School Wars: The Battle for Britain's Education

Language Arts Journal of Michigan

During the summer of 1988, Professor Marilyn Wilson and I led twenty-seven school and college teachers from Michigan and other states on a four week study tour to London. Along with exploring London's rich (even mind numbing) cultural, literary, and historical resources, our students had an opportunity to meet with a number of distinguished British specialists in En glish education, including John Dixon, formerly of the Bretton Hall College, author of Growth Through English; James Britton, generally acknowledged as the father of the "new English" movement in Great Britain; Patrick Creber of Exeter University, author of Sense and Sensitivity in Teaching English; Don Williams, Senior Primary Advisor for the Wiltshire County schools; and Peter Abbs, University of Sussex, author of several books on the value of literary and artistic education. From these consultants, from newspaper accounts, and from back fence and bus stop conversations, we discovered that we had arrived in London dur ing a particularly turbulent time in British education. Parliament had just passed a major Education Reform Act. (The irony of its acronym, ERA, was not 60 testing scheme would do anything more than hinder teachers-especially the good ones who are knowledgeable about language growth and development. In the meantime, the uproar over the Education Reform Act and the Kingman Report seems to be obscuring another significant debate within the English teaching profession, one that also has parallels in the United States.

The Palgrave International Handbook of School Discipline, Surveillance, and Social Control, 2018

Surveillance, control and resistance in UK schools Anna Carlile 2 the increasing pathologisation of the behaviour of ethnic minorities (Kulz 2014). Their perceived threats to both state security and market capitalism have led to the policing of students' and teachers' identities and critical discourses through the U.K. government's 'antiterrorist' Prevent and Fundamental British Values agendas (discussed below and in other chapters within this volume). All of this has led to an increase in student and teacher stress (Ball 2003; Elias 1989; Keddie 2014; Teague 2014). The response described in this chapter amounts to a harsher approach to discipline and punishment through rising numbers of detentions, seclusions, and exclusions (Carlile 2012; Lloyd 2005; Department for Education 2014a; Department for Education 2015). However, there is potential for restorative justice approaches (McCluskey et al 2008a, 2008b, 2011). Other sources of hope for the future of education will be described towards the end of the chapter. Here, the Equality Act 2010 will be explained as having provided protection for students and teachers who possess specific 'protected characteristics' related to, for example, religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity, and disability. This statutory protection will be shown to not simply require a response to inequitable treatment but to mandate an active approach to developing positive relationships between groups. In addition, evidence will be discussed which demonstrates that school students' digital capital allows them to access a range of critiques, making them knowing subjects rather than simply docile bodies (Foucault 1975; Hope 2015). The chapter will include ways in which the current context provides gaps and spaces for the practice of 'critical bureaucracy' (Carlile 2010) as a route towards resistance and social justice in U.K. schools. However, it concludes that this might actually have resulted in a tougher approach to discipline. U.K. SCHOOLS IN A NEOLIBERAL CONTEXT Neoliberalism is understood by the critical pedagogue Giroux, to be a form of ideological market fundamentalism; 'a pervasive and potent form of public pedagogy that operates

Journal of the British Academy

This paper is a reflection on the current state of education and education policy in England drawn from over forty years of my involvement in education policy research. It articulates a strong sense of my discomfort, disappointment, and frustra tion with the current state of the English education system and with the educational state. I shall take stock and look across the school system, confining myself to com pulsory education, and argue that there is no 'system' at all. Rather, I suggest, the current iteration of school reform perpetuates and exacerbates the messiness and incoherence, and the mix of meddlesomeness and reluctance, that have always bedevilled education policy in England and at the same time reproduces and legit imates complex social divisions and inequalities embedded in this messiness. I also look back at the several attempts to impose some sort of order on the delivery of schooling (1870, 1902, 1944, 1988, and 2016) and the discordant interests that have confounded these attempts, particularly in relation to church schools.

Radical Philosophy, 2012

Andrew McGettigan’s analysis of the financial transformations of higher education (‘Who Let the Dogs Out? The Privatization of Higher Education’, RP 174) is important for comprehending the complexity of the changes universities are undergoing and their implications. As he argues, ‘it is mass higher education in England’ that is now under attack and adequately responding to this requires the development of new habits and new forms of thought.1 It is also necessary to contextualize this attack in relation to comparable changes occurring in other educational sectors in England, not least because it is through control of the points of intersection between primary, secondary, and tertiary education that the government’s political intent is being most effectively realized. An analysis of these changes reveals the broader nature of the attack on the idea and practice of mass education itself.

London Review of Education, 2009

This short, tightly written book unpacks the realities of Tony Blair and New Labour's mantra of education, education, education. Ball concentrates on school policies but also draws on policy examples from other sectors including preschool and higher education. He tries to make sense of the last 10 years of unprecedented hyperactivity in education policy development, identifying the main tendencies and patterns along with key moments and significant developments. To untangle these policies, Ball uses a 'political sociology' approach, calling on sociological concepts, ideas and research. Central to this is the attention he gives to 'the language of policy-policy rhetorics and discourses' (5) which demonstrates how certain ideas, topics and speakers are privileged while others are excluded. And, it shows how policy language is used to produce certain meanings and effects so that policies appear as rational and practical solutions to social and economic problems. Thus, in his exploration of education policy Ball relies heavily on extracts from 'policy texts' such as official documents and speeches: … that 'articulate' policies and policy ideas, which work to translate policy abstractions like globalisation and the knowledge economy and public sector reform, into roles and relationships and practices within institutions that enact policy and change what people do and how they think about what they do. (6)

Critical Quarterly, 1997

In a speech last summer a former ally of the Tory Party, Professor Alexander, who, along with Chris Woodhead, contributed to the`Three Wise Men' report on primary education in 1992, claimed,`What we are currently witnessing is ± the lowest level of buck-passing and scapegoating, as the government and opposition compete for a quick electoral advantage in the run up to the general election.' He went on to add that, A rather bizarre consensus has emerged as the political right and left jockey for control of ideological territory hitherto held uncontested by the right'. His frustration, along with that of the vast majority of those who work in education, is evident but it is important to understand where this`bizarre consensus' has come from. As the election approaches, there is a sense in which schools have become the loci of a moral panic. They symbolise both an apparent descent into chaos, as violent pupils and failing institutions hit the headlines, and, at the same time, the only hope of salvation, through the introduction of a moral curriculum, lessons in parenting and home±school contracts. But while these concerns appear to have wider social implications, for many they are intimately connected with the way in which we discuss the notion of standards in educational terms and in particular with the teaching of English. It was Norman Tebbit who remarked in an interview on the Today programme, in 1985, * These quotations are all found in Cox on the Battle for the English Curriculum, pp. 37±8.

Historical Studies in Education Revue D Histoire De L Education, 2015

is a unique work in the field of curriculum study examining the teaching of English in three schools in the United Kingdom. The book's uniqueness is derived from its concentration upon one subject and its combination of primary documentary sources and oral history. The authors, Medway, Hardcastle, Brewis, and Crook, tell a compelling story of curriculum and instruction at Minchenden Grammar School, Walworth School, and Hackney Downs in London. They weave this story into a larger narrative about evolving social norms and ideals over two decades. The authors' interest in what they term "rescue archaeology" (1) leads them to inquire into the curriculum as rhetoric but, more so -and rather ambitiously -into curriculum as taught and learned. Oral history is thus an important tool in the narrative reconstruction of what was taught, how it was taught, how instruction was received, and how these evolved with respect to the English curriculum. Post-World War II London evolved "from austerity combined with optimistic attempts at reconstruction under a Labour government to rising affluence and a new consumer economy under the Conservatives … and, accompanying that, the beginnings of far-reaching movement in cultural life" (3). These transformations in social life did not have a monolithic effect on the teaching of English across the schools examined in the study, and yet the study, while limited in its concentration upon one subject, illuminates the shifting place of disciplines in the formal curriculum of schooling that we often take for granted.

Journal of Pedagogical Sociology and Psychology, 2021

In his classic The Condition of the Working Class in England (1845), Friedrich Engels argued that workers engaged in industrial action gained knowledge of economic processes, tactical awareness in struggles and grasped the value of solidarity in the face of employers" assaults on pay and working conditions. These struggles constituted "schools of war"; significant learning experiences for workers, argued Engels. Yet schools of war can take other forms, such as struggles against the capitalisation of education; educational institutions becoming sites of capital accumulation and preparation for capitalist work. In this sense, education has become a battleground as its privatisation, commodification, marketisation, commercialisation and monetisation have gathered pace in many countries since the second half of the twentieth century. This article argues that there are two main fronts in the war over the penetration of education by capital in contemporary society: the business takeover of education, as educational institutions become value-and profit-making sites; and the reduction of education to labour-power production. It explores these two fronts of war in terms of education policies in England and Brazil and argues for the establishment of forms of education beyond capitalist states and capital"s commodity forms.

Oxford Review of Education, 2015

The number and range of school types in England is increasing rapidly in response to a neoliberal policy agenda aiming to expand choice of provision as a mechanism for raising educational standards. In this paper, I seek to undertake a mapping of these school types in order to describe and explain what is happening. I capture this busy terrain from different perspectives: legal status; curricular specialism; pupil selection; types of academy; and school groupings. The mapping highlights the intersections between the current reform agenda and the historical diversity within the English school system to show the dialogue between past and present. Borrowing the geological metaphors of faulting and folding, I argue that long-established school types are not buried under sedimentary layers of reform, but are thrust into the present where they are discursively reimagined through neoliberalism. Finally, I conceptualise the landscape holistically through the lenses of locus of legitimacy and branding, where I argue that current structural diversification policies enable the enactment of interests other than educational through transferring responsibility for education and related assets away from public and towards corporatised or religious actors and institutions.

Can Dewey’s Moral Principles in Education throw light on a contemporary policy issue in education, namely the privatisation of education through the establishment of academy schools in England? The article first considers what the policy entails, in terms of its conception of education as a market commodity. The next section suggests an alternative conception, drawing particularly on Deweyan claims for the fundamentally normative and relational nature of teaching, through his definition of democracy as ‘a form of associated living’ and the school as a place for such association. The third section relates the two conceptions of education and in their light considers tensions and conflicts in the academisation policy concerning inclusion, equity and social cohesion. The article concludes that the establishment of academy schools compromises these values and constitutes a danger to the commons, that is, to socially consensual and equitable ways of being together.

British Journal of Sociology of Education 32, 6, 2011

London and New York: Routledge. 2011 190pp ISBN 978 0 415 49829 6 Reviewed by David James for the British Journal of Sociology of Education 32 (6)

Race Ethnicity and Education, 2014

This article considers the implications of the Troops to Teaching (TtT) programme, to be introduced in England in autumn 2013, for Initial Teacher Education (ITE) and race equality. TtT will fast-track ex-armed service members to teach in schools, without necessarily the requirement of a university degree. Employing theories of white supremacy, and Althusser's (1971) concept of Ideological and Repressive State Apparatus, I argue that this initiative both stems from, and contributes to, a system of social privilege and oppression in education. Despite appearing to be aimed at all young people, the planned TtT initiative is actually aimed at poor and racially subordinated youth. This is likely to further entrench polarisation in a system which already provides two tier educational provision: TtT will be a programme for the inner-city disadvantaged, whilst wealthier, whiter schools will mostly continue to get highly qualified teachers. Moreover, TtT contributes to a wider devaluing of current ITE; ITE itself is rendered virtually irrelevant, as it seems TtT teachers will not be subject specialists, rather will be expected to provide military-style discipline, the skills for which they will be expected to bring with them. More sinister, I argue that TtT is part of the wider militarisation of education. This military-industrial-education complex seeks to contain and police young people who are marginalised along lines of race and class, and contributes to a wider move to increase ideological support for foreign wars-both aims ultimately in the service of neoliberal objectives which will feed social inequalities.