Dave is in Education Policy Research at University of Manchester. His talk is about education policy research over the last 25 to 30 years and the wrong turn he believes it has taken. In the talk, he is looking at some of the deleterious effects of that wrong turn along with the negative impacts of these policy decisions. The educational reforms which have taken place are not all negative, but form a complex picture. It is complex because of the huge amount of reform which has taken place over the period which he is talking about. Here he will be examining some of the darker elements of the reforms which have happened in the educational sector. www.ragged-online.com

1. Education and the permanent
revolution of reform: A journey to the
dark side
Dave Hall
Manchester Institute of Education
University of Manchester
February 2015.

2. Education and the permanent revolution of reform
• Characterising and analysing the nature of
educational reform and modernisation over
the past thirty years (focus upon schools)
• Examining it effects upon young people,
educational institutions and those work in
them
• Looking to the future and how the
educational project might be re-enchanted
and enlightened

7. The 1970s and the emergence of a new
educational consensus – The New Right and
Education
Set within the context of a wider ‘crisis’ for social democracy and
taking a particular form in education (William Tyndale and
progressivism).
Series of Education Black Papers highlighting:
• Lack of discipline in schools (linked to student unrest in
universities)
• Dangers of progressive education
• Producer capture
Proposals for:
• Competition between schools
• Education vouchers
• Parental control of schools

8. The 1970s and the emergence of a
new educational consensus – Labour
and Education
James Callaghan and the Great Education Debate
"Some parents were expressing their concerns about
whether children were being taught or not because of
the child-centred approach . . . I was also talking to
the Confederation of British Industry . . . they were
complaining about the quality of schools.”
•called into question the wisdom of comprehensive
schooling
•perceptions of falling educational standards
•an education system that was viewed as contributing
to the UK’s economic decline.

9. The new educational consensus
A heady mix of:
•conservatism - (deeply hostile to progressive forms of
education) seeking to control schools, teachers and pupils and
to assert traditional educational values
•Neo-liberalism (markets are THE solution) - enthusiasm for
and/or agnosticism in relation to marketisation. Parental
involvement conceptualised mainly through removing teacher
control and marketised ‘choice’. The private replacing the
public.
•Removing/questioning the common/comprehensive school
•All allied to calls for radical increases in central state
involvement in education

10. The revolution begins: The Education
Reform Act 1988 (1)
The neo-liberal:
•Competition: Schools began operating within competitive
local markets with individual schools competing for pupils.
•Business: Schools set up as individual business units
operating within local markets through the decentralisation
of school finances.
•Consumption and choice: Notions of parental ‘choice’ were
stressed with an emphasis upon the accountability of schools
via performance data linked to national pupil tests (school
league tables appeared and rapidly became highly important
in terms of judging school ‘success’). School diversity
enabling ‘choice’ via the creation of independent state
schools (City Technology Colleges)

11. The revolution begins: The
Education Reform Act 1988 (2)
The neo-conservative:
•Tradition: Schools to teach the ‘right’ knowledge
through the creation of a National Curriculum
centred upon a traditional model
•Control: School performance through national tests
and reform of school inspections via the creation of
OFSTED under the leadership of Chris Woodhead
(enacted in 1992).
•Centralisation of powers and the sidelining of local
authorities (LEAs/LAs)

12. The permanent revolution: New
Labour 1997-2010
Determination not to be ‘outflanked’ by the Conservatives on
education:
•Chris Woodhead remains as Chief Inspector
•Education, education, education=standards, standards,
standards; targets, targets, targets and tests, tests and tests
•Re-doubling of efforts to centrally control school, teacher and
pupil performance via attempted micro-management of
classrooms (Literacy and numeracy strategies)
•The independent state school becomes stronger via
Academies, specialist schools and the denigration of the
comprehensive
•Reform, reform and more reform – Initiativitis, re-
disorganisation and the English global education laboratory
•Eleventh hour mediation via Every Child Matters – be healthy,
stay safe, enjoy and achieve, make a positive contribution,
achieve economic well-being

13. The Coalition
Government 2010-2015

14. The Coalition
Government 2010-2015
•Independent schools are best - Academies,
academies, academies
•Rhetoric of school and teacher autonomy, but
system remains very tightly regulated within
contradictory discourse (real British values,
Secretary of State designating individual texts).
1968 and back to the future.
•Paving the way for privatisation and the
completion of the neo-liberal turn

15. Effects upon teachers,
schools and young people
Schools and education professionals
• Anxiety and stress – high stakes
testing and performance
management (schools in
challenging circumstances)
• De-professionalisation and
autonomy – elites know best
• The cult of leadership
• The endurance of the permanent
revolution and constant change
• Continued undermining of the
remarkably resilient common
school
Young people
•High stakes testing - anxiety and
stress from young age
•Data rich and controlled
environments – surveillance or
security?
•The educational laboratory effect
•The dominance of the
instrumental – 5 A*-C, ABB, 2:1
or 1st
•Education as economic
performance and commodity

16. Moving forward
1968 no longer seems like a
promising basis for educational
reform
•Focus upon teaching and learning
embracing the progressive (e.g.
student voice)
•Surveillance can be counter-
productive
•The creation of a new collaboratively
based teacher professionalism
•Lower the pressure – high stakes
often doesn’t equal rich learning
•Celebrating the common school
•Beware further privatisation
•Less national reform!
Educational reform as a grand
distraction from teaching and
learning
•Schools as businesses – PR,
marketing and loss of talent from
the core activity
•Schools as performance machines
confusing test preparation for
learning
•Continued focus upon structural
reforms deeply misplaced
•Education as economic
performance and international /
political prestige winning device

17. Ongoing Conversation…
Professor David Hall
dave.hall@manchester.ac.uk