Marketisation policies - purpose and criticisms

Policies to promote marketisation

• Publication of league tables

• Publication of OFSTED reports

• Business sponsorship of schools (Cadbury, CurrysPCWorld)

• Open enrolment

• Specialist schools

• Formula funding

• Academisation

• Free schools

• Tuition fees for HE

Education Reform Act (1988) - purpose

• Introduce marketisation

  • Promote competition by giving parents more choice

• Raise standards

• Create standardisation through testing

• Remove budget constraints on headteachers

Purpose of the national curriculum

1. Create standardisation through testing

• ‘Ikea answer’

3 purposes of academies/free schools

1. Power in hands of school/parents

2. More freedom

3. Benefit those in it

2 purposes of formula funding

1. Remove budget constraints on headteachers

2. Encourage competition by making schools fight for students and therefore money

• Drives up standards as oversubscribed schools can be selective

• Example: Chubb and Moe, vouchers

3 purposes of OFSTED

1. Encourage a flat standard for schools - ‘quality of provision’

2. Encourages maintenance of high standards 

3. Give parents more resources to make choices

• Therefore encouraging inter-school competition

Formula funding in the reproduction of inequality

• Funding by pupil

• Allow popular schools to thrive but cause unpopular schools to fail

  • Popular schools → more funds → can be more selective → get more high-achieving pupils → become more popular (cycle restarts)

  • Less popular schools → less funds → can’t match rival schools → are less popular

Institute for Public Policy Research (2012) - marketisation and segregation

• Competition-oriented systems produce more segregation between social backgrounds

Ball (1994) and Whitty (1998) - marketisation and creation/reproduction of inequality

• Marketisation causes the reproduction of inequality

• Formula funding and league tables reproduce class inequality by creating inequalities between schools

Bartlett (1993) - cream-skimming and silt-shifting

• Encourage cream-skimming and silt-shifting

• 🍦-skimming

  • Good schools are able to be more selective as are oversubscribed

    • They choose their own customers and recruit high-achieving m/c pupils (skim the ‘cream’ from their pool of applicants)

      • This gives their pupils an advantage

• Silt-shifting

  • Good schools are able to be more selective as are oversubscribed

    • They avoid taking less able students (often w/c) (‘sift’ through the silt) who are more likely to damage their league table position

• Bad schools are unable to cream-skim and silt-shift as they just need bums on seats, so have worse results

  • Their students are therefore disadvantaged