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The marketisation revolution of the 1988 Education Reform Act (Lesson 7) did not end the policy story — it set the terms for everything that followed. The AQA specification requires you to understand and evaluate the education policies of New Labour (1997-2010), the Coalition (2010-2015), and Conservative governments (2015 onwards), together with the accelerating privatisation of education and the influence of globalisation. The thread that runs through the whole period is a tension the best candidates make explicit: governments simultaneously pursue policies designed to raise standards (testing, academies, the EBacc) and policies designed to reduce inequality (EMA, Sure Start, the Pupil Premium), and the central evaluative question is whether these two goals reinforce or undermine one another. A recurring sociological verdict is that the anti-inequality measures have been partial and frequently cut, while the marketising measures have been entrenched and extended — so the structural advantages of the middle class have survived intact.
Key Definition: Privatisation in education is the transfer of educational services, management, or funding from the public sector to private companies. It ranges from outright private ownership and management of state-funded schools to the contracting-out of specific services such as buildings (through PFI), inspection, supply staffing, and curriculum or testing provision.
Spec Mapping: This lesson maps to AQA A-Level Sociology (7192), Paper 1, Section A: Education — the requirement to understand and evaluate recent and current educational policies, including those concerned with marketisation, privatisation, selection, and the reduction of inequality, and the impact of globalisation on educational policy. It builds directly on the selection-to-marketisation lesson and supplies the contemporary material examiners expect in any up-to-date policy answer, assessed through 10-mark "applying material from the Item, analyse two…" questions and 30-mark "applying material from the Item and your knowledge, evaluate…" essays.
Synoptic Links: Post-1997 policy is steeped in theory. The "Third Way" mix of markets and intervention pits the New Right (Chubb & Moe) against social-democratic and Marxist critiques; privatisation connects to beliefs in society (neoliberal ideology) and to Marxist accounts of capital extracting profit from public goods (Ball's "commodification"). Targeted anti-poverty policy (EMA, Sure Start, Pupil Premium) links to external factors and the family (material deprivation, compensatory education). Globalisation and human-capital theory connect to stratification and the relationship between education and work. Methods in Context is engaged whenever we ask how policy effects are evidenced — the EEF's randomised trials of Pupil Premium spending, the National Evaluation of Sure Start, Allen's analysis of free-school intakes — making the validity of policy evaluation itself an examinable AO3 point.
Tony Blair famously declared his three priorities to be "education, education, education." New Labour's approach is usually characterised as a "Third Way" — combining the market-oriented machinery it inherited from the Conservatives (league tables, Ofsted, choice) with interventionist strategies aimed at reducing inequality and promoting social inclusion. New Labour sharply increased education spending and introduced a battery of policies, and the analytical key is to see that it pursued marketisation and anti-poverty intervention simultaneously — which is precisely why its record is so contested.
The Education Maintenance Allowance (EMA), introduced nationally in 2004, paid means-tested weekly amounts (up to around £30 a week) to 16-18 year-olds from low-income families who stayed in full-time education or training, in order to lower the financial barrier to staying on past the compulsory leaving age.
Evaluation (AO3). Research indicated that EMA increased participation in post-16 education, particularly among the most disadvantaged students, addressing the kind of material barrier documented by Callender and Jackson (2005). However, it was abolished in England in 2011 by the Coalition (though retained in Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland), on the grounds that it was not cost-effective and that many recipients would have stayed on anyway — a claim critics rejected as ignoring the marginal disadvantaged students for whom the payment was decisive.
New Labour launched the Academies Programme in 2000, initially targeting failing schools in disadvantaged areas. Academies were state-funded but independently managed schools, freed from LEA control and from the National Curriculum, and sponsored by businesses, charities, or individuals who contributed some capital funding. The aim was to break the "cycle of failure" by importing new leadership, management, and investment, and by 2010 there were roughly 200 academies in England.
Evaluation (AO3). Some academies recorded significant improvements in results. Critics argued they diverted public money and assets to private sponsors, weakened local democratic accountability, and could "cherry-pick" more able pupils while shedding the most disadvantaged. The programme was later transformed in scale and purpose by the Coalition (below), shifting from a targeted intervention in failing schools to a near-universal structural reform.
Sure Start Children's Centres, launched in 1999, provided integrated early-years services — childcare, health visiting, parenting support, and employment advice — to families with children under five in disadvantaged areas, with over 3,500 centres by 2010. Sure Start is the British heir to the American Head Start programme and is the clearest example of compensatory education in recent policy (Lesson 2).
Evaluation (AO3). The National Evaluation of Sure Start (NESS) produced mixed early findings — the most disadvantaged families initially benefited least — but more positive effects on children's development and parenting quality emerged as the programme matured and was better targeted. Funding was sharply reduced from 2010 under austerity and many centres closed. Critics from both wings questioned the principle: Marxists and Keddie (1973) argued compensatory education accepts the flawed, ethnocentric premise that working-class culture is deficient and needs "fixing"; the New Right saw it as unwarranted state intrusion into family life. As Bernstein reportedly observed, education cannot compensate for society.
New Labour encouraged secondary schools to develop specialisms (technology, languages, sport, the arts) in return for extra funding, and most secondary schools acquired specialist status by 2010. More controversially, New Labour introduced university tuition fees in 1998 (around £1,000 a year) and raised them to around £3,000 through top-up fees in 2004, accompanied by income-contingent loans so that students did not pay upfront.
Evaluation (AO3). Supporters argued fees were needed to fund the expansion of higher education and that loans protected access. Critics argued fees deterred working-class students, who Callender and Jackson (2005) found were significantly more debt averse, while Reay et al. (2005) found working-class students more likely to choose local, less prestigious universities to save money and stay near support networks — so fees risked reproducing class inequality at the very top of the system, in apparent tension with New Labour's egalitarian rhetoric.
Strengths. New Labour sharply increased education spending (spending per pupil rose substantially over the period), introduced genuinely targeted anti-disadvantage policies (EMA, Sure Start), and presided over a narrowing of the attainment gap between FSM and non-FSM pupils.
Limitations. It also continued and extended marketisation — league tables, Ofsted, academies — which critics argue reproduced inequality through the mechanisms of Lesson 7. Ball (2008) described the approach as "privatisation by stealth", drawing private companies ever deeper into the delivery of public education. And despite enormous investment, class differences in achievement remained substantial, suggesting that money channelled through a marketised, selective system cannot by itself neutralise the external inequalities pupils bring to school.
The Conservative-Liberal Democrat Coalition, led by David Cameron, pursued an education agenda shaped by austerity and a further extension of market principles, with Education Secretary Michael Gove driving sweeping structural and curricular reform.
The Academies Act 2010 transformed the academies programme, allowing all schools — not just failing ones — to convert to academy status, and by 2015 over half of all secondary schools were academies. Free schools, a new type of state-funded but LEA-independent school, could be set up by parents, teachers, charities, or businesses, and were modelled on the Swedish free-school system and the American charter-school movement.
Evaluation (AO3). Supporters argued these promoted innovation, choice, and parental involvement. Critics argued free schools diverted funding from existing schools, were often opened where no additional places were needed, and lacked accountability. Allen (2015) found that free schools tended to have a more affluent intake than nearby schools, suggesting they benefited the middle class — a finding that connects directly to the cream-skimming and parentocracy arguments of Lesson 7.
The wider evidence on academies and free schools is genuinely mixed, and a strong answer resists sweeping verdicts in either direction. Some sponsored academies in deprived areas did record real improvements, lending support to the New Right claim that fresh leadership and competition can shake up a failing school. But the mass conversion of already-successful schools after 2010 was a structural reform whose effect on standards is far harder to demonstrate, since converting a good school to academy status does not obviously make it better. Sociologists also stress that academisation removed schools from local democratic oversight, transferring control to academy trusts accountable directly to central government rather than to elected local authorities. This is why Ball reads the whole programme not primarily as a standards measure but as a stage in the marketisation and privatisation of the system: it fragments provision, weakens the local-authority "middle tier", and opens the way for private and quasi-private bodies (the Multi-Academy Trusts) to run publicly funded schools. The dispute over academies thus reproduces in miniature the central tension of the lesson — is this a standards reform or a marketisation reform, and who really benefits?
The Pupil Premium, introduced in 2011, gave schools additional funding for each pupil eligible for Free School Meals (broadly in the region of £900-£1,300 per pupil depending on phase and year), to be spent at the school's discretion but with a duty to report on its impact.
Evaluation (AO3). The Pupil Premium was widely welcomed as a targeted measure to attack disadvantage. Crucially, the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) found that its effectiveness varied enormously between schools, depending on how wisely the money was spent — evidence that how resources are used matters more than the headline amount, which complicates a purely material reading of disadvantage. The FSM gap narrowed slightly in this period but remained substantial.
The EBacc, introduced as a performance measure in 2010, recognises pupils achieving good grades in English, Maths, Science, a language, and History or Geography, with schools judged partly on the proportion attaining it. From 2013-2015 the participation age was raised so that all young people must remain in education, training, or an apprenticeship until 18.
Evaluation (AO3). Supporters argued the EBacc promotes academic rigour and a broad traditional curriculum for all. Critics argued it devalues vocational and creative subjects (art, music, drama, design technology) and is elitist, imposing a narrow, traditional, middle-class definition of worthwhile knowledge — an argument that echoes Bourdieu's claim (Lesson 2) that the school treats dominant-class culture as the natural standard.
In 2016 Prime Minister Theresa May proposed lifting the ban (in place since 1998) on opening new grammar schools, arguing they promote social mobility — a highly controversial proposal that revived the selection debate of Lesson 7.
Evaluation (AO3). Supporters argued grammar schools give bright working-class children access to an elite academic education. Critics cited extensive evidence that grammars disproportionately benefit the middle class: the Sutton Trust (2016) found that the proportion of grammar-school pupils eligible for Free School Meals was very small relative to the national average, and grammars are associated with a "tutoring culture" in which middle-class families buy private coaching for the 11-plus, undermining the meritocratic claim. Gorard and Siddiqui (2018) found no evidence that grammar schools improved social mobility at the area level — strong empirical support for the tripartite critique.
The growth of Multi-Academy Trusts (MATs) — groups of schools run by a single trust, some controlling dozens of schools across large areas — has accelerated.
Evaluation (AO3). Supporters argue MATs let strong schools share expertise and resources with weaker ones. Critics argue they reduce local accountability, concentrate power in unelected trust leaders, and deepen the quasi-market in which schools are treated as commodities to be managed for performance data.
Stephen Ball (2007) is the leading sociologist of the privatisation of education, using the term "edu-business" for the growing involvement of private companies in delivering educational services. His central claim is that the boundary between public education and private profit has been progressively dissolved, so that education is increasingly run like a business and by businesses.
| Form | What it means | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| Exo-privatisation (of education) | Direct transfer of public education services to private providers | Companies running academy chains; PFI buildings; supply-staff agencies |
| Endo-privatisation (in education) | Importing private-sector management techniques into public education | Performance-related pay, target-setting, league tables, management consultants |
Ball distinguishes exo-privatisation (the privatisation of education — handing services to private providers) from endo-privatisation (the privatisation in education — running public schools using business methods such as performance-related pay, targets, and consultancy). The two together, he argues, reconstruct the teacher as a manager of measurable outputs rather than an educator.
| Company / Organisation | Role in education |
|---|---|
| Capita | Provided school management and back-office services |
| Serco | Held outsourced inspection and management contracts |
| Pearson | Major provider of textbooks, qualifications (Edexcel), and testing services |
| G4S | Provided security and facilities management |
| PFI consortia | Built and maintained school buildings for long-term lease payments |
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