Education is being remade at every level - from nursery to university - and the remaking has a distinct neo-liberal flavour. This blog is a space for the analysis of such change, in Britain and internationally. But we hope it will be more than that. Movements of opposition to the particular kinds of 'reform' being implemented in education are now widespread. On the blog, we hope to give to their experiences, and to the alternative programmes, visions and values that they are seeking to develop.

The Editors: Martin Allen, Jon Duveen, Richard Hatcher, Ken Jones

Culture and Creative Learning

Culture and Creative Learning: a literature review

Ken Jones

This review focuses on debates that have occurred in and around English education since 1944. It tracks a sequence of intense and continuing arguments about the proper meanings of ‘culture’ and ‘creativity’, about their salience to education, and, through education, to wider issues of equality, democracy, economics and emancipation.

Who are the participants in these arguments? In the 30 years after 1944, the review identifies three main currents of thought and practice:

• a cultural conservatism for which tradition and authority are important reference points;

• a progressivism concerned with child-centred learning;

• and a tendency whose belief that ‘culture is ordinary’ led to an insistence that working-class and popular culture should be represented in the classroom.

Michael Fullan’s role in the global privatisation of education policy

 

Michael Fullan is a leading international education consultant who is a key adviser to to the Labour government in Britain and to the Ontario Ministry of Education. In this extract from his article The Global Privatization of Education Policy George Thompson argues that Fullan has significant business connections which stand to gain directly from his reforms. The article was published on November 6 in the Daily Censored, an independent blog and news source based at Sonoma State University, USA. Read it in full at http://dailycensored.com/2009/11/06/the-global-privatization-of-education-policy-lorna-earl-conflict-of-interest-is-the-tip-of-the-iceberg/

For more on education in Ontario visit Education Action: Toronto at http://educationactiontoronto.com/home/

Patterns of conflict in education: France, Italy, England

European Conference on Educational Research, Vienna 2009

Network 23 (Policy Studies and Politics of Education)

Patterns of conflict in education: France, Italy, England[1]

Ken Jones,  Keele University, England

k.w.jones@keele.ac.uk

(Draft paper – Comments welcome)

The course of educational reform in England has been broader, deeper and faster-moving than that of any other country of Western Europe, cutting deeply into what remained, after Thatcherism, of the post-war policy settlement. [i] No sector or strand of education has been unaffected by a programme which ranges from large-scale privatisation to micro-level classroom reform. Yet despite a certain, persistent level of grievance, this is a programme that has not encountered forceful opposition. Teachers’ unhappiness with an assessment regime based on high stakes testing has been well publicised, without being translated into a collective response. Discontent with the government’s programme for ‘academy’ schools – state-funded privately-run institutions – has resulted in a number of local strikes, and in a lively national campaign, but not one conducted on a mass scale. [ii]School and university teachers have taken occasional, limited action over pay – the NUT’s one-day strike in 2008 was the first national strike since 1987. University teachers have fought local campaigns against redundancies (for instance London Metropolitan University 2004 and 2009, Keele 2008) but have not effectively challenged a policy that aims to align higher education with business needs. Among university students, opposition to the imposition of tuition fees was initially strong, but has waned since, with the passing of the 2004 Higher Education Act, fees became law.

Participation and Democratisation in the Local School System

 

Participation and Democratisation in the Local School System

Richard Hatcher

A socialist politics of education comprises three elements: critical analysis of what exists, the elaboration of alternative policies, and a strategy for action. Its object can be divided into two broad themes. The first concerns what we can broadly call the content of education – the curriculum, pedagogy, forms of organisation etc. The second concerns how decisions are made – in other words where power lies in and over the school system. We have no shortage of critical analysis both of the content of current education policy and of the highly centralised, bureaucratic and managerialist way in which policy is devised and imposed, marginalising the voices of teachers, parents, students and citizens. In terms of alternative policies concerning content, we have some ideas about what we are fighting for. But when it comes to our alternative proposals for the democratisation of decision-making, we have little to say.

Local government against local democracy

Local government against local democracy: a case study of a bid for Building Schools for the Future funding for an Academy

Paper given at ‘From Critique to Contestation’, Marxism and Education: Renewing Dialogues XII seminar, Institute of Education, London, 21 November 2009.

Richard Hatcher

‘…mass deliberation in the public realm […] is an absolutely crucial process in a democratic and open society’. (Power Inquiry 2006, p159)

This talk is based on a case study of the progress of Staffordshire County Council’s bid for £100 million Building Schools for the Future (BSF) government funding for Tamworth, including an Academy, during the period 2007 to 2009. Tamworth is a town of some 75,000 inhabitants in Staffordshire local authority, with five 11-18 secondary schools. It was Labour-led until the Conservatives won the county council elections in June 2009.

I have been researching developments in Tamworth since the ‘Hands Off Tamworth Schools’ (HOTS) campaign began in September 2008. HOTS is a parent-led campaign which has published leaflets and policy documents, held several public meetings of up to 100 people, collected hundreds of petition signatures, and won 1848 votes for its six candidates in all six Tamworth wards in the county council elections on June 4 2009, which represented 10% of the total vote.