neoliberalism and education

7/28/2019 Neoliberalism and Education

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EDU3004 ASSIGNMENT 3: Report &

Presentation; Neoliberalism and Education

The education system within the UK is divided into 3 main stages, PrimaryEducation, Secondary Education and Further or Higher Education (UK

International Student.com, 2012, online), the affect of Neoliberalism can be

seen throughout all stages of education, this paper will look closely at

secondary education as well as Further Education, looking at the slowly

increasing managerial culture within secondary schools as well as the way in

which universities within England are developing and currently being run, the

affects which Neoliberalism has had on both of these stages of education

shall be explored.

Neoliberal policies have exploded across the world over the past 30 yearsand have had a massive impact in the way the education systems in many

countries are run. The Neoliberal policies can been seen to reduce state

subsidization of higher education and to shift the costs towards "the market

and consumers themselves, accountability is also demanded for each

institutes performance, and the role of higher educations within the

economy is emphasized greatly (Neave and Van Vught 1991). Neoliberal

policies have meant that education institutions are now thought of as not

only being embedded in a nation state and national system, but within a

national marketplace (Marginson, and Rhoades, 2002).

There has been a vast amount of different research into Neoliberalism within

education, such studies have focused on the impact of state policy on

universities independence, including the changing relations between national

ministries and higher education institutions (Gornitzka 1999; Kogan and

Hanney 2000; Salter and Tapper 1994). Or other areas such as universities

involvement in and responsiveness to national markets particular focus on

universities entrepreneurial activity in and adaptation to external markets

has been explored heavily (Clark 1998; Slaughter and Leslie 1997; Sporn

1999). It is clear from this research that whatever way you wish to look into

Neoliberalism there are many different views and opinions on the subject,

and for this paper to be able to further explore Neoliberalism the primary

features need to be identified so at to be able to recognize Neoliberalism

within the education system itself. There have been many academics who

have explored Neoliberalism and the work of both Treanor (2003) and

Martinez and Garcia (1997) can be used to identify a number of key

principles within Neoliberalism, this paper identifies the main four as:

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Competition, both within the country and internationally.

The market being of extreme importance and key.

The importance of employability.

Cutting public expenditure by increasing privatisation.

Neoliberalism has come under scrutiny over the past few years, with the

bankruptcy of the Lehman Brothers in 2008 the worlds financial system was

close to collapseand it was debated whether or not Neoliberalism was over,

some, such as Birch & Mykhnenko (2010) questioned the strength and

relevance of Neoliberalism within contemporary society and other academics,

such as George Monbiot (2013) agreed with their views. Despite their fears

that the almost worldwide economic issues would cause Neoliberalism to

slow, or even for some countries to perform a U turn on Neoliberalism as

suggested by Birch and Mykhnenko (2010) and by Monboit (2013) has notseemed happened within higher education in England. This paper actually

argues that we are more Neo-liberal now within education, than we ever

have been before.

Within recent years there have been many changes to Higher Education,

these include; the cap in tuition fees being scrapped and universities now

able to charge nearly three times the amount they were to students due to

"the government transfers much of the cost of courses from the state to

students" (Coughlan, 2010, online). University rankings tables are also ever

more prevalent in the news and even when looking at specific universities,such as the University of Northampton, there are clear signs of Neoliberalism

in marketing of the University such as by calling itself "England's number 1

University for employability" (University of Northampton, 2012, online).

Neoliberal ideals are clearly still very prominent within English universities,

and within government policies to education.

Other educational stages have also not been ignored by this increase in

Neoliberalism, Secondary education has been through a number of reforms

as well,the 1988 Education Reform Act increased Neoliberalism within

schools by stating competition would raise standards; weaker schools wouldgo to the wall and good ones be able to expand, and it was judged to be

good for parents to be able to choose where to send their children

(Government, 1988). There have been other incidents within secondary

schools which leads this paper to believe that Liberalism within secondary

schools as well as within further education is in fact growing, reports done by

the BBC show that An unwelcome bonus culture is creeping into head

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teachers pay" (BBC, 2009) secondary schools are being run more and more

like businesses rather than an educational institute, and performance related

pay schemes have also been introduced such as the Threshold Assessment in

2002 (Chamberlin et al., 2002) showing a clear aim to increase schools

accountability. There are other, even clearer examples of Neoliberalism

within secondary schools, such as the introduction of academies, the

Department for Education (2013) defines academies as schools with a

greater freedom from local authorities, able to develop their own curriculum

and change length of school days, they will also have a sponsor which will

could come from businesses, universities, charities or a faith body, although

the funding may still come from government, the running of these academies

are completely separate from other state funded secondary schools, able to

provide courses which can be aimed more at employability over education.

This paper has put forward the idea that despite the almost global financial

crisis and the scrutiny put against Neoliberalism, both Higher Education and

Secondary Educational setting have become more Neoliberal than ever

before, because of this both schools and teachers have become more

accountable for their students, University students have become more

responsible for the payment of their degrees, and the employability of all

students has been put into question. Whether this is beneficial for society or

those in society remains to be seen, however what is clear is that

Neoliberalism is most likely going to remain a very strong force within the

English Educational system.

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References

BBC (2009) Bonus secondary head suspended, BBC News, 13th May, online

at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/8047700.stm

Birch, K. & Mykhnenko, V. (ed.) (2010) The Rise and Fall of Neo-Liberalism:

The Collapse of an Economic Order?London: Zed Books.

Chamberlin, R., Wragg, T., Haynes, G., Wragg, C., (2002) Performance-

Related Pay and the teaching profession: A review of the literature, Research

Papers in Education, Vol 17:1, pages 31-49

Clark, B.R. (1998). Creating Entrepreneurial Universities: OrganizationalPathways of Transformation. Oxford: Pergamon.

Coughlan, S., (2010) Students face Tuition Fee Rising to 9,000, BBC News,

online, available from http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-11677862

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Gornitzka, A. (1999). Governmental policies and organisational change in

higher education, Higher Education 38(1), 531.

Government, (1988) Education Reform Act 1988, Online, available fromhttp://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1988/40/contents [accessed

06/03/2013]

Kogan, M. and Hanney, S. (2000). Reforming Higher Education. London:Jessica Kingsley Publishers.

Marginson, S., and Rhoades, G., (2002) Beyond national states, markets,

and systems of higher education: A glonacal agency heuristic, HigherEducation vol43, Pages 281309

Martinez, E. & Garcia, A. (1997) What is Neoliberalism? CorpWatch, 1st January

(Posted 20th November 2002), available from:http://www.corpwatch.org/issues/PID.jsp?articleid=376

Monbiot, G. (2013) If you think were done with neoliberalism, think again,The Guardian, 15th January, p.30.

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Neave, G. and van Vught, F. (eds.) (1991). Prometheus Bound: TheChanging Relationship Between Government and Higher Education in

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Slaughter, S. and Leslie, L.L. (1997).Academic Capitalism: Politics, Policies,

and the Entrepreneurial University. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UniversityPress.

Sporn, B. (1999).Adaptive University Structures. London: Jessica Kingsley.

Treanor, P. (2003) Neoliberalism: origins, theory, definition, 6th October, at:

http://web.inter.nl.net/users/Paul.Treanor/neoliberalism.html

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[accessed 06/03/13]

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