Change, agency and partnership: new models for

new times

‘The Importance of Teaching’ White paper 2010

Partnership: (5) to • enable low performing schools to become

academies /improve; • deploy leaders across LA boundaries and increase

productivity; • open free schools and university technology

colleges;• save money through shared resources.

‘The Importance of Teaching’ White paper 2010Collaboration (6) • Financial incentive to reward schools which support

weaker schools and ‘demonstrably improve their performance’. (2)

• Collaboration incentive for LAs to drive school improvement and raise the attainment of deprived children in underperforming schools.

• Between LAs to bring down the cost of SEN provision.• Professional collaboration to share ‘ideas that work’.(2)

‘The Importance of Teaching’ White paper 2010Competition / Diversity (6)• Diversification of provision including increased opportunities

for voluntary and private sector providers.• Secretary of state power to close ‘inadequate provision’ and

specify to LAs what kind of provision should replace it.• Simplification of bureaucratic competition process currently

required to open a new school.• Where new school is needed first choice will be academy or

free school.(Diversity is not mentioned in any other context.)

‘The Importance of Teaching’ White paper 2010Equality (1)• Improving the quality of education for excluded pupils

(black boys and FSM specified).Social mobility (2)• Through academies.

Autonomy (36) or Regulation?• Under the 1988 Education Reform Act, the education

minister had 200 powers of direction, he now has more than 2,000.

Basic principles of democracy

‘… a concern for the protection of human rights, for the equality of all citizens, for the maximization of individual liberty and for the maintenance of popular sovereignty. ‘

Kelly (1995:48)

The democratic tensionClassical democracy(social democratic)

Modern proceduralist democracy (neo-liberal)

A popular form of power that strives to create expanding opportunities for the direct participation of members of a society in deliberation and decision-making.

A representative system of political decision-making and a mechanism for selecting a leading political elite. Carr and Hartnett (1996)

Justification Justification

Only through the active participation of individuals in deliberation, consensus and collective action, can democracy be realised.

Only through the primacy of economic freedom and minimal government can democracy be realised.

Democracy, education and schoolingClassical democracy Proceduralist democracy

The educative life is constructed through participation in a wide range of democratic systems.

The role of schools is to offer a minority an education appropriate for political leadership, and to initiate the majority into the values, attitudes and behavior appropriate to their role as producers, workers and consumers;

The aim of education is to initiate individuals into the values, attitudes and behavior appropriate to active participation in democratic institutions and processes.

The approach to curriculum development is through process and praxis, through a meaning of community that emphasizes personal networks and relationships, association and communion.

The approach to curriculum development is through outcomes, and a view of community as place (territory) and as marketised networks.

1. In practice, the principles of rights, equality, freedom and popular sovereignty, can run counter to each other. How should we position ourselves in relation to democratic principles: whose rights, equality, freedom/emancipation are we privileging? How is this justified? What kind of shared principles articulate our position?

2. Democracy requires citizens who can think critically, whilst the market needs consumers who can be easily influenced by media and advertising. How do we enable CPD that is essentially concerned with criticality? How do we sell the collectivist necessities of criticality in the context of the necessary individualisation of the market ? How does the market affect quality? What kind of shared principles articulate our position? 3. Partnerships are presented as an alternative to hierarchies and markets (cooperation, collaboration, participation) and as a means of co-operation between political and civil society, yet are bound by economically driven central control over key processes. How are partnerships generally conceived in the current ideological landscape (between schools /academies / HEIs private providers) ? What are the barriers to collaboration? Does this matter? What can we do?

4. Education has moved from being conceived as a public good, to being conceived as a market commodity. What does education as a public good mean in a market economy? What kind of shared principles articulate our position?