Search Results for: market madness

Market madness: condition critical

Posted on June 24, 2015 by

Market madness: condition critical From Forum vol.57, no.2, 2015 The condition of English education is critical. It has been weakened by pathological marketization and is in desperate need of treatment to restore it to health. In this article, I try to … Continue reading →

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Market madness #7: What markets do to us

Posted on March 14, 2015 by

The creeping marketization of education has many aspects, each of which changes the way we see ourselves and the way we relate to others. Commodification: If education is seen as a commodity; something which can be consumed and traded, then schools, … Continue reading →

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Market madness #6 Students as commodities: premium, discount and remaindered

Posted on December 23, 2014 by

Originally posted on Eddie Playfair:
Enrolment is always a challenge. We come back from our holidays to an empty college. Like someone organising an open house, we’ve stocked up on a range of snacks and drinks for our guests but…

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Market madness #5 Qualifications as currency

Posted on December 23, 2014 by

A series of short posts about the marketisation of public education: #5 Qualifications as currency. All economies need a currency which we all use to represent the value we give to things and which can be exchanged for real things. … Continue reading →

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Market madness #6 Students as commodities: premium, discount and remaindered

Posted on September 9, 2014 by

Enrolment is always a challenge. We come back from our holidays to an empty college. Like someone organising an open house, we’ve stocked up on a range of snacks and drinks for our guests but we can’t really be sure … Continue reading →

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Market madness #4 A good system can help schools improve

Posted on August 15, 2014 by

A series of short posts about the marketisation of public education: #4 A good system can help schools improve. Whenever I am asked to explain English secondary education to foreign visitors I usually start by saying that there is no … Continue reading →

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Market madness #3 The well-informed educational consumer

Posted on June 17, 2014 by

A series of short posts about the marketisation of public education: #3 The well-informed educational consumer. An ideal market requires well informed consumers who are in a position to make choices between products based on accurate information about the things … Continue reading →

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Market madness #2 “Choice and diversity”

Posted on June 1, 2014 by

A series of short posts about the marketisation of public education: #2 “Choice and diversity” “Choice and diversity” was the last government’s euphemism for marketisation in public services, putting a positive spin on something which is not particularly popular with … Continue reading →

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Market madness #1 Oversubscribed?

Posted on May 22, 2014 by

A series of short posts about the marketisation of public education: #1 Oversubscribed? “6 applicants for every place”…”heavily oversubscribed”. These sorts of claims are often used to establish how popular, and by implication successful, schools and colleges are. They should … Continue reading →

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Education 2022: market or system?

Posted on June 17, 2017 by

What will education in England look like in 2022? An election is the decisive moment where we are offered, and can select from, alternative futures. Following an inconclusive general election outcome which has delivered a hung parliament, we now await … Continue reading →

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Life in the qualification market

Posted on May 22, 2016 by

‘The truth is in the whole’ and if we want to understand the impact of recent post-16 qualification reform on sixth formers’ experience of education we need to start with an overview of the whole educational landscape before analysing specific … Continue reading →

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The promise of a National Education Service

Posted on January 13, 2019 by

The proposed creation of a National Education Service (NES) for England offers us the possibility of a decisive break with the market model, where education is treated as a commodity and where individual and institutional competition are regarded as the … Continue reading →

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Sixth form hopes for 2018.

Posted on January 1, 2018 by

I’ve been posting new year’s wishes for sixth form education since January 2015. This started with 5 ‘modest, realistic and realisable’ hopes. By 2016 the list had been cut to 4 and was then further reduced to 3 a year … Continue reading →

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A 2016 guide to this blog.

Posted on December 31, 2016 by

I’ve continued to blog in 2016 and this eclectic collection of posts now numbers around 300; not all of which will interest everyone. To remain useful, such a resource needs to be well catalogued so I’ve tried to use categories and … Continue reading →

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The limits of social mobility

Posted on March 25, 2016 by

In his Observer article a couple of weeks ago, the sociologist John Goldthorpe shatters two cherished illusions: first, that social mobility in Britain is in decline and second, that education is a powerful agent for promoting social mobility. 1. Social … Continue reading →

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