Search Results for: market madness

Market madness: condition critical

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

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

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

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

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

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

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”

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?

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?

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

‘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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In praise of ‘low value’ subjects.

The English education system is built on value judgements. Measures of provider quality, qualification currency and student achievement create a web of rankings which shape our view of the system, and the resulting hierarchies impact how everyone feels about where … Continue reading

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Redistribution and recognition should go hand in hand.

Reading Nancy Fraser’s critique of progressive neoliberalism. Continue reading

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The promise of a National Education Service

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.

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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