Beyond Every Child Matters

Neoliberal Education and Social Policy in the new era

Catherine Simon

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781138918979
• eBook ISBN: 9781317420224
• Topic: Pedagogía
• Subtopic: Educación general

The United Kingdom's Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition government 2010–15 was responsible for some of the most radical changes to education policy for decades. Beyond Every Child Matters provides a critical overview of developments in education and social welfare policy in the years following the 2010 general election. It explores the conceptual background of a 'Big Society' used to frame Coalition policy and shows how the underlying spectre of neoliberalism both creates issues for policy attention and undermines ensuing policy solutions.

This book charts those changes which have impacted upon education and schooling in England and Wales and is divided into two parts. Part I analyses Conservative philosophical thought and policy discussions that underpin the social, welfare and education policies introduced under the Conservative-led coalition government of 2010–15 and the subsequent Conservative administration since 2015. Part II looks at these policies in detail and concludes with a discussion of possible alternative policy approaches.

Set against a backdrop of unprecedented economic crisis and austerity, Beyond Every Child Matters will be of interest to students of education and welfare policy, academics and researchers.

PART I

1

From no society to Big Society

Reinventing Conservatism

This chapter considers the political origins of public service reforms following the creation of the Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition in 2010 and the consequent limits and possibilities these presented to education, children’s services and the pursuit of social democracy. New Labour governments (1997–2010) had couched public service reform, initially at least, in terms of the Third Way; in other words, as an alternative to both social democracy and neoliberalism. David Cameron, leader of the coalition government, however, promoted what he named a ‘compassionate Conservatism’ under the banner of the ‘Big Society’, to be achieved not through ‘some slick re-branding exercise [but through] fundamental change [so that] we look, feel, think and behave like a completely new organisation’ (Cameron, 2005).

Indeed, the Conservative Party had spent a humiliating and unprecedented 13 years in opposition following their landslide defeat in the general election of 1997. Perceived as the ‘nasty party’ (May, 2002), they found themselves to be apparently out of touch with the needs and aspirations of ordinary people, evidenced in Lord Ashcroft’s (2005) report into public opinion at the time of the 2005 general election. Ashcroft’s findings suggested that the electorate considered the Conservatives ‘less likely to care about ordinary people’s problems, share the values of voters or deliver what they promised’. Moreover, ‘the party was out of touch, had failed to learn from its mistakes, cared more for the well-off than the have-nots and did not stand for opportunity for all’ (ibid.: 3). It fell to David Cameron, elected as party leader in that same year, to reconnect the Conservative party with its lost voters. This was to demand, for the party at large, wholesale ideological change rather than mere organisational or presentational adjustments (Lee, 2009: 6) to disassociate the new model conservatism from that of its recent past. This more compassionate conservatism was to draw a line under the negative fallout from Margaret Thatcher’s contention that ‘there is no such thing as society’ (Keay, 1987), the poll tax riots of 1990 and the ‘cash for questions’ furore of 1994 (Davis, 2010) and to show greater concern for the poor and disadvantaged. By the 2015 general election, a full 10 years after promoting ‘compassionate Conservatism’ and Big Society ideals, David Cameron was to present his party as the ‘real party of working people’ (Cameron, 2015) in a further attempt to dispel the image of the Conservatives being the ‘party of the rich’ (Dathan, 2015). As much a message for Conservative Party members as for potential new voters, rebranding was to take time. But back in 2005, when David Cameron was fighting the Conservative leadership election, the narrative had been a simple one: Britain was broken and needed mending.

Political ideology

To do this required a new form of conservatism that acted as an agent of social responsibility. Indeed, the Conservative Manifesto of 2010 called for

a society with much higher levels of personal, professional, civic and corporate responsibility; a society where people come together to solve problems and improve life for themselves and their communities; a society where the leading force for progress is social responsibility, not state control.

(Conservative Party Manifesto, 2010)

Commissioned by David Cameron while in opposition, Breakdown Britain (Social Justice Policy Group, 2006) reported on the nature and extent of Britain’s acute social problems, their causes and how best to address them. Central to its argument was an understanding of there being five ‘pathways to poverty’: family breakdown, educational failure, economic dependence, indebtedness and addictions (ibid.: 13). Furthermore, the cost of welfare had risen ‘inexorably’ even ‘at a time of rising employment and economic stability’ (ibid.: 13). Representing, then, the world’s fourth largest economy, such growing demands in Britain on the nation’s welfare state must, it was assumed, point to fraudulent claimants and reluctance by successive governments to stem the tide of demand for particular benefits. The preferred model for repair, therefore, was to look to the welfare society rather than the welfare state, and particularly the use of third-sector organisations, those charitable and voluntary bodies that demonstrate ‘independence, enthusiasm, innovation, commitment and diversity’ (ibid.: 20).

The welfare society is that which delivers welfare beyond the state. At the heart of the welfare society is the family. I think of a wife caring for a sick husband, a son caring for an ageing mother, or even an extended family rallying round to help a young relation tackle their drug addiction. The welfare society remains the largest deliverer of care in Britain today, dwarfing the state and without which the state would be overwhelmed … An integral and vital part of the welfare society is the voluntary and community sector which so often provides a form of extended family to those who have none and are vulnerable as a consequence … Yet the welfare society has been breaking down on the margins, and the social fabric of many communities is being stripped away.

(ibid.: 14)

In response, therefore, the ‘Big Society’ was to stand as the antidote to big government, empowering communities to construct services tailored to their own needs through the mechanisms of decentralisation and localism. The strong arm of government and bureaucracy had become too overbearing. Thus, in contrast to New Labour’s targeted and interventionist agenda that used children and the family as the rationale for, and means of, social policy reform (Simon and Ward, 2010), the Big Society looked to strengthen and renew civic institutions such as the family, church and charitable organisations to be able to mediate between the needs of individuals and the state that could provide for them. In doing so, the Big Society would bring together a number of recognisable strands of political and philosophical thought from a variety of contemporary and traditional sources to construct what it considered to be a totally ‘new’ model of state governance.

Indeed, what we see in the construction of the Big Society narrative is the drawing together of Conservative ideologies that spanned the decades: notions of community, freedom and fairness. Certainly, this approach is not new; rather, it is fundamental to the very process of policy construction: ‘Political theory and political practice are inseparably linked. Any balanced and persuasive account of political life must therefore acknowledge the constant interplay between ideas and ideologies on the one hand, and historical and social forces on the other’ (Heywood, 2012: 3).

Thus, ideas and ideologies such as the Big Society serve several purposes. First, they structure political understanding, set goals and inspire political activism. Second, they shape the nature of political systems and, finally, they act as a form of social cement providing social groups or societies with a set of unifying values and beliefs (ibid.: 3). Arguably, the Big Society was the most significant ideological theme to have emerged from the UK Conservative Party in recent years, yet it was to face significant difficulties on all three of their intended aims.

Structuring political understanding

Phillip Blond (theologian and director of the think tank ResPublica) and Jesse Norman (Conservative member of Parliament) were among the key advocates of Cameron’s Big Society; however, between them they took very different approaches to creating a new ‘Conservative narrative’. Whereas one presented a critique of liberalism, particularly neoliberalism, the other sought to align the views of liberalism and conservatism (Kelly, 2012: 23). The difficulty here is that these look like contrasting, even contradictory, views on the aims and purposes of a Big Society, indicating from the outset inherent inconsistencies and a lack of internal coherence within the Big Society narrative. On the one hand, the market is to be welcomed; on the other hand, it is to be treated with caution. Evidence of a ‘broken Britain’, attributed to the negative effects of free-market liberalism, is blurred in the construct of an ostensibly neoliberal ideology that favours a small state, a proactive role for entrepreneurship, matched by radical reform of the education and welfare systems. While the rhetoric of the Big Society may suggest a desire to ameliorate the worst excesses of neoliberalism, the reality was that the ideals of compassionate conservatism were ‘crowded out’ (Sandel, 2012: 113) and undermined by that very same aggressive neoliberal project. The remainder of this book will demonstrate how, in continuing to support the incursion of the market into welfare services such as health, education and social care, the answers proposed by the Big Society became part of the problem it sought to address. Market solutions to market inadequacies such as empowering local communities to address poor service provision, of themselves, play into the hands of those most able to do so. A case is the flagship Free Schools policy launched by Secretary of State for Education Michael Gove in 2010 and which, it will be argued, perpetuates, rather than challenges, social inequalities.

Shaping political systems

The Big Society was meant to represent the antithesis of big government and signal a step change from the centralising effects of New Labour’s policymaking, particularly in education and social care. Yet, rather than looking radically different, in many ways David Cameron’s progressive, more compassionate brand of conservatism drew heavily on both Thatcherite and Blairite policy models similarly aimed at producing a small state with services provided by private and voluntary organisations. Localism and the Third Way approaches to modernising government and the governance of welfare provision pursued by New Labour (see Chapter 9) continued under the Conservative-led coalition post 2010. Indeed, themes such as citizen participation, consumer choice, involvement in decision making and the shaping of services or offering a greater diversity of providers can all be traced through both Conservative and Labour policies over recent decades. The Localism Act of 2011 (HMG, 2011b), for example, offered in essence a legal framework for the Big Society project in demonstrating the intentional shift from state governing to local governance. The aim of the act was to devolve greater powers to councils and neighbourhoods and give local communities more control over housing and planning decisions. There was certainly potential for greater community involvement in decision making via referenda called for by the local authority or local residents, including the election of local mayors in certain authorities, and the ability of local community and voluntary groups to challenge existing service provision. Local authorities were to receive greater flexibility in relation to social housing, local business rate relief and the protection of services and facilities threatened by closure. So, too, the Open Public Services White Paper (HMG, 2011a) demonstrated the objective of divesting the public sector of its responsibility for service provision and transferring this to other organisations in the private and third sectors.

Unifying beliefs and values

The notion of a Big Society holds within it a reconceptualisation of the relationship between state and society. For Edwards (2012: 1), it was driven by anxieties regarding neoliberal government: ‘the lack of democratic control over managerialist bureaucracies in both the public and private sectors, and the socially dissociative effects of the pursuit of free-market economics and consumer capitalism’. In trying to cohere around concepts of community, freedom and fairness, the stage was set to militate against the worst excesses of individualism and private choice. However, in Edwards’s analysis, the pitching of the Big Society to the public was ‘depthless’, even though it contained ‘substantial ideas’ (ibid.: 2). What was absent, however, was any real engagement with the role that capitalism had to play, either in the construct of the historical narratives or in the new political and economic order that was to make up the Big Society.

Capitalism

Capitalism represents an economic system in which wealth is owned by private individuals or businesses and where goods are produced for exchange, according to the dictates of the market. Capitalism emerged from the Industrial Revolution in the West, where so-called Fordist models of mass production technology became linked to rising wages and mass consumption. The increased demand for mass-produced goods engendered confident and secure working-class consumers. Rather than presenting a threat to capitalism, they became a constituent part of it, enabling the expansion of the market and profit on an unprecedented scale (Crouch, 2011: 11).

The inevitable logic of capitalism is, of course, the accumulation of wealth. This means that those who wish to begin a business enterprise of their own must seek to borrow from this accumulated wealth. It also means that within any capitalist system runs a deep seam of inequality, wholly problematic for any government wishing to espouse virtues such as compassion and social justice. There is no single model of organising capitalism, that of free-market capitalism being only one. Chang (2010: 253), for example, refers to American, Scandinavian, German and French models. The American, or Anglo-Saxon, model of capitalism is based on belief in minimal regulation and taxation. This is in sharp contrast to Nordic and Continental models such as that of Germany. The Nordic model is based on free-market capitalism but supported by a comprehensive welfare state and workers’ collective bargaining over conditions of employment and pay. This is different from the German approach, which celebrates the role of unions in industrial relations. Nor is capitalism, of itself, fixed. Foucault (1979: 70), for example, refers to the constant presence of phenomena he called ‘crises of capitalism’ in the modern world. The most recent crisis is the global crash in 2008, considered the second largest economic crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s (Chang, 2010: xiii). The response has been not to turn away from free market economics, but to continue to espouse its values.

The Co-operatives Bill (Johnson, 2012) enabled public sector workers to create...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Foreword
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• Part I
• Part II
• Afterword
• Index