Critically assess the claim that ‘education policy is always ideologically driven’. In your answer, refer to particular policy agendas and draw upon relevant literature. The citation should be 10-15 references and Harvard format.

PPE Revision Session 2020-21 Part II • • • • Exam Instructions Exam advice Choosing a question Planning an answer Exam Instructions • The assessment is an open-book exam (100% of the module mark), in which students are asked to write two essays from a choice of questions based on topics covered in the module. • Each question is 50% of the module mark. This will be an open-book exam for which you will have a maximum of 8 days to complete. Exam Instructions continued.. • The exam will assess understanding of key concepts and issues and the ability to assess arguments and make critical judgements concerning educational matters. • The word count for each individual question is 2,000 words +/- 10% (therefore a maximum of 2,200 words PER question). While students will not be penalised for falling below the word count, it would be difficult to meet the marking criteria for higher bands (i.e. the 'B' and 'A' bands) Exam Instructions continued.. • Assessment deadlines • Please note that all assignments should be submitted by 4.30 pm on the day of the deadline. • Examination date • The examination will take place in the summer term – Monday 10th – Monday 17th May. The exam paper will be released on the morning of the 10th May (9am) and the deadline for submitting on Moodle is Monday 17th May, by 16.30pm (BST). Exam advice • You must answer 2 questions in the exam • Read all questions carefully and make a careful choice you have already decided on topics but you can change your mind once you see the questions • Work out what each part of the question is asking • Make sure you spend time planning before you start writing – you have already started doing this with your draft outlines. • Try and spend an equal amount of time on each question BA Education Studies Policy and Politics in Education 2017-18 MAIN Paper June 2018 Answer two of the following questions. 1. Discuss how policy emerges as a solution to a problem, with reference to one or more examples and what has been written about policy. 2. How important is ideology in the production of education policy? Make reference to examples of particular policy agendas and the relevant literature. 3. How has neoliberalism influenced education policy? Give specific examples and make reference to relevant literature. 4. What does the idea of ‘enactment’ add to our understanding of education policy? Refer to research on enactment. 5. What is the justification for systems of school choice, and what are the disadvantages of this? Refer to research in this field. 6. What is the relationship between issues of funding and access in higher education? Include relevant literature in your answer. 7. What are high stakes tests, and what role do they play in an education system? Include relevant research and literature in your answer. 8. Why is teaching sometimes referred to as a ‘semi-profession’? (Etzioni,1969)? How do policy decisions relate to this description? Include relevant literature in your answer. 9. What are the forms of privatisation, and how have these had an impact on the education system? Include relevant literature and research in your answer. 10. ‘Human capital theory drives education policy’. Discuss, making reference to scholarship in this area. Activity • Look at the paper from 2018 • Which questions would you choose? • Think about how you would choose and which to answer first Exam advice • There is plenty of time to plan, so use this time to think about the question and structure your argument • Include key concepts, references to literature and if asked, empirical examples • You can reference the lecture slides, but don’t overly rely on that. Important to refer to key and further reading lists. • Be clear what your answer is to the question, and that you answer both/all parts if necessary • If examples are requested, give examples Planning an exam answer • ‘All education policy is ideologicallydriven’. Discuss, with reference to specific examples of education policies. Planning an exam answer • ‘All education policy is ideologicallydriven’. Discuss, with reference to specific examples of education policies. A sample plan Intro – what is ideology? Argue it is important in education policy making, but other influences too, e.g. economic situation/pragmatism. Mention examples you will use. Section 1: bit more detail on ideology and way it has shifted in ed policy (i.e. welfare consensus to breakdown to neoliberalism) • Section 2: How neoliberalism as an ideology has influenced policy – examples of school choice, privatisation, diversification of schools • Section 3: Points about how economy links with ideology, e.g. economic crisis of 70s means breakdown of consensus; new human capital theory means ed and economy linked. Could also mention policy responses to the pandemic as a crisis. • Conclusion – return to question – argue all policy not ideologically driven, but ideology v important under neoliberalism. All policy constrained by context however. Writing a good exam essay Highly graded answers tend to be: • Well-structured so that the reader understands the argument, with clear signposting • Have a clear answer to the question • Use relevant literature appropriately (i.e. no overly long quotes, but key phrases or ideas, or research evidence) • Key concepts explained with accuracy, and consistent comment/critical reflection in own words. Pitfalls to avoid • Writing everything you know about a topic even if it doesn’t answer the question • Running out of time or not finishing the answer • Repeating too much material between the two questions • Important also to avoid plagiarism! Make sure you always include required referencing information. Place direct Questions? Practicalities and final advice • Plan your time during the exam period. You may have some competing demands, so make sure you set aside enough time to write your answers. • Read the exam advice and try to remain calm - see this as an opportunity to show us what you have learnt on the module. • Read over and proofread your answers when you have finished. Try to leave time for this. Having a break and then returning to read over your answers often leads to spotting typos/errors etc. • GOOD LUCK! Revision Session 2020-21 Dr Patrick Bailey Policy and Politics in Education Content A. Module content: A. Overall themes for the module B. Session by session summary of each topic B. Exam preparation: A. B. C. D. 2 Types of question Planning an answer, timing Topic and overall questions Practicalities Overall themes for the module 3 Topics on the module • Education policy and politics: What is policy? • Education and political ideologies • Neoliberalism in education and the Global Education Reform Movement (GERM) • School Choice • Policy enactment, policy windows and the localised nature of policy actions • Assessment policy: High stakes testing • Teachers and teacher education • Private Sector Involvement in Education • Character education policy and social mobility Topic 1: What is ‘policy’? • Formal and legislated Policy vs. policy made and remade in many places (Evans et al, 2008) • Legislation, which is enacted in different ways in different contexts Policy cycle 6 A more sociological view of how policy emerges (Policy Sociology) Policy emerges as solution to a ‘problem’ Possible solutions and ‘policy silences’ Changing possibilities over time Compromises between competing interests – incoherence • Building on previous policy • May have unintended consequences • • • • How policy emerges Policy as discourse: • Policy as signalling a problem • Policy as defining solutions to the problem • Policy as limiting other alternatives (see Adams, 2014 p35) 8 Using this topic in the exam • Many questions will involve some discussion of the nature of policy. • It may be enough to comment on a policy ‘problem’ that is solved through the presentation of a particular ‘solution’ • Remember to be critical – there are no given answers to policy problems Using this topic in the exam • Other questions (but especially question 1) may ask more specifically about the nature of policy, so will require more in-depth knowledge of this topic • With these, it would be useful to have examples ready Key Reading for this topic • Chapter 2 ‘Education policy and policymaking’ in Adams, P. (2014). Policy and Education. Abingdon, Routledge. • Ball, S.J. (2017) The Education Debate (third edition). Policy Press: Bristol. Introduction Chapter: the Great Education Debate (1976–2016) - pp. 1-12. Topic 2: Ideology • Role of the state - to control education, to greater or lesser extents (current consensus is that the state should be involved in the education of all children) • Globalisation – power of supranational organisations e.g. OECD (who run PISA tests), World Bank - shift from Westphalian to post-Westphalian conceptions of political authority State control Topic 2: Ideology • Thus policy agendas are set at a national but also global level – policy is multidimensional and multi-layered Topic 2: Ideology • Ideology is ‘“system” of ideas, beliefs, fundamental commitments, or values about social reality’ (Apple, 2013; 34) • Different ideologies can be placed on the political spectrum, left to right • Ideology affects policy in education, e.g. what schools we have, what is learnt, funding, access to types of education, access to higher education Political trends in the UK 17 Using this topic in the exam • Ideology is important throughout the module, particularly in relation to the dominance of neoliberalism. • Links also to the nature of policy – what solutions are offered relate to ideological positions? • May need to include comment on globalisation and supranational decision-making in other discussions, e.g. testing Using this topic in the exam • Questions on this topic specifically will need to comment on the links between different ideologies and different policies • E.g. state education for all under post-war Welfarist consensus; comprehensive education from Left; choice/marketisation from neoliberalism (political Right) • You may also discuss neo-conservatism Key Reading for this topic • Chapter 1: ‘Political Ideology’.Adams, P. (2014) Policy and Education. Abingdon: Routledge. • Robertson, L. & Hill, D. (2014) Policy and ideologies in schooling and early years education in England: Implications for and impacts on leadership, management and equality. Management in Education, Vol 28:4. Topic 3: Neoliberalism and GERM • Dominant ideology since 1980s • Markets and choice are priorities in mission to improve efficiency and reduce ‘producer capture’ • International – e.g. voucher systems are used in Chile, Sweden, US; global scope of marketization/privatization (GERM) Central ideas of neoliberalism 22 The impact on education policy 23 Also, neoconservatism • A ‘return’ to higher standards • ‘a romanticized past of the ‘ideal’ home, family and school’ (Apple 2006 p469) • Rejection of ‘progressive’ education • Need to tighten control of curriculum Neoliberal policy • Introduction of school choice • Local management of schools – budgets to mimic vouchers • Diversification of types of school • In England, present in 80s, 90s, 2000s and 2010s by Conservative, coalition and Labour govts. You can discuss other national contexts! Using this topic in the exam • A question on neoliberalism – be ready to explain it, and the evidence for it in education policy • Also neoliberalism as a key theme of the module, present in many questions • Remember there are other ideologies too Key Reading for this topic • Bailey, P. & Ball, S.J. (2016) 'The coalition government, the general election and the policy ratchet in education: a reflection on the 'ghosts' of policy past, present and yet to come'. In Bochel, H. & Powell, M. (eds) The coalition government and social policy: restructuring the welfare state (Chapter 6). • Fuller, K. & Stevenson, H. (2019) Global education reform: understanding the movement. Educational Review, 71:1, PP. 1-4. • Also see • Chapter 1: ‘Political Ideology’. Adams, P. (2014) Policy and Education. Abingdon: Routledge. • And the chapter on markets. Topic 4: Choice • Neo-liberalism refers to the introduction of market-led economic policies which minimize state intervention. • In education, neo-liberalism is associated with a market-oriented education system in which schools compete for pupils. • Parents are seen as consumers who have the responsibility of choosing an appropriate provider for their child, from a number of different options. Neoliberalism and the idea of the market Topic 5: Choice • Key idea behind choice in education is that the market is the ideal way to allocate resources • Diversification of types of school – key shifts in Cons in 80s/90s; then under New Lab; then coalition and Cons in 2010s. • Social Class effects on choosing – e.g. how school choice is mediated by social class (different choice practices –’willing’, ‘default’ and ‘community’ choosers) • Increased segregation (Allen and Vignoles, 2007) especially in London https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0305 4980701366306 • Pierre Bourdieu and uneven distribution of economic, social and cultural capital. Does choice benefit all equally? Using this topic in the exam • Topic on school choice – need to know the evolution of the policy, the ideology behind it, and the effects it has. • Important to understand the inequalities of choice. • The question might also ask about alternatives to choice. Key Reading for this topic • Vincent, C., Braun, A. & Ball, S.J. (2010) Local links, local knowledge: choosing care settings and schools. British Educational Research Journal, 36:2, pp. 279-298. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01411920902919240 • Angus, L. (2015) School choice: neoliberal education policy and imagined futures. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 36:3, pp. 395-413. • SEE ALSO: Adams, P. (2014) Policy and Education. London: Routledge. Chapter 6: ‘Choice and Diversity’. Topic 5: Policy Enactment • Enactment: – policies are interpreted and ‘translated’ by diverse policy actors in the school environment, rather than simply implemented. – Teachers and education workers are key actors, rather than just subjects in the policy process. • Policy rarely tells schools/teachers exactly what to do (or how to do it) – policy has to be translated from the ‘policy text’ into practice (=enacted). • This means that context, in its various forms, is integral in shaping policy on the ground. • Enactment different to ‘implementation’. Revisiting The Policy Cycle Stephen Ball’s policy cycle (Ball 1994) The Policy Cycle • Context of influence is where interest groups struggle over the construction of policy discourses and where key policy concepts are established; • Context of policy text production is where texts represent policies. Texts have to be read in relation to time and the site of production, and with other relevant texts; • Context of practice is where policy is subject to interpretation and recreation. • Context of outcomes is where the impact of policies on existing social inequalities is seen; • Context of political strategy is where one identifies political activities which might tackle such inequalities. (Lall 2007, p.5) Using this topic in the exam • Important to refer to the idea of policy enactment when discussing how any policy plays out in practice. • Also a question in itself, but need examples (see lecture notes and readings) • Annette Braun discussed different examples, including school responses to Covid policy on the ground. Key Reading for this topic • Wright, J.S. & Kim, K. (2020) Reframing community (dis)engagement: the discursive connection between undemocratic policy enactment, minoritized communities and resistance, Journal of Education Policy, DOI: 10.1080/02680939.2020.1777467 • Lightfoot, N. (2016) Policy research: In defence of ad hocery?, in A. O’Grady & V. Cottle, (eds) Exploring Education at Postgraduate Level. London, David Fulton • ALSO SEE: • Taking context seriously: towards explaining policy enactments in the secondary school - Annette Braun, Stephen J. Ball, Meg Maguire, Kate Hoskins Topic 6: High stakes tests • a key feature of systems where schools are judged through assessments, and progress between assessments • Part of performativity and accountability • Intended to give parents information about quality of schools • Have an impact on practices and priorities, e.g. datafication Topic 6: High stakes tests • Impact on teachers - ‘terrors of performativity’ (Ball, 2003); becoming data collectors • Rational responses? Gaming, fabrication • Impact on children – grouping (e.g. triage), mental health Performance and accountability: Role of state in monitoring education 43 Using this topic in the exam • HST are a neoliberal policy (with league tables, to inform parental choice) – will feature in other topics too • As a topic, need to know some basic information on what HST there are, the impact and why they are in the system • Need to define HST. Key Reading for this topic • Bradbury, A., & Roberts-Holmes, G. (2017). The Datafication of Early Years and Primary Education: Playing with numbers. ‘Schools’ responses to datafication and the visibility of performance’ (Chapter 5) • https://www.morethanascore.org.uk/wpcontent/uploads/2019/09/SATs-research.pdf - pages 1-11. • Briefing paper on testing after COVID here: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/ioe/research-projects/2020/oct/primaryassessment-turbulent-times • ALSO SEE: Lingard and Sellar (2013) on ‘perverse systemic effects’ of HST https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02680939.2012.758815 Topic 7: Teachers & Teacher training • Teacher training policy evolved from informal to day training colleges (from 1890) to PGCEs in universities (and polytechnics), to Teach First and other routes • Debates over status (related to the gendered dimension), and pay and professional status Topic 7: Teachers & Teacher training • A semi-profession? Shifts in discourse from professional to skilled or innate teacher • Political debates over need for theory or technical instruction The status of teaching • Reasons for the lower status of teaching in comparison to other professions: – High number of women in the profession – Teaching as less ‘glamorous’ than medicine or law – People’s familiarity with teachers, e.g. from their own schooling, demystifies the job – Teachers (in Britain) tend to have lower qualifications than members of other professions – Teaching often viewed as something ‘anyone can do’, a ‘default’ occupation people slip into (Adapted from Bates at al., 2011, p.140) Topic 7: Teachers & Teacher training • Policy has an impact on teachers, especially performance related pay; HST and performativity • Current teacher training shortage and high leaving rate from teaching – made by policy? Using this topic in the exam • Question on topic – policy, debates • Also performativity features in HST topic and relevant to other topics involving teachers. • Teacher resistance?? Key Reading for this topic • Ball, S.J. (2016) Neoliberal education? Confronting the slouching beast. Policy Futures in Education 14, 8: 1046-59. • Adams, P. (2014) Policy and Education. London: Routledge. Chapter 7: ‘Professionalism’. • ALSO SEE: • Chapter 8: Performance and accountablity - P. Adams Policy and Education Topic 8: Privatisation • Ongoing process of public sector reform – ‘selling off’ national industries and services • Shift from state ownership to private • Neoliberal ideology • Different forms, including retailisation • IMPORTANT – while you can note the existence of private/fee-paying education, this topic is more focused on the privatisation of state education (globally) Endogenous and exogenous privatisation in education ENDOGENOUS – internal reforms to organisation, relationships, methods and values of the public sector – marketisation and competition EXOGENOUS – replacing public sector providers by ‘selling off’, deregulating or contracting out public service delivery or infrastructure Interrelated and mutually reinforcing – endogenous first, e.g. 1988 Education Reform Act, followed by exogenous, e.g. contracting out of services in 1990s A policy settlement? Policy ratchet? Is education a public or a private good? These approaches to education also work together to make education more like a ‘commodity’ owned by and benefiting the individual and her/his employer than a public good that benefits the society as a whole. While policy accounts of education matched to the needs of employment and the economy – a human capital approach – argues that this benefits society as a whole by creating a strong economy as well as individual wealth, it is difficult to see this in practice. Furthermore, there is a conceptual shift from education as an intrinsically valuable shared resource which the state owes to its citizens to a consumer product for which the individual must take first responsibility, as it is this individual who reaps the rewards of being educated. This conceptual shift changes fundamentally what it means for a society to educate its citizens. --Ball and Youdell 2007, p. 53: https://pages.eiie.org/quadrennialreport/2007/upload/content_trsl_images/630/Hidden_privatisation-EN.pdf Using this topic in the exam • A key part of neoliberal policy • Need examples of privatization as well as explanation for why it has happened/been encouraged by policy • Remember that this topic is about the privatization of state education (there is a fee-paying, private/independent system in England, which you can refer to, but you should focus on state education) Key Reading for this topic Ball, S. (2017) ‘Policy technologies and the UK government’s approach to public service reform’, in The Education Debate (3rd Ed.) Bristol: The Policy Press. Sellar, S. & Lingard, B. (2013) The OECD and the expansion of PISA: new global modes of governance in education. British Educational Research Journal, 40:6, pp. 917-936. Topic 9: Character Education and Social Mobility • Character/values education = An umbrella term for broadly describing the teaching of children in a manner that will help them develop variously as moral, social, civic, behaved, healthy, successful, critical, compliant or socially acceptable beings • Lickona (1993) argues that the purposes of education have almost always been to ‘help people become smart, and to help them become good’ – the shaping of an educated and moral self • This session explored the (re)emergence of character education in England, including how this was connected to the social, political and economic context (i.e. neoconservatism, the financial crisis and the London riots) • BUT important to also note the global scope of this discourse. Character Education and Social Mobility • • • Important to examine the ways in which one of the more dominant forms of CE reflects neoliberalism. For example, critically discuss the discursive individualization of social problems, such as inequality and social (im)mobility – with particular policy focus on the poor, vulnerable and disadvantaged. The promotion of a self-responsible, resilient and ‘post-welfare’ neoliberal self in some versions of character education Character education, in some contexts such as England, is a good example of neoliberal policy and policy as discourse: – Individual character suggested as policy solution to social immobility. – Can relate to the policy cycle (contexts of influence, text production and practice) – The ‘Character and Resilience Manifesto (text production) https://www.character-uk.org/wp-content/uploads/character-and-resilience.pdf – And the pilot study by Bailey described in the slides (context of practice) • Can situate the return to character education, socially, economically and politically, within the context of austerity and welfare reform • Proposed as both policy ‘problem’ and ‘solution’ in the aftermath of the ‘London Riots’ in 2011 in England – Cameron’s neo-conservative ‘Broken Britain’ narrative • • • • • • • Whilst there is a wider salience and field of application to character education, there is a particular policy focus on vulnerable and disadvantaged children/young people (and their parents). Social mobility, ‘achievement gap’ and ‘bad parenting’ as policy problems. Constructs individual and wider social problems in terms of individual failings – a deficit discourse. Undermines/silences structural explanations of social immobility and poverty. Advances and normalises therapeutic and disciplinary interventions, over and against more redistributive/economic solutions Essentialises ‘good character’ (are values/virtues universal?) and potentially reinforces a diminished view of human agency Important to discuss some of the criticisms of CE, i.e. see the key reading by Bull and Allen (2018): – Introduction: Sociological Interrogations of the Turn to Character - Anna Bull, Kim Allen, 2018 (sagepub.com) Using this topic in the exam • Need to critically examine CE as a form of neoliberal policy • A good opportunity to bring in ideas on the policy cycle and policy as discourse (construction of policy problems/solutions) • Can relate back to ideology. Key Reading for this topic • Saltman, K. (2014) The austerity school: grit, character, and the privatization of public education. Symploke, Volume 22 (1-2), pp. 4157. • Bull, A. & Allen, K. (2018) Introduction: sociological interrogations of the turn to character. Sociological Research Online. 23(2), pp. 392398 MiE Article Policy and ideologies in schooling and early years education in England: Implications for and impacts on leadership, management and equality Management in Education 2014, Vol. 28(4) 167–174 ª 2014 British Educational Leadership, Management & Administration Society (BELMAS) Reprints and permission: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/0892020614550468 mie.sagepub.com Leena Helavaara Robertson Middlesex University, London, UK Dave Hill Anglia Ruskin University, Chelmsford, UK Abstract In this article we begin by discussing ‘ideology’ as a theoretical construct, and the interconnections between policy and ideology in the education system in England. We analyse the main principles of education policies that can be broadly defined from Left to Right, according to the following ideologies: Marxism/Socialism/Radical Leftism, Social Democracy, Liberal-Progressivism, Neoliberal Conservatism and Neoconservatism. We then move on to analysing responses to inequalities, as informed by different ideological positions, and identify three main types of responses: (1) conforming; (2) reforming; and (3) transforming. The article concludes by addressing some historical developments in terms of equality in early years and identifies key implications for leadership and management. Keywords Ideology, policy, equality, inequality, radical left, neoliberal, neoconservative, early years Introduction The most recent, updated version of the statutory framework that sets out the standards for learning for the youngest members of our society in England, states very clearly that: ‘The Early Years Foundation Stage seeks to provide [ . . . ] equality of opportunity and anti-discriminatory practice, ensuring that every child is included and supported’. (DFE, 2014: 5). This is a welcome recommendation and one that is difficult to disagree with. Democracy, equality and anti-discriminatory practices are all terms that appear in current legislation and educational policies. Yet, they are also terms that are used very differently within various different political positions. In everyday practices they have come to mean some very different ideas – and ideals – to different groups of people. For example, ‘equality’ has been made to appear synonymous with the business agenda that informs much of the current early years policies in England. Children’s ‘standards’ of achievement and development are now viewed as measurable; they are graded, too, which encourages immediate competition between individual children, teachers and settings. With competition some children are marked as winners and some, inevitably, as failures very early on. But not all early years practitioners, leaders or managers are interested in fostering competition. Some are more interested in solidarity and developing collaboration between settings, and some – whilst starting from equality of opportunity – ultimately aim to work towards equality of outcome. As political positions differ on the desirability of social and economic equality, so they differ on the need for the two distinct aims of, firstly, equality of outcome, and secondly, equality of opportunity within education. Consequently, the policies flow from the different ideas and values which characterise these ideologies and tend to be explicitly framed in terms of their intention to promote either (more) equality of outcome, more equality of opportunity, or, in contrast, to accept or promote elitism and hierarchy within schooling – and thereby inequality. The first section of the paper begins with a definition and discussion of the term ‘ideology’. The second section, a historical analytical overview, briefly describes key aspects of the ideologies that have affected education policies (particularly the ideologies of Social Democracy, of Liberal-Progressivism and of the Radical Socialist/Marxist Left), with a particular reference to early years education policy. Ideology can be understood as a more or less coherent set of beliefs and attitudes that is regarded as selfevidently true, as ‘common sense’ in opposition to other Corresponding author: Leena Helavaara Robertson, Middlesex University, London, NW4 4BT, UK. E-mail: l.robertson@mdx.ac.uk 168 belief systems. Examples of ideologies are socialism, conservatism, feminism, racism and theism. When people and political parties disagree about how society, economy or early years settings should be organised, they justify their views with a particular version of what is right and what is wrong, and with a particular version of what is ‘common sense’. The influence of an ideology can be overwhelming. As Eagleton puts it, it is ‘[w]hat persuades men and women to mistake each other from time to time for gods or vermin is ideology’ (Eagleton, 1991: xiii). Althusser (1971) observes how individuals or groups of people are ‘interpellated’ or ‘called out to’/‘feel spoken to’ by different ideologies. In the ideological ‘culture wars’, in the battle over ideas about what is right and what is wrong in society (and its institutions and processes), people are ‘hailed’ both by dominant ideologies and by oppositional ideologies, each with their variously constructed notions of ‘common sense’. So, for example, when early years practitioners argue for ‘play’ – the cherished but rarely defined term of early years practice and pedagogy – notions of ‘common sense’ tend to creep in. Typical statements by practitioners such as ‘all young children like to play; it’s common sense’ and ‘play is young children’s work’ derive from particular idealised notions of childhood and an assumption that everyone agrees what these might be. These in turn relate to the broader beliefs and aims of what education should be about and for whom. Each early years teacher, researcher or politician developing policies brings his/her own subjectivity – consisting of life experiences, values, interests and identities – to every aspect of their work. As an aspect of subjectivity, ideology is contested and commonly inconsistent, arising from multiple forces within different social experiences and histories. Ideological perspectives – and the resulting opinions – derive from and are structured by social class position, as well as factors such as sexuality, disability, ‘race’, gender, ‘nation’ and religion. Ideologies arise substantially from individual and group histories and experiences of material, social and economic relations and conditions. Management in Education 28(4) For Marx, ideology is in some respects a distorted consciousness, as his famous phrase from Das Kapital implies: ‘Sie wissen das nicht, aber sie tun es’ (‘they do not know it, but they are doing it’). In Marx’s view it conceals social contradictions and conflict (the class struggle), and it does so in the interests of a dominant class (Larrain, 1979: 48). In this sense, ideology can create ‘false consciousness’ because it fools people into going along with an exploitative and oppressive system, into thinking, for example, that competitive individualism, consumerism and capitalism are ‘natural’. Secondly, Marx (and Lukacs, the Hungarian Marxist) also define, in contrast, a fundamentally positive aspect of ideology, which renders it more akin to ‘true consciousness’. Since consciousness results from material conditions of existence, people’s everyday conditions of living and working: [the] mode of production of material life conditions the social, political and intellectual life process in general . . . [therefore] . . . [i]t is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness (Marx, [1859] 1977). There are two main perceptions of ideology in critical thought. The first is negative, viewing ideology as distorted consciousness. The other is positive, where ideology can be the positive expression of the interests and world-view or weltanschauung of a class-located person or group. Such an ideology would be ‘class-conscious’. Firstly, as a negative concept: However, the issue is complex. There is no complete congruence or agreement between a social class and its ideology (Eagleton, 1991: 100–106): social classes or even social class strata are not homogenous. Furthermore, following Gramsci, the hegemony, or overall dominance of a particular ideology, is strongly contested. There are clashes of opinion; ‘culture wars’ between different ideologies between, for example, competitive individualism on the one hand, and solidaristic collectivism on the other. In the struggle between ideologies, ‘meanings and values are stolen, transformed, appropriated across the frontiers of different classes and groups, surrendered, repossessed, reinflected’ (Eagleton, 1991: 101). The current (Conservative–Liberal Democrat) Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) promotes, for example, ‘purposeful play’ (DFE, 2014: 9). Managers of early years settings looking for the term ‘play’ in the policy may be somewhat assured that as an approach to teaching and learning it is clearly included. On closer inspection some may think that as a term it is appropriated and repossessed, or even stolen as it is surrendered to the achievement agenda that emphasises early reading, phonics, over and above other aspects of early years curriculum. It implies that many variations of ‘play’ are not purposeful, but many practitioners may well be asking whose purpose is critical in the idea of ‘purposeful play’: the child’s or the teacher’s? Others, such as Wood (2010), may argue that since the term ‘play’ is often used in a naive way, it needs to be more critically interrogated: . . . ideology may be conceived in eminently negative terms as a critical concept which means a form of false consciousness or necessary deception which somehow distorts men’s [sic] understanding of social reality [so that] the cognitive value of ideas affected by ideology is called into question’ (Larrain, 1979: 13–14). Play has been credited with romantic, spiritual and existentialist dimensions: children have inner power and potential which can be realised and revealed through play. [ . . . ] The notion of play as freedom begs two questions: from what, and from whom, are children free, and what are they free to do? (Wood, 2010: 14–15). Ideology as true or false consciousness Robertson and Hill Nonetheless, the complexity of the nature of ideology should not mask the link between social class (complex though that notion is) and class-consciousness – in other words, the material basis of ideology. Equality and inequality There are different sets of responses by managements and by education workers – teachers, teaching assistants, nursery nurses – to the inequalities we have in our early years settings and schools and society. One is to flatly deny inequality is a problem, to see it as ‘only natural’, or perhaps even desirable. Some policy makers may see it this way, believing that large inequalities are not a problem for societies. For example, the Thatcherite Conservatives, originally responsible for many current school reforms, starting with their Education Reform Act of 1988, deliberately widened social class inequalities in Britain (Hill, 2004, 2006a), and New Labour’s Peter Mandelson famously declared that he was ‘extremely relaxed’ about the superrich getting richer (Rentoul, 2013). Others do see there is a problem. The recent best-selling phenomenon by Thomas Picketty, Capitalism in the Twenty-First Century (2014), is a critique of hugely increasing inequalities of income and wealth under neoliberal capitalism, and Dave Hill’s edited Immiseration Capitalism and Education: Austerity, Resistance and Revolt (2013) examines neoliberal and neoconservative education, and wider social, employment, economic and fiscal policies in England, the USA, Ireland, Greece and Turkey, critiquing their impacts. The 2009 book The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better (Wilkinson and Pickett, 2009) shows that social ills, such as mental illness and rates of other illnesses, teenage pregnancy, bullying, violence, murder, and general unhappiness, result from and are statistically linked with high levels of social inequality. In countries, for example Japan, Finland, Sweden and Norway, where there is more equality between different groups of people, children’s educational achievements are also higher and all social ills are lower. In countries such as the UK and the USA, where there are persisting and increasing inequalities between different groups of people, between different (gendered and ‘raced’) social classes and social class strata, the levels of education attainment are lower than those in the more equal countries. Responding to inequalities There are different ways, different ideological responses, to this high level and increasing inequality. Managers and leaders of early years settings have a duty to develop their own context-specific responses and solutions to the ways in which these societal problems are evident in their settings; these responses can be grouped within the following three types: Conforming – maintaining the rise of inequalities: (1) the neoliberal and (2) the conservative way; 169 Reforming – reducing many inequalities: (3) the liberal-progressive and (4) social-democratic way; Transforming – identifying and removing the reasons and obstacles that cause inequalities: (5) critical pedagogy and (6) the socialist/Marxist way. These are, of course, ideal types (Hill, 2001b). Government policy is influenced by long-term ideology and by short-term electoralism, and parties in government comprise within their ranks different ideologies. Thus, the Conservative Party includes neoliberals and neoconservatives, and, in the past, (‘Old’) Labour included social democrats and socialists, but now Labour includes neoliberals and neoconservatives as well and very few Marxists. 1. A neoliberal believes that competitive individualism is ‘only natural’ and, indeed, beneficial to society’s productivity and profit, that it should be developed in schools and universities among children and students, and within the country at large. It is actually, in a way, meritocratic; it does not worry whether the successful are black, white, straight/LGBT, men or women; as long as they are successful. Four and five year old children in Reception classes are routinely grouped according to their ‘ability’ to decode phonics (Robertson, 2007) and the implicit (or explicit) competition between these different ‘ability groups’ is seen as motivating and ‘natural’. So there is to an extent a belief in meritocracy, in equal opportunities, but this increased opportunity is to become ‘top dog’ in a society that is rapidly becoming more and more unequal. For its liberal and its social-democratic and its socialist/Marxist critics, wider neoliberal economic policies (such as privatisation, anti-trade union legislation, cutting benefits, cutting public expenditure) and education policies (such as marketisation, so-called ‘parental choice’, and the detachment of schools from democratically elected local authorities with Academies and Free School being put into private hands) actually work to suffocate or inhibit equal opportunities (Hill, 2006b). 2. A conservative approach lauds belief in tradition, hierarchy, elites, a ‘traditional’ version of middle class sexual morality and family structures. It is against both socialist egalitarianism and liberal permissiveness and child-centredness, believing in ‘order’, deference, ‘natural’ inequalities and hierarchy. Within this, there is sometimes a sense of ‘noblesse oblige’, for example, ex-Conservative prime minister Harold Macmillan (Freedland, 2013) and his concern at privatisation as ‘selling off the family silver’. Neoconservatism has some differences with neoliberalism, the former believing in order and control, the latter believing in ‘freedom’ from control. The genius of Thatcherism is that she married the two together, neoconservatism providing the ‘repressive state apparatuses’ of surveillance, inspection and policing, to ensure the 170 operation of ‘the free market’. This is encapsulated in the title of Andrew Gamble’s book The Free Economy and the Strong State (1994). 3. A liberal-progressive way is to look for and work towards tolerance, mutual respect and multiculturalism, to develop empathy and to treat people with dignity. It is one way that advances social justice and reduces inequalities caused by institutional racism, sexism, homophobia and discrimination. This type of approach works at the interpersonal level. Liberal-progressive attempts to reform individual children’s educational experiences might include books that reflect the diversity of home languages, or persona or diversity dolls (Srinivasan and Cruz, 2014) and posters that ensure that different ethnic groups are represented, or circle time activities that promote respect for all. Marxist critiques of Liberal-Progressivism, while welcoming reforms, are that it fails to recognise the need for wider structural changes in the wider economy and society; that there is little dignity in gross economic inequality. 4. A social-democratic way is to engage in reforms, with some income redistribution, and to use positive discrimination policies. Examples are SureStart and Children’s Centres, Education Maintenance Allowances, Free School Meals (in some areas) for all children who want them, and breakfast clubs. Teachers and managers of early years settings who see the need for these reforms – and arguably a majority do – aim to reduce the levels of injustice and structural discrimination. In broader terms this type of approach works at the level of reforming the existing (capitalist) society and its structures, such as schools, the welfare benefit system and the taxation system. This approach is not transformative; it is happy with and seeks to manage capitalism better, to reform it and to regulate it rather than replace it. 5. A fifth approach is what is widely known among educators in the USA as critical pedagogy (see Hill, 2009). This approach, drawing on educators such as Paolo Freire (e.g. 1972), Peter McLaren (prior to his current Marxist phase, since the 1990s, see below), Henry Giroux, Antonia Darder and Joe Kincheloe, urges teachers and educators (and other workers, such as media workers) to develop a critique of the way capitalist society works, to expose racism, sexism, homophobia, and discrimination against the disabled and against the poor. Thus ‘critique’ becomes an important word in concepts and practice. In early years settings teachers would see children’s experiences through this lens of criticality and as part of their families’ and communities’ experiences. The influential Reggio Emila approach, developed in Northern Italy soon after the Second World War in the wake of Nazism and Fascism in Italy, was established on the values of working with the whole community, for the good of all (Rinaldi, Management in Education 28(4) 2005). The Rights Respecting Schools Awards by UNICEF (2009) can work towards critical pedagogy; they are based on the Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNICEF, 1989). Critical Pedagogical approaches vary, but generally they come from the tradition known in the USA as ‘radical democracy’, which is in global and UK terms a radical, leftwing variant of Social Democracy, aiming at transforming society and people, but within a capitalist system. 6. A sixth and final approach to inequalities in schooling is the Marxist or socialist one. The words ‘socialist’ and ‘Marxist’ (and, indeed, ‘Communist’) are, in different contexts and countries, used sometimes interchangeably. With regard to education, the current principal exponent of a Marxist critical pedagogy is Peter McLaren (for example McLaren, 2005; McLaren and Farahmandpur, 2005). In the USA this approach is known as ‘revolutionary critical pedagogy’ or ‘critical revolutionary pedagogy’. This approach welcomes the redistributive and positive discrimination reforms of the social-democratic approach, as are evident in some of New Labour’s education policies since 1997 (see Hill, 2006b; Tomlinson, 2005 for an analysis of New Labour’s contradictory and competing ideologies). This approach also welcomes the liberal-progressive developments and radical democratic forms of critical pedagogy, with their stress on tolerance, mutual understanding, dignity, compassion and seeing each other’s points of view. But Marxists see these as not going far enough. Marxists call for not only the critique of racism and sexism and homophobia and other forms of structural and widespread discrimination, but unlike social democrats, and many critical pedagogues and critical educators, Marxists work towards replacing capitalism, rather than managing it more fairly; and replacing it with socialism. The critique of a capitalist society is that its key aim is to maximise profits – whatever the crippling human, social or environmental damage. It privileges greed, consumerism and ultra-individualism. Marxist writers in Britain, such as Dave Hill (2010; Hill and Boxley, 2007) and Terry Wrigley (2003, 2006) attempt to develop policy and programmes for socialist education, and writers such as Mike Cole (2008), Mike Cole and Sara Motta (2013) and Peter McLaren and Mike Cole (2014) refer to what they see as socialist models of education in Venezuela, for example. The translation of ideology into action is by no means assured or straightforward for any of the models presented above (Robertson, 2009). Much policy is short-term, or responds to electoral considerations, or to international economic events. Yet all policies are fundamentally related to ideologies (Hill, 2001a, 2001b). Whenever the ideas and values defined by a particular ideology result in a certain form of action, then the power of ideology is realised. Robertson and Hill Conclusion: implications for leadership and management Since the 1870 Education Act, the age of compulsory schooling in the UK has been set at five years (Stephens, 1999). The development of early years education in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland has been a patchwork of different approaches and pedagogies, arising from different ideological perspectives, often bridging the optional preschool or nursery (‘kindergarten’) provision and compulsory primary education. The first kindergarten in England was opened in 1851. It was based on the principles of Friedrich Froebel, the ‘Father of Kindergarten’, and stressed the role of education in combating poverty and rescuing the urban poor – and ‘play’. At this time the majority of young children did not attend any kind of formal early years settings. The wealthy middle class and upper class families employed nurses and governesses (Thane, 2011). Children of working class backgrounds were commonly looked after by their families, typically older siblings or grandmothers, when their mothers went to work. The 1918 Education Act sought to extend nursery education for all children (before the start of statutory schooling) but in particular for those who lived in poverty and in cramped inner city areas. It took many decades, however, and until the late 1990s before there were any consistent and nationally funded efforts to provide for all young children’s early years educational experiences. For older children, the 1944 Education Act introduced free secondary schooling for all. Initially, and until the mid-1960s, it established the tripartite system and the ‘11 plus’ selection exam (selecting pupils for grammar, secondary technical or secondary modern schools). The 1976 Ruskin College speech by Labour Prime Minister James Callaghan came after the international economic crisis of 1973, and the decline in the profitability of British (and indeed, Western) capital and capitalism. Henceforth, education was to serve the economy rather than promoting either the liberal-progressive full-flowering of each child’s individuality and potential, or the social-democratic creation of a more socially just society. For early years education, historically, there has been very little government intention to provide for it (separate from health and welfare provision) except when women’s work was needed during the Second World War (Thane, 2011). Equally, there has been little intervention in the provision until in the late 20th century when the field of early childhood education and care (ECEC) was established together with the agenda for ‘school effectiveness’. This was a direct result of a neoliberal, global drive to increase economic competition and competitiveness. Mothers were now required to work and to increase the labour force. Children needed state-run care as their grandmothers were no longer available for this job; either they lived too far away or were in work themselves. Older siblings were in school themselves. From 1997 to 2010, the education policies of the New Labour government can be seen in some respects as continuing social-democratic education policies, committed to extending equal opportunities. There were some positive 171 innovations in that their policies were also committed to recognising ‘early years’ as an important stage in education. They developed and resourced Children’s Centres and promoted ‘Every Child Matters’. The policy Curriculum Guidance for the Foundation Stage (DfEE, 2000) was, to a small degree, more oriented towards the ways in which young children learn and recognised learning outdoors as an important part of young children’s learning. At the same time, however, the Department of Education also introduced different levels of qualifications, and different levels of pay. Teachers with Qualified Teacher Status (QTS) were paid more than those with the graduate-entry level qualification, Early Years Professional Status (EYPS). In 2014 a new Early Years Teacher Status was developed, and largely to replace the EYPS. This is another non-QTS route into teaching children up to five years, and again it is predicted that pay levels not be as high as with teachers with QTS. ‘Childcare markets’, as well as the marketisation of other social welfare provision, became a growing phenomenon between 1997 and 2010. Lloyd (2012) notes how the English childcare market was reinforced by the introduction of the 2006 Childcare Act, and in this respect England was almost unique in Europe: only the Netherlands had passed similar legislation. According to Lloyd: The Act introduced two important innovations: a market facilitation duty for local authorities and a duty to close the gap between the most and the least well-off children through the provision of early years service. [ . . . ] Section 8(3) allows local authorities to act only as ‘providers of last resort’, and restricts their ability to establish new services or expand their own provision in competition with existing good quality provision (Lloyd, 2012: 112). In terms of the theoretical underpinnings that continue to shape pedagogical aspects of early years practice, three trajectories have remained consistent over the years. Firstly, there has been a focus on nurturing children from low socio-economic backgrounds and to compensate for the shortcomings of slums and of parents and families. For example, as already stated above, the 1918 Education Act sought to extend nursery education for all children, but in particular for those who lived in areas of socio-economic deprivation. Margaret and Rachel McMillan’s pioneering work in the 1920s and 1930s emphasised children’s physical health and well-being in the poorest urban areas. Nearly 100 years later these early intentions were followed by the development of Sure Start programmes and Children’s Centres in the late 1990s and early 2000s for socially and economically deprived children. Secondly, a belief that young children learn through play has also been consistent. For example, in the Froebelian tradition, nursery schools tended to advocate the importance of structured play in children’s learning. As more voluntary nursery schools were established, wider dimensions of play together with domestic tasks were also adopted (Whitbread, 1972). After Froebel, Susan Isaacs is often acknowledged as having the greatest influence on the development of play pedagogies in the 20th century (see for example Drummond, 172 2000). The latest version of the early years policy (DFE, 2014) continues to advocate ‘play’, as already discussed, but only within the context of adult-led activity and ensuring that children become ‘ready for school’. Thirdly, a belief in sequential and universal developmental stages has continued to inform early years education. For example, during the Piagetian ‘Plowden Years’ (1965– 1988), child-centred pedagogy in the context of developmentally appropriate practices has been influential. As a theoretical frame, ‘developmentally appropriate practices’ have been more recently rejected, and following from James and Prout (1997), a number of writers have advocated postdevelopmental theories of early years education (Bredekamp, 1991; Broadhead et al., 2010; File, 2012; Wood, 2010). These writers focus on the ‘socially developing child’ (James et al., 1998) rather than on the ‘universal child’ whose progress can be mapped out in universal, linear stages. In spite of these theoretical developments, the latest EYFS policy (DFE, 2014) continues to advocate tightly defined developmental stages. For example by the age of 40–60 months it now wants to ensure that the majority of children: . . . read and understand simple sentences. They use phonic knowledge to decode regular words and read them aloud accurately. They also read some common irregular words. They demonstrate understanding when talking with others about what they have read. In 2010, when the Conservative–Liberal coalition government won the election, a more Radical Right, neoliberal emphasis on ‘back to basics’ and ‘traditional’ subjects was soon promoted. Competition, increased privatisation, diversity and hierarchy in schooling were key drives for all educational developments. Payler and Wood (2014) offer decisive and urgent suggestions for the field of ECEC in England and Wales that were developed in collaboration with two professional organisations, TACTYC (Training, Advancement and Co-operation in teaching young children) and British Educational Research Association (BERA) Early Years SIG (Special Interest Group). One of their key recommendations is to: Ensure that all EY [early years] practitioners have a core understanding of social inequalities and cultural differences, and their impact on families and that they are able to look at the world from a parent’s point of view, whilst still maintaining fully professional relationships that allow them to carry out safeguarding function (Payler and Wood, 2014: 6). Payler and Wood’s thoughts, combined with the concerns identified in this article, serve well in raising new questions for the leadership and management of early years settings: What would count as ‘core understanding’ of social inequalities and cultural differences in your setting? How could the children, their families and communities contribute to this understanding in the 21st century? Management in Education 28(4) Do cultural and social class differences impact on young children’s participation, and if they do, how? How can the worlds of children, parents and professionals, and their different points of view, be integrated into practice and pedagogy? Do parents see invisible barriers between them and their children’s teachers? Do teachers actively contribute to the raising of these barriers – and if so, how? Who is well placed in the early years setting to unravel some answers? Do all practitioners in the setting work towards a genuine partnership with families and communities, avoiding a deficit model where practitioners are seen as ‘experts’ and parents as ‘junior partners’? How can settings ensure that the early years expert in a leadership role has a QTS? Can management review pay and conditions of all teachers (those with QTS and those with non-QTS teacher status) and work towards parity? How can the setting become a family and community hub for services? 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Dave Hill is Research Professor in Education at Anglia Ruskin University. Chapter 2 The Origins of Political Parties in Britain: Consensus or Conflict? The Situation in Britain Today There are currently three main parties in British politics—the Conservative Party, the Labour Party and the Liberal Democrats—and since the general election of May 2010, the country has had a coalition government comprising two of these parties: the Conservatives led by David Cameron and the Liberal Democrats led by Nick Clegg. As the leader of the largest party in the House of Commons, with the Conservatives having 306 seats in May 2010, David Cameron is the prime minister, with Nick Clegg acting as his deputy. As the role of the Crown diminished and that of parliament became more powerful in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, it proved necessary to foster the growth of political parties so that the process of governing, and of carrying on the business of opposition, could be organized in a fairly systematic way. Without a degree of party discipline it would be quite impossible, even for a government that had secured widespread electoral support, to be certain of getting all its legislation through the House of Commons and the House of Lords. When Robert Peel’s Conservative government decided in 1846 to repeal the Corn Laws, making bread cheaper and, or so it was hoped, within the purchasing power of the poor by the complete removal of import duties on grain, the effect was also to alienate the diehard protectionists in the Conservative Party; and it was the rising C. Chitty, New Labour and Secondary Education, 1994–2010 © Clyde Chitty 2013 8 New Labour and Secondary Education politician Benjamin Disraeli who made a famous speech in the House of Commons in January 1846 articulating the view that loyalty to party must always be paramount: Let men stand by the principle by which they rise, right or wrong. I make no exception. . . . Do not, because you see a great personage giving up his opinions—do not cheer him on. . . . Above all, maintain the line of demarcation between parties, for it is only by maintaining the independence and integrity of party that you can maintain the integrity of public men—and the power and influence of Parliament itself. (Quoted in Blake, 1966, p. 227) Even so, and despite Disraeli’s strong warning, it has always been true that the main political parties at Westminster are themselves virtual coalitions, with the ministers and MPs who adopt a particular party label often disagreeing among themselves about key aspects of party policy. Indeed, there have been interesting occasions when politicians from opposing parties have campaigned together in support of a particular cause. The meetings leading up to the referendum on Britain’s membership of the European Economic Community (or Common Market), held on June 5, 1975, involved some surprising, if only temporary, alliances between erstwhile political “enemies.” Rallies held by the Coalition for Europe were addressed by Edward Heath, until February 1975—when he was replaced by Margaret Thatcher—leader of the Conservative Party; Jeremy Thorpe, the leader of the Liberal Party; and Roy Jenkins, until September 1976 home secretary in the Labour government. Prominent politicians campaigning for withdrawal from the EEC included three left-wing secretaries of state in the Labour government: Tony Benn, Michael Foot, and Peter Shore, together with the former Conservative minister Enoch Powell, noted for his strong views on the need to curb black immigration to Britain (see Benn, 1989, pp. 236–387). More recently, the coalition government established in May 2010 held a referendum in May 2011 to decide whether the country should stay with the “first past the post” system of voting—under which the candidate who secures the most votes in a constituency wins—or move over to an alternative vote (AV) system, where, if none of the candidates receives more than 50 percent of the votes, the process begins whereby, however long it takes, the one with the least number of votes is always eliminated and second preferences The Origins of Political Parties in Britain 9 are distributed among the rest—until, eventually, one of the candidates emerges with a clear majority. While the Conservative Party was very much opposed to the AV system and their Liberal Democrat partners were strongly in favor, the Labour Party led by Ed Miliband was split on the issue, with former home secretaries David Blunkett and John Reid prepared to share a platform with David Cameron. It is on these occasions—others include the votes on capital punishment, environmental issues, human rights, the treatment of suspected terrorists, and decisions to go to war—when one realizes that the “line of demarcation” between parties can indeed be blurred and party loyalties can be fractured. * * * It will now be useful to examine briefly the historical origins of each of the three main political parties. It can be argued that only by understanding the nature of their development since the middle of the nineteenth century is it possible to appreciate the principles underpinning their evolving attitudes toward state education—and particularly at the secondary level. * * * The Conservative Party from Peel to the Present Day: From One-Nation Conservatism to New Right Neoliberalism The Conservative Party is also often referred to as the Tory Party— the word “Tory” is believed to derive from the word “Toiridhe” or “Toraidhe,” a term used to describe an Irish supporter of the House of Stuart to which the English monarchs belonged in the seventeenth century. The ancestry of the modern Conservative Party has been variously traced; but it can probably trace its roots back to the emergence of a more clearly defined party system after the passing of the 1832 Reform Act, which began the long process of restructuring the electoral system in the United Kingdom. It is usually claimed that the 10 New Labour and Secondary Education word “Conservative” in its modern, strictly political sense was first used in an article in The Quarterly Review in January 1830: “We are now, as we have always been, decidedly and conscientiously attached to what is called the Tory, and which might with more propriety, be called the Conservative Party” (quoted in Blake, 1985, p. 6). Certainly, by the time Sir Robert Peel had become the acknowledged leader of the Conservative Party in 1835, the label “Conservative” had become one which could be usefully applied to all those ministers and politicians who wished to preserve the institutions of the state against radical innovation. It was, of course, a label that covered a wide range of political attitudes—from steadfast reaction to moderate reformism— but before a general election held in January 1835, Peel had taken the unprecedented step of issuing the Tamworth Manifesto of December 1834, which was an attempt to clarify the official policy of the party which he now led in the House of Commons. The publication of this document—recognized at the time as an important constitutional innovation—clearly afforded Peel the opportunity to inform his 586 constituents of the attitude of his government to some of the main political issues of the day. It opened by making it clear that Peel was making a plea to “that great and intelligent class of society . . . which is much less interested in the contentions of party than in the maintenance of good order and the cause of good government.” Peel said he accepted the Reform Bill of 1832 as “a final and irrevocable settlement of a great constitutional question” and pledged himself and his colleagues to carry out “a careful review of all institutions, both civil and ecclesiastical,” which would entail “the correction of proved abuses and the redress of real grievances.” The Tory Quarterly Review was quick to recognize the constitutional significance of this set of electoral promises. An editorial published in April 1835 argued that: “in former times, such a proceeding would have been thought derogatory and impugned as unconstitutional, and would have been both; but the new circumstances in which the Reform Bill has placed the Crown, by making its choice of Ministers immediately and absolutely dependent on the choice of the several constituencies . . . have clearly rendered such a course of action not merely expedient but necessary” (The Quarterly Review, Vol. 53, April 1835, quoted in Briggs, 1959, p. 273). In the 1985 edition of his book The Conservative Party from Peel to Thatcher, Conservative peer Robert Blake stressed the continuity of the The Origins of Political Parties in Britain 11 Party’s social and political attitudes from the early nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth: The person who was a Conservative of the more thoughtful sort in Peel’s day, his (sic) outlook, prejudices and passions, would have been quite recognizable to his counterpart who voted for Winston Churchill in the 1950s. There was a similar belief that Britain, especially England, was usually in the right. There was a similar faith in the value of diversity rather than uniformity, of independent institutions, of the rights of property; a similar distrust of centralizing officialdom, of the efficacy of government (except in the preservation of order and national defence), of Utopian panaceas and of “doctrinaire” intellectuals; a similar dislike of abstract ideas, high philosophical principles and sweeping generalizations. There was a similar readiness to accept cautious empirical piecemeal reform, but only if a Conservative government said it was needed. There was a similar reluctance to look far ahead or worry too much about the future; a similar scepticism about human nature; a similar belief in original sin, and in the limitations of political and social amelioration; a similar scepticism about the whole notion of “equality”. (Blake, 1985, p. 359) Professor Denis Lawton has pointed out that it can, in fact, be misleading to think of postwar Conservatism as essentially “ideology-free,” with, at least until the 1970s, a dislike for “abstract ideas” and “sweeping generalizations.” In his view, this often meant no more than “a preference for the status quo,” which “can be just as much an ideological position as is a desire to change or reform institutions” (Lawton, 1994, p. 3). And even this fundamental characteristic of postwar Conservatism was to change when Margaret Thatcher assumed the leadership of the Conservative Party in February 1975 and set about transforming its image as the “common-sense” party, reluctant to embrace idealistic visions or radical solutions to social and economic problems. Robert Blake has suggested that Benjamin Disraeli, who became the effective leader of the Conservative Party in the House of Commons in 1849, was in many ways the real founder of modern Conservatism, not only in the field of party organization, but also “in the far more important field of political ideas.” In Blake’s view, “it cannot be wholly accidental or erroneous that so many modern Conservatives look back on Disraeli as their prophet, high priest and philosopher rolled into 12 New Labour and Secondary Education one” (Blake, 1985, p. 3). But, once again, one has to bear in mind that Blake was writing at a time when the Conservative Party had not yet come to embrace many of the free-market values more usually associated with the nineteenth-century Manchester school of radical liberals led by industrialists like Richard Cobden and John Bright. Disraeli believed in the necessity of gaining working-class support by stressing the identity of interests of different classes and groups in society and, where possible, ameliorating the obvious differences between them in wealth, income, and lifestyle. He had used his 1845 novel Sybil or The Two Nations to deplore the existence of “two nations” in Britain—the rich and the poor—“between whom there is no intercourse and no sympathy; who are as ignorant of each other’s habits, thoughts and feelings, as if they were dwellers in different zones, or inhabitants of different planets; who are formed by a different breeding, are fed by different food, are ordered by different manners, and are not governed by the same laws” (Sybil, Book 2, Chapter 5), And Disraeli used a speech delivered at a Conservative banquet in Edinburgh in 1867 to return to his theme that the Conservative or Tory Party had to see itself as “the National Party of England”: In a progressive country, change is constant; and the great question is not whether you should resist change which is inevitable, but whether that change should be carried out in deference to the manners, the customs, the laws and the traditions of a people; or whether it should be carried out in deference to various abstract principles and arbitrary and general doctrines. The one is a national system; the other . . . is a philosophic system. He went on: Now I have always considered that the Tory Party is the National Party of England. It is not formed of a combination of oligarchs and philosophers who practise on the sectarian prejudices of a small portion of the people. It is formed of all classes, from the highest to the most homely; and it upholds a series of institutions that are in theory, and ought to be in practice, an embodiment of the national requirements and the security of the national rights. . . . Whenever the Tory Party degenerates into an oligarchy, it becomes unpopular; whenever the national institutions do not fulfil their original intention, the Tory Party becomes odious; but when the people are led by their natural leaders, and when, The Origins of Political Parties in Britain 13 by their united influence, the national institutions fulfil their original intention, the Tory Party is always triumphant, and then, under Providence, will secure the prosperity and the power of the country. (Quoted in Blake, 1966, p. 482) After the Second World War, a significant body of opinion within the Conservative Party believed that it was time to revive Disraeli’s “One-Nation” approach and to emphasize that society was not just a random collection of competing individuals. (As we shall see later in the chapter, this was a time when a large section of the political class in Britain was prepared to accept the basic assumptions of the newly created welfare state). Just before the Conservative Party conference in 1950, nine young Conservative MPs, with the official blessing of the party, published a book of essays covering a wide range of domestic policy issues. Having adopted the title of “One-Nation Conservatives” as their collective name, it seemed sensible to all those present at the planning meetings to call the book One Nation: A Tory Approach to Social Problems. And in his Foreword to the book, R. A. Butler, very much associated with the 1944 Education Act, picked up the theme that it was one of the Conservative Party’s main tasks to promote the nation’s sense of itself as a unity. The party, he insisted, had “a long and honourable record in the field of Social Service”, which refuted the claim of the postwar Attlee government that “the Labour Party had a monopoly in this sphere.” Admittedly, the Conservatives had lost successive general elections in 1945 and 1950; but their fortunes would revive, “provided they stayed true to Disraeli’s message” (Butler, 1950, p. 7). Writing in 1997, Ian Gilmour, a member of the One Nation Group of Conservatives from 1962 to 1992 and a minister in the cabinets of both Edward Heath and Margaret Thatcher, argued that a large section of the party was wrong to turn its back on the concept of “OneNation” after Mrs. Thatcher defeated Edward Heath in the leadership election of February 1975. Although he accepted a post in the Foreign Office in the Thatcher government of 1979, he admits that “he never thought for a moment that the Thatcher Experiment would last,” and when he was sacked in September 1981 he told the waiting reporters outside 10 Downing Street that “the Government was heading for the rocks.” In his coauthored 1997 book Whatever Happened to the Tories: The Conservative Party since 1945, he reported that Mrs. Thatcher had once admitted to him that she did not really know what “One-Nation” 14 New Labour and Secondary Education meant, and that, on another occasion, she had made the astonishing claim that “One-Nation Conservatives” were really “No-Nation Conservatives” (Gilmour and Garnett, 1997, p. 1). Margaret Thatcher came to power in May 1979 determined to change Britain. In her view, it had become an uncompetitive society in which the larger unions had too much power; too many adults were dependent on welfare benefits; and there were not enough people with a stake in the future of capitalism. Privatization and the breakup of state monopolies were to play a major role in her program to secure the regeneration of Britain, and the implementation of this program also necessitated a major change in the political philosophy of the Conservative Party. This was not, of course, a one-person crusade; and in her attempt to refashion the party as one with radical neoliberal ideas, Mrs. Thatcher had the support and encouragement of a number of enthusiastic devotees of the free market—notably Sir Keith Joseph and Alfred Sherman with whom she had founded the right-wing think tank the Centre for Policy Studies, in August 1974. Indeed, it has been argued by at least one influential commentator (see Young, 1989, pp. 87, 100) that Mrs. Thatcher did not enjoy a reputation as “an accomplished theoretician” in the early stages of her career, and that it was “entirely due to men like Joseph and Sherman” that the future leader came to “educate herself in liberal economics after 1974.” It is certainly true that Keith Joseph played a very significant role in the development of the new prime minister’s political and social philosophy in the late 1970s. He had been at the Department of Health and Social Security (DHSS) in Edward Heath’s 1970–1974 administration and might himself have stood for the leadership of the Conservative Party in February 1975 had he not been widely criticized for a controversial speech he delivered to the Birmingham Conservative Association in October 1974 in which he argued that the nation was moving toward inevitable degeneration on account of the high and rising proportion of children being born to mothers “least fitted to bring children into the world” (see Chitty, 2007, p. 100). In a speech delivered to the Oxford Union in December 1975, Joseph argued that the Conservative Party was now “obsessed with the middle ground of politics.” This was, in fact, “the lowest common denominator obtained from a calculus of assumed electoral expediency, defined not by reference to popular feeling, but by splitting the difference between The Origins of Political Parties in Britain 15 Labour’s position and that of the Conservatives.” The disastrous effect of this continuing adjustment by Conservative politicians in what they fondly believed to be the pursuit of votes could be described as “the Left-wing ratchet.” Possessing no coherent philosophical position of their own, Conservatives felt obliged to make progressive and apparently unending concessions to a Left-dominated consensus. And this resulted in their adoption of policies favored by the Left, which, in turn, had the unhealthy effect of steadily extending the boundaries of the state (Joseph, 1976, p. 21). It was now time to proclaim the supremacy of the market; in another speech, entitled “Moral and Material Benefits of the Market Order,” delivered to the Bow Group of Conservatives in Norwich in July 1976, Joseph stated categorically that: The blind, unplanned, uncoordinated wisdom of the Market is overwhelmingly superior to the well-researched, rational, systematic, well-meaning, cooperative, science-based, forward-looking, statistically respectable plans of governments, bureaucracies and international organizations. He went on: The market system is the greatest generator of national wealth known to Mankind: coordinating and fulfilling the diverse needs of countless individuals in a way which no human mind or minds could even comprehend, without coercion, without direction, without bureaucratic interference. (Joseph, 1976, pp. 57, 62) The philosophy of the 1970s neoliberals, also often referred to as the New Right, can be seen as an expression of the new politics which emerged in both Britain and America in that decade in response to the major world economic recession that erupted in 1973–75, marking the decisive end of what was probably the longest and most rapid period of continuous expansion that world capitalism had ever enjoyed. While it would be wrong to see this recession as having a single cause, its onset was clearly marked by a quadrupling of oil prices by OPEC (Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries) in 1973. It can be argued that it was indeed this economic recession of 1973–75 that fundamentally altered the map of British politics in the mid-1970s and provided the necessary conditions for the widespread dissemination of right-wing ideas. For Professor Andrew Gamble, writing in 1988, there 16 New Labour and Secondary Education were certain important beliefs which were common to all adherents of neoliberal or New Right philosophy: What all strands within the New Right share . . . is the rejection of many of the ideas, practices, and institutions which have been so characteristic of Social Democratic regimes in Europe and also of the New Deal and the Great Society Programmes in the United States. The New Right is radical because it seeks to undo much that has been constructed in the last sixty years. New Right thinkers question many of the assumptions which have become accepted for the conduct of public policy, while New Right politicians have sought to build electoral and policy coalitions which challenge key institutions and key policies. . . . These thinkers and politicians are all fierce critics of Keynesian policies of economic management and high public expenditure on welfare. But these New Right and neo-liberal politicians are also renowned as advocates of national discipline and strong defence. . . . To preserve a free society and a free economy, the authority of the state has to be restored. (Gamble, 1988, pp. 27–28) There is, then, a paradox at the very heart of Thatcherite Far Right philosophy; and this is why, for Gamble, the phrase which best summarizes the doctrine of Keith Joseph and his associates (and the hegemonic project which it inspired) is: “Free Economy / Strong State.” It will be one of the aims of this book to trace the development of neoliberal ideas after Margaret Thatcher’s downfall in November 1990 and to ascertain the extent to which they directly influenced New Labour education policy after 1994. The Liberal Tradition since the Mid-Victorian Age: Liberals, Classical Liberals and Social Liberals It is fair to say that the history of the Liberals / Liberal Democrats has been relatively neglected by academic historians and political commentators; there are a number of pretty obvious reasons why this has been so. More than a hundred years have passed since the great Liberal electoral landslide of January 1906, when Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman’s Liberal Party secured 377 seats in the House of Commons—and The Origins of Political Parties in Britain 17 a majority of 84 over all other parties combined. The last Liberal prime minister, David Lloyd George, lost power in 1922; and the Liberal Party ceased to be a major force in British politics after the electoral debacle of October 1924, when the party gained a mere 40 seats. From now on, the Liberals were no longer able to harness a rising working-class political consciousness to their fading party; as the recently formed Labour Party grew in power and influence, the Liberal Party became, in the words of Chris Cook’s Short History of the Liberal Party, “the Cinderella of British politics” (Cook, 2010, p. 1). If there was a moment during the reign of Queen Victoria (1837– 1901) when the Liberal Party can be said to have been born, it was probably on June 6, 1859 at a famous meeting in Willis’s Rooms—a fairly substantial meeting place on St. James’s Street in London—when a large group of leading Whigs, Peelites and radicals combined to get rid of the minority government of the Earl of Derby and Benjamin Disraeli. It will be worth considering the characteristics and outlook of each of these groups in turn. The Whigs had shared with the Tories (already featured in our section on the Conservative Party) the distinction of being the main political party in Britain in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the term “Whig” probably deriving from the word “Whiggamore,” which was a contemptuous nickname given to the Scots Presbyterians of the seventeenth century. (Their attack on royalist forces in Edinburgh in the middle years of the seventeenth century was known as “the Whiggamore Raid”). Unlike the majority of Tories, the Whigs represented both the landed aristocracy and the moneyed middle class at the time of the Industrial Revolution. They spoke on behalf of industrialists, manufacturers, and religious dissenters for political and social change that would further their cause, but their reform program was extremely limited and successive Reform Acts in 1832 and 1867, which extended the franchise, also reduced their influence in the House of Commons. Within the Liberal Party, they constituted, in Chris Cook’s phrase (Cook, 2010, p. 2), “an exclusive caste in the upper reaches of political society,” and their dominant position in the House of Lords meant that they were able to hold high office in a number of Liberal administrations. From the 1850s onwards, they had to acknowledge the growing influence of the Peelites who owed much of their political philosophy—amounting to a more moderate and consensual form of 18 New Labour and Secondary Education Toryism—to the reforming agenda of Sir Robert Peel who had died in a riding accident on Constitution Hill in 1850. It is, of course, interesting to note that William Gladstone should have seen himself as a Peelite on his journey from being a reactionary Tory and High Churchman to becoming leader of the Liberal Party in 1868—and, in the same year, prime minister for the first time. But, in the long term, it was the growing number of radicals, rather than the Peelites, who were to pose the more serious threat to the passivity and essential conservatism of the Whigs. These were, in a sense, the most “militant” and the most assertive of the individuals who made up the new Liberal Party; and the Group’s most dynamic element was the nonconformist manufacturing interest. It was, in fact, from constituencies in Lancashire, Yorkshire, and the industrial Midlands that these radical dissenters and businessmen were chiefly returned. In their determination to challenge the existing order in both church and state and to put forward demands for the extension of the franchise and for the promotion of a form of state education, they were viewed with great suspicion by both the Whig hierarchy and the Whigs’ allies among the large number of “moderate” Liberals, all of whom found the radicals’ enthusiasm for change frankly disturbing. From the very beginning, then, the Liberal Party was composed of many diverse elements, but it is important to stress that the balance of forces within the party, both at Westminster and in the country at large, did not remain static, and that, within a short space of time, differences within the party were to centre on differing conceptions of the nature of the state, foreshadowing the scene with which we are familiar today. For many Liberals involved in politics in the closing decades of the nineteenth century, the radical program of unrestricted individualism was failing to take account of the needs of a rapidly changing industrial society. And these “Social Liberals” developed ideas on the merits of “collectivism” which were to exert a powerful influence on the policies of the pioneering Liberal administration elected in 1906. Richard Grayson has argued that, for many Social Liberals, the key figure to be revered is the Liberal economist William Beveridge (1879–1963), whose famous report on Social Insurance and Allied Services, published at the height of the Second World War, identified five great giants that had to be slain on the “road to social reconstruction”: want, disease, ignorance, squalor, and idleness. According to The Origins of Political Parties in Britain 19 Grayson, “there is a narrative popular with “Social Liberals,” which runs along the lines of the Liberals under David Lloyd George establishing the welfare state after the election victory of 1906, with radical enhancements made following the Beveridge Report of 1942—a narrative that, while accepting that many important reforms were implemented by a Labour government, effectively makes Lloyd George and Beveridge “the true founders of the modern Welfare State” (Grayson, 2009, p. 53). This version of events clearly overlooks the extent to which the National Health Service was imagined only in outline by Beveridge, with detailed planning carried out by officials who had learned from the Emergency Medical Service—and the fact that it was actually implemented by the Labour Party after 1945, driven by Aneurin Bevan. And it also needs to be acknowledged that the declared aim of the Beveridge Report was not, in fact, security though a welfare state, but security by cooperation between the state and the individual. It seems to be generally agreed that there are two dominant ideological traditions within the Liberal Democrats (the name of the party since the merger in March 1988 with the Social Democrats who had broken away from the Labour Party in March 1981): classical liberalism and social liberalism. A particular feature of an edited collection of essays published in 2009 (Hickson, 2009) is the emphasis placed on a third group within the modern Liberal Party: the so-called centrists, but, for our purposes, it will be sufficient to concentrate on the two distinct ideological perspectives that have underpinned mainstream Liberal thinking for over a century. And it is probably fair to say that it is the classical liberals, with their core belief in the effectiveness of the private sector, who have been in the ascendant in recent years, with the key text for understanding their philosophy, The Orange Book: Reclaiming Liberalism, published in 2004 (Marshall and Laws, 2004), provoking much discussion within the party on the nature of “freedom” and the precise role of the state in economic and social affairs. If there can be said to have been a clear social liberal response, it is probably Reinventing the State, published in 2007 (Brack, Grayson, and Howarth, 2007) arguing for a reinvention of the state along localized lines. The Coalition Agreement between the Liberal Democrats and David Cameron’s Conservative Party after the May 2010 general election can possibly be viewed as some sort of “victory” for the classical liberals, and it is interesting to note that one of the chief negotiators 20 New Labour and Secondary Education at that critical time was David Laws, one of the editors of the 2004 Orange Book. * * * The Origins and Principles of the Labour Party: Marxist, Socialist, or Social Democratic? Throughout the...

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