-based pedagogic approaches. Alongside this, we undertook an interpretive case study, collecting data through questionnaires, focus groups and in-conference spoken reflection. Findings suggest trainee teachers gained a more nuanced understanding of the value and nature of ESE, as well as more affective and informed engagement with it, across the conference. Implications for ESE within ITE focus around the potential of pedagogies which provide affective experiences, in particular participatory and arts-based pedagogical approaches, for inspiring and empowering trainee teachers to enter into schools and develop their own ESE practice as classroom teachers.     

Change in Teacher Education: interpreting and experiencing new professional roles

In this paper we consider the effect of moves by the British Government to make initial teacher education (ITE) in England and Wales more school‐based (Blake, 1993). To monitor the impact of this shift towards school‐based training we conducted a fine grain study of what was happening on the ground within the one‐year Secondary School‐Based Postgraduate Certificate in Education (PGCE) at the Chichester Institute of Higher Education (ChIHE). * *At the time the research was conducted, the Institute's name was the West Sussex Institute of Higher Education, hence interviewees refer to ‘WSIHE’ and ‘West Sussex’. View all notes Data were gathered from questionnaire surveys and interviews. Findings from our regional case study indicate that while school‐based ITE programmes may offer student teachers greater insight into school life, this should not be at the expense of developing students’ analytical and theoretical understanding of education and schooling promoted within higher education‐based work.     

Developing governmentality: conduct3 and education policy

Educational reforms and legislative initiatives in Australia and internationally during the late 1980s imposed new political solutions on to the problems experienced in educational settings. This paper aims to explore the significance of education to politics, through a brief history and reference to comparative studies. While schools in western democracies have always operated within a political context, the paper argues that the radical conservatism of the 1990s makes it even more important that educators take on an assertive policy role. One possibility is identified through reference to a research‐based procedure identified as ‘pragmatic policy development’.     

Distance education for aboriginal communities in Canada: Past experience and future potential

Abstract

Past experience with an industrial, classroom‐based educational model for aboriginal students has revealed severe limitations that have resulted in secondary graduation levels far below those of the Canadian population in general. Distance education has the potential to redress many of the traditional model's inherent weaknesses, including the reduction of problems associated with cultural assimilation. Distance education also has the potential to enhance the multimedia resources of band‐controlled schools, schools that have shown good promise in raising retention and attainment rates. This article reviews the current situation pertaining to education in Canadian aboriginal communities, discusses the strengths and weaknesses of two distance education programs for aboriginals, and concludes with key guidelines for future distance education endeavors.