The End of Education Policy?

Abstract

Education is no longer the responsibility of education policy as public policy. Instead the provision of and access to school places has been relocated away from the desk of publicly elected representatives and appointed accredited professionals, to a range of private sites controlled by oligarchic club interests engaged in market exchanges: first, little monarchies, such as the Harris family; second, little representatives, such as the Confederation of School Trusts (CST); and third, little contractors, such as grammar schools. We use these three examples to examine the restoration of private provision, access and control as an example of depoliticisation. This trend is evident in a shift in decision-making about the purposes of education, away from public policy funded by the public, in the name of the public and accountable to the public, and towards providers and consumers, and towards nowhere in particular. Debates about and for educational issues are on no-one's agenda. We argue that these trends validate the analytical judgment that education is no longer a matter for public policy but instead has been relocated to corporate market exchanges within and beyond the nation state.