Making Sense of Education and Training Markets: Lessons From England

Abstract

Policy discussions in the United States around markets in education frequently lack an empirical base. However, for nearly twenty years reforms in England have emphasized market-like mechanisms to spur competition among providers and choices among consumers. We examine the research findings about English reforms in six areas. Supply-side reJbrms include efforts to enhance competition among institutions, to promote efficiency through subcontracting, and to mimic market incentives through perfor-mance_based funding. Demand-side rqforms include a variety of vouchers as well as other mechanisms to enhance parental and student choice, including access to information. Finally, we discuss several equilibrating mechanisms intended to bring demand and supply into equilibrium. The English examples clarify the limitations of the quasi-markets introduced under current conditions. However, they also raise the possibilities of designing policy around strong markets with more competent suppliers and demanders of education and training services, as a way of escaping the conventional dichotomy of institutional versus market reforms.Nt,.aa. D. FINKELSTEIN is Research Coordinator, Outreach Evaluation, University of California, Office of the President, Student Academic Services, 1111 Franklin St., 9 m Floor, Oakland, CA 94607-5200. His specializations include education policy, school governance and management, urban education, and school finance.

Exploring governance in two chains of academy schools

“…In recent decades England has made concerted efforts to reform its education system and since the passing of the Education Reform Act 1988 the pace of change has been relentless. The intensity and boldness of reform has led some American researchers to liken England to a real life laboratory (Finkelstein and Grubb, 2000). Recent reforms have involved significant interventions by successive national governments to break down traditional hierarchies within the system and to encourage greater involvement by the private sector in education.…”

The CANparent trial—the delivery of universal parenting education in England

“…It is this analysis of the advantages of competitive markets that has, in part, underpinned the long history of government attempting to introduce market‐style reforms into public‐sector activity previously coordinated by other means. The degree to which such reforms do, in fact, generate allocative and productive efficiency gains is contested (Kirkpatrick, ; Finkelstein & Grubb, ; Kähkönen, ). Other arguments have also been deployed to critique marketised reforms, with, for instance, arguments being advanced in relation to increasing social inequity (Dumay & Dupriez, ) or lack of public choice (Exley, ).…”

System leadership as depoliticisation: Reconceptualising educational leadership in a new multi-academy trust

“…Our data are drawn from interviews with actors constructed as leaders at all senior levels within a single, new multi-academy trust (MAT), and so complements and builds on important research focusing primarily on the MAT chief executive officer (CEO) (Hughes, 2019;Hughes et al, 2020) or on the relationship between system and other leaders (Cousin, 2019). The MAT structure is presently the site and producer of a form of system leadership most privileged through policy in England, which is a nation recognised as a laboratory and international exporter of education reform (Finkelstein and Grubb, 2000;Gunter, 2015b). The conceptualisation and analysis presented here therefore have implications for policy making and policy scholarship in states internationally where system leadership is being considered or enacted, for example in the USA, where charter schools may be brought and managed together under charter management organisations.…”