Education plc
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Education plc

Understanding Private Sector Participation in Public Sector Education

Stephen J. Ball

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Education plc

Understanding Private Sector Participation in Public Sector Education

Stephen J. Ball

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About This Book

Is the privatisation of state education defendable? Did the public sector ever provide a fair education for all learners?

In Education plc, Stephen Ball provides a comprehensive, analytic and empirical account of the privatisation of education. He questions the kind of future we want for education and what role privatisation and the private sector may have in that future. Using policy sociology to describe and critically analyse changes in policy, policy technologies and policy regimes, he looks at the ethical and democratic impacts of these changes and raises the following questions:

  • Is there a legitimacy for privatisation based on the convergence of interests between business and the 'third way' state?
  • Is the extent and value of private participation in public education misunderstood?
  • How is the selling of private company services linked to the remodelling of schools?
  • Why have the technical and political issues of privatisation been considered but ethical issues almost totally neglected?
  • What is happening here, beyond mere technical changes in the form of public service delivery?
  • Is education policy being spoken by new voices?

Drawing upon extensive documentary research and interviews with senior executives from the leading 'education services industry' companies, the author challenges preconceptions about privatisation. He concludes that blanket defence of the public sector as it was, over and against the inroads of privatisation, is untenable, and that there is no going back to a past in which the public sector as a whole worked well and worked fairly in the interests of all learners, because there was no such past.

This book breaks new ground and builds on Stephen Ball's previous work on education policy. It should appeal to those researching and studying in the fields of social policy, policy analysis, sociology of education, education research and social economics.

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Publisher
Routledge
Year
2007
ISBN
9781134148998
Edition
1

1 A 'policy sociology' introduction to privatisation(s)

Tools, meanings and positions
This book builds upon and extends my long-standing interest in the contemporary history of education policy. It uses the method of ‘policy sociology’ (Ozga 1987; Ball 1994) to describe and critically analyse changes in policy, policy technologies and policy regimes in the UK,1 and some of the ethical and democratic impacts of these changes, although the purpose here is to understand rather than rush to judgement. As in my previous work theoretically and conceptually the book is pragmatic and eclectic. As such my examination of privatisation(s) involves the use of a variety of analytic tools to understand, interpret and begin to explain the phenomenon.2 These tools are of three sorts and are employed self-consciously and tentatively to provide a methodological framework which is both ontologically flexible and epistemologically pluralist (Sibeon 2004) and a set of analytic concepts which are potent and malleable. They are respectively discursive,3 structural and interpretive and they enable me to explore the complex interactions of social relations, economics and discourses without assuming the necessary dominance of any of these.

Discourse

Discourses are fallible but influential particularly in providing possibilities of political thought and thus policy ‘but the extent to which they produce what they name is a matter for empirical research’ (Sayer 2005: 76). They are also rooted within material contexts and networks of social interaction. Through narratives of plausibility, including the shared personal narratives ‘of significant classes, strata, social categories or groups that have been affected by the development of the post-war economic and political order’ (Jessop 2002: 93), policies accumulate credibility and legitimacy. These narratives offer language and practices in terms of which the public sector is being reformed. They are fundamental to the production of an obviousness, a common sense, a ‘banality’ (Rosamond 2002) and often an inevitability of reform, of a particular sort. “There is no alternative to reform. No one should be allowed to veto progress . . .” (Rod Aldridge of Capita4 and Chairman of the CBI Public Services Strategy Board). They constitute what Angela Eagle calls a ‘default model for any reform’ (2003: 13) and a kind of reform readiness, or a ‘systematicity’ (Mills 1997: 17)5 and a ‘solidity and normality which is difficult to think outside of . . .’ (p. 54). Voices on the ‘outside’ of normal find it difficult to be heard. The discourses of reform have distinctive generative effects but these effects are not determinate nor simply predictable and neither do they work independently from other extra-discursive mechanisms. They provide authoritative readings of prevailing economic and political conditions and problems (see below on globalisation) and mediate and render as ‘sensible’ the ‘appropriate’ solutions.
The prevailing discourse of education and public sector reform generates, as discourses do, subject positions, social relations and opportunities within policy. New kinds of actors, social interactions and institutions are produced (see Chapters 4 and 5). Specifically, the meaning, force and effect of this discourse are framed by an over-bearing, economic and political context of international competitiveness. “The purpose of our social model should be to enhance our ability to compete, to help our people cope with globalisation” (Prime Minister Tony Blair’s speech to EU Parliament, 26 June 2005). The key ideas of these reform narratives are ‘scaffolded’ by and ‘sedimented into institutions and operative networks’ (Robertson 2006: 12) – they circulate and gain credibility and impetus through such networks. ‘Those discourses which are commented upon by others are the discourses we consider to have validity and worth’ (Mills 1997: 67). These are new ways of talking about (“personalised learning”, “intelligent accountability”, “leadership capacity building”, “operational imperative”, “activity streams”) and realising education processes and relationships. They are spoken and authorised by a variety of types of (new) actors speaking from a variety of (new and newly) relevant sites and positions which map out possible uses of statements within the discourse. These statements are made up out of fragments – slogans, recipes, incantations and self-evidences (see Chapters 2 and 6). The recitations and rhetorics involved here are part of the process of building support for state projects and establishing hegemonic visions. As Fairclough (2000: 157) puts it, ‘much of the action of government is language’. These statements are painstakingly reiterated but also constantly elaborated and inflected (retrofitted) and this does not necessarily help to produce a clear and coherent vision of the future to which they point. What can count as part of the discourse is limited but is also diverse; the statements and fragments do not make a coherent joined-up whole. They do not have their effects by virtue of their inherent logic. Discourses often maintain their credibility through their repetition, substantive simplicity (see the discussion of Jessop later in this chapter) and rhetorical sophistication, for example in this case what Fairclough (2000: 10) calls ‘the denial of expectations’ which is central to the language of New Labour.
As indicated already, the naturalness of these discourses of reform arises in good part from what has been excluded from them and by them and rendered unsayable. Exclusion is indeed one of the most important aspects of discursive production. Nonetheless, discourses exist over and against these exclusions, they are always ‘in dialogue and in conflict with other positions’ (Mills 1997: 14) and accordingly the discourse of reform strategically appropriates from other sources in relation to its contrary objectives – trust, creativity and social capital are perhaps examples.6 This is achieved in part by bringing together ‘impossible alternatives’ (Fairclough 2000) (see Chapter 7). This can very effectively undermine the possibilities of speaking ‘otherwise’ or in opposition to reform discourses. Despite their bricolage form, the discourses of contemporary reform have an agonistic dependency, even if this often rests upon a set of ‘false dilemmas’, that is they rest heavily for their legitimation on a particular ‘discourse of derision’ (Kenway 1990), one which pathologises the welfare tradition of public sector provision, which generates in turn what Torrance (2004: 3) calls a ‘discourse of distrust’. As we shall see later there is a confusing interplay of trust/distrust inside the discourse and mechanics of public sector reform. A great deal of rhetorical effort and discursive work are expended on ensuring that the public sector is portrayed as ineffective, unresponsive, sloppy, risk-averse and innovation-resistant (except when it is not). Such portrayals also work to exclude or devalue particular voices, which thence have difficulty in inserting themselves into a discourse by virtue of the way in which they are spoken of by it (see Box 1.1).7 But there is a contrary but concomitant celebration of public sector ‘heroes’ of reform and of new kinds of public sector ‘excellence’. These are part of a new public sector, set over and against the old.
The discourse of ‘the private’, and ‘the market’, is examined in the next chapter.

The competition state

The second set of tools on which I draw are from Jessop’s (1997, 1998a, 1998b, 2001, 2002, 2004) particular combination of economic geography and political sociology and his analyses of the capitalist state and state intervention, specifically the co-evolution of the economic and political aspects of what he calls the Keynsian National Welfare State (KNWS) and its ‘potential replacement’ by what he calls the Schumpeterian Workfare State (SWS) or ‘competition state’ (a term also used by Cerny 1990: 220–31).8 The competition state ‘aims to secure economic growth within its borders and/or to secure competitive advantages for capitals based in its borders’ (Jessop 2002: 96) by promoting the economic and extra-economic conditions necessary for competitive success. In this account the conditions addressed are those produced within the education system. This is not an argument based on any kind of simple economic determinism but rather an account of ‘structural coupling’, a mutual conditioning and accommodation between accumulation and regulation: ‘emerging modes of regulation themselves play a key role in constituting the eventual objects of regulation’ (Jessop 2002: 134). In effect, Jessop’s argument is that the changes that have taken place over the last 25 years in the
Box 1.1 Privileging the private
Allyson Pollack describes a meeting with Gordon Brown at which she questioned important aspects of PFI policy and notes that ‘his response was simply to declare repeatedly that the public sector is bad at management, and that only the private sector is efficient and can manage services well’ (Pollack 2004: 3).
The era of state-only funding is over . . . we must remember that no public service model has ever delivered high quality services for every child.
(DfES source quoted by J. Sutcliffe, TES, 13 April 2001, p. 20)
Today David Crossley, headhunted by 3Es from a private international school in Brunei to be the new principal of King’s College, ranges through his newly refurbished buildings, talking enthusiastically about a new ethos and innovative ways of teaching. Why does he think bringing in a private company was necessary at King’s College? Education has suffered from a conservatism and command and control structure which has stifled innovation, he argues, but “it doesn’t have to be private, that’s a red herring. It’s the quality of ideas and some money to implement them.”
(Felicity Lawrence, EducationGuardian.co.uk, 24 July 2001)
Mr Neil McIntosh of CfBT Education Services told us that it was not possible to define specific qualities which private companies can bring to education, but that the “variety and competition” which private companies did bring helped to counter the tendency of monopoly providers to “atrophy over time”.
(House of Commons Select Committee on Education and Employment, Seventh Report, 2000, para. 14)
regime of capital accumulation have made the KNWS increasingly redundant and indeed obstructive, undermining of the conditions of accumulation. The relationships between the emerging accumulation regime (post-Fordism) and the institutional ensemble of the mode of regulation became increasingly incoherent. The KNWS became subject to mounting crises, in and of itself, that is both structurally and subjectively, which could no longer be managed or deferred. This was not as a result of some kind of disembedded economic logic, but rather a conjunction of crises, financial, economic, social and political – inflation, taxation costs, ungovernability, unemployment, demographic change, inequality, rigidity, changing national identities, family instability, movements of capital, ecological problems, etc., etc. – occurring at various ‘moments’ across the system. The form of the state/economy relationship, the settlement as it is sometimes termed or the ‘spatio-temporal fix’ as Jessop calls it, became untenable and a hindrance to international competitiveness. It produced a condition Cerny (1990: 221) calls the ‘overloaded state’ – trying ineffectively to manage a ‘lumbering’ command economy creating ‘rigidities which prevented private capital from playing its proper role in its own sphere’ (p. 221). The KNWS has as a result become steadily de-legitimated and subject to systematic but not total dismantling and is in the process of being replaced or in part over-laid by the SWS, the logic and workings of which constitute a new ‘social fix’. The new SWS, the new settlement, did not come into existence once and for all at some particular point in time, nor is it a stable or comprehensive settlement. Initial optimistic reformism was replaced by radical transformation which is itself always limited by the political reach of regulation.9 The extent to which crises are solved or solutions attempted within the framework of an existing regime varies between nations. Therefore much of the generality of what is said here has a degree of specific relevance to England but a general relevance to many other national settings. England holds a particular position as a political laboratory of political transformation, first under Thatcher and then under Blair, which exports policy solutions across the globe (see Chapter 3).
The form of the SWS has not developed in a mechanical fashion but rather has crystallised out of the responses to and management of crisis tendencies and the promotion of ‘economic and extra-economic conditions deemed appropriate to the emerging post-Fordist accumulation regime’ (Jessop 2002: 95) and its new ‘techno-economic paradigms’ the informational, or digital or knowledge, economy (see Chapter 7). One of the aspects of the SWS, which is very relevant to the more specific analysis to come, is a shift from the state as a decommodifying agent to the ‘re-emergence of the state as a commodifying agent’ (Cerny 1990: 230), that is a re-positioning of the state as commissioner and monitor of public services, and broker of social and economic innovations, rather than deliverer or even owner and funder. The new institutional architecture of the SWS is still emerging from ‘fumblings’ and ‘muddling through’ and is changing by trial and error, mediated by ‘discursive struggles over the nature and significance of the crisis’ (Jessop 2002: 92) and the inadequacies of neo-liberalism as an initial response (see Chapter 2). It is within parts of this new ‘competition state’ and its re-scaling and re-articulation that this research is set and the ‘fumblings’ and qualities of trial and error involved in ‘reform’ of state education will become apparent ‘up close’. Indeed, education is itself now in almost permanent ‘crisis’ as it has taken centre stage in the complex relations between the state and the ‘imagined economy’ – a knowledge economy, an economy much simpler than the real one.
I aim to take education policy as an analytical case of state re-articulation and re-scaling which might purposefully be explored using Jessop’s account of the characteristics of the SWS. Indeed he also offers a brief account of education policy (Jessop 2002: 162–8) and the discursive resolution of ‘the crisis in education . . . through a growing hegemony of accounts that cast educational reform in terms of economic imperatives’ (p. 163) within which ‘learning is the key to prosperity’ (DfEE 1998). However, I intend to deploy, elaborate and adjust his framework, where necessary, specifically in relation to the privatisation of education as one particular response to crisis. This will not, hopefully, be a simplistic process of just fitting the case into the framework but rather its use as a source of enriching insights: an interplay of exploration and modification between data and concepts.
In Jessop’s analysis the building of the ‘competition state’ is a ‘political response to the challenges and opportunities’ which arise from the decomposition of Fordism and the ‘economic and extra economic’ (2002: 124) tendencies of ‘globalisations’.10 He sees globalisation(s) not as ‘being a unitary causal mechanism’ but rather ‘as the complex emergent product of many different forces operating on many scales’ (2002: 114). Globalisation is a heterogeneous process. It has economic, cultural and political dimensions and is made up of erratic but increasingly speedy flows of capital, goods, services, labour and ideas (including policy ideas – Ball 1998) which all contribute to an increasing synchronicity of demands, the weakening of traditional structures of meaning, and increasing but varying degrees of difficulty for nation states in the management of their economies. The term is used and the processes it refers to take place both in a transitive sense, something which is made to happen, and in an intransitive sense as something that happens (Lewin 1997). It is not just ‘an “out there” phenomenon. It refers not only to the emergence of large scale world systems, but to transformations in the very texture of everyday life’ (Giddens 1996: 367–8). However, ‘to a large extent, globalization represents the triumph of the economy over politics and culture’ (Kellner 2000: 307). For Western developed economies, globalisation is a threat to traditional forms of production and accumulation and the opportunity for new forms. While in some ways less nuanced, Leys (2001: 2) presents a case very similar to Jessop, that profound change in the structure and role of the state ‘flows from a new political dynamic resulting from economic globalisation. It is not that the state has become impotent, but that it is constrained to use its power to advance the process of commodification’ and ‘from now on society would be increasingly shaped in ways that served the needs of capital accumulation’ (p. 80). To quote Tony Blair again: “Of course we need a social Europe. But it must be a social Europe that works” (speech to the EU Parliament, 25 June 2005).
The political responses to all of this involve new forms of state relations, new institutions and levels of activity, new actors and agents of policy intervention, new policy narratives and the development of new forms of governance. To reiterate, this is not a single, conscious, explicit project, but is a set of trends which involve searches, discoveries, borrowing, and ‘struggles to mobilise support behind alternative accumulation strategies’ (Jessop 2002: 124), which are critically mediated through new discourses and which are also specific and path-dependent within particular political, cultural and accumulation histories. Within New Labour this involves a move away from Fabian planning modes of policy to the deployment of projects, initiatives and resources targeting and policy experiments from a variety of sources. These constitute a ‘tendential emergence’ (Jessop 2002: 124) on different scales – local, city, regional, national – of new forms of entrepreneurialism which are intended to promote structural or systemic competitiveness (see Chapters 6 and 7). Competition states typically have a ‘self-image as being proactive in promoting the competitiveness of their economic spaces’ (Jessop 2002: 124), always though in relation to an economy, the subject of policy, that they can control or influence rather than that they cannot. Indeed, ‘National competitiveness has increasingly become a central preoccupation of governance strategies throughout the world’ (Watson and Hay 2003: 299). ‘So what is the agenda that we are carrying through?. . . It is to build on the platform of economic stability, the modern knowledge econ...

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