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Public Sector Policies and Practice, Neo-Liberal Consumerism and Freedom of Choice in Secondary Education: A Case Study of One Area in Kent

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Title: Public Sector Policies and Practice, Neo-Liberal Consumerism and Freedom of Choice in Secondary Education: A Case Study of One Area in Kent
Language: English
Authors: Parsons, Carl, Welsh, Paul J.
Source: Cambridge Journal of Education. Jun 2006 36(2):237-256.
Availability: Routledge. 270 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016. Tel: 212-216-7800; Fax: 212-244-1563; Web site: http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals.
Peer Reviewed: Y
Page Count: 20
Publication Date: 2006
Document Type: Journal Articles
Reports - Research
Education Level: Secondary Education
Descriptors: Secondary Schools, Public Policy, Case Studies, Academic Freedom, Consumer Education, Foreign Countries, Disadvantaged Youth, Equal Education, Politics of Education, School Choice, Access to Education, Social Services, Social Stratification, Selective Admission, Competition, Educational Principles, Justice, Educational Discrimination
Geographic Terms: United Kingdom (England)
ISSN: 0305-764X
Abstract: This paper details the impact of New Labour's neo-liberal social and educational policies on disadvantaged groups in the district of Thanet. It notes that the post-welfare policy responses to social and educational problems reinforce both the disadvantages of deprived groups and the gradient of popularity among secondary schools within the district. It further argues that the nature of individual consumer choice inherent in the concept of neo-liberal negative freedom systematically discriminates against deprived groups by overriding wider concepts of equity and social justice. The paper concludes that a fair system of social justice, which recognizes the need for personal liberty, requires properly resourced and justly functioning public services that are equitably and inclusively available to all. (Contains 6 tables and 1 figure.)
Abstractor: Author
Number of References: 55
Entry Date: 2006
Access URL: https://taylorandfrancis.metapress.com/link.asp?target=contribution&id=K6601M2758602051
Accession Number: EJ738787
Database: ERIC
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  Value: <anid>AN0022088958;caj01jun.06;2019Feb20.14:26;v2.2.500</anid> <title id="AN0022088958-1">Public sector policies and practice, neo‐liberal consumerism and freedom of choice in secondary education: a case study of one area in Kent. </title> <sbt id="AN0022088958-2">Introduction</sbt> <p>This paper details the impact of New Labour's neo‐liberal social and educational policies on disadvantaged groups in the district of Thanet. It notes that the post‐welfare policy responses to social and educational problems reinforce both the disadvantages of deprived groups and the gradient of popularity among secondary schools within the district. It further argues that the nature of individual consumer choice inherent in the concept of neo‐liberal negative freedom systematically discriminates against deprived groups by overriding wider concepts of equity and social justice. The paper concludes that a fair system of social justice, which recognizes the need for personal liberty, requires properly resourced and justly functioning public services that are equitably and inclusively available to all.</p> <p>This paper examines the impact of neo‐liberal political policies on the structure and functioning of welfare provision and secondary education in the district of Thanet, in the county of Kent, during the school year 2003–2004. The historical character of social deprivation within the district is acknowledged, and structural differences in the stratification resulting from education provided as a public service and education as a market commodity are suggested. The policy context within which education and support services are delivered is examined, while a detailed analysis of secondary school popularity, performance and admissions practices indicates that, in Thanet, the neo‐liberal redefinition of citizens as self‐serving consumers reinforces the social and educational relegation of the needy. The paper then considers an alternative model for service delivery that is based on the Rawlsian concept of social justice as fairness.</p> <p>Data for the study were gathered from fieldwork interviews with parents, pupils, head teachers and managers working in education and other public services, and the voluntary sector. The interviews were conducted as part of an ongoing study of youth disaffection in the area, and were supplemented by information published by the LEA, other admissions authorities operating in Thanet, social services and voluntary sector organizations, and by material publicly available from the district and local authorities about the schools and services.</p> <hd id="AN0022088958-3">Public sector policies and practice, the voluntary sector and the concept of the enabling sta...</hd> <p>The current New Labour Government has maintained much of the previous Conservative Governments' emphasis on raising levels of measured attainment in schools by retaining choice and promoting diversity within the education system. At the same time, it has desisted from increasing core social services provision in favour of funding a series of separate supporting projects for periods varying from three to seven years. This style of addressing social problems, which is located at a particular point on the <emph>laissez‐faire</emph>–authoritarian interventionist continuum, became known as new public management (NPM) (Clarke <emph>et al.</emph>, [<reflink idref="bib8" id="ref1">8</reflink>]). It is clearly different from directly enhancing the role and funding of mainstream public services, as it operates at a distance, with funding often being allocated in response to invited bids, set conditions and targets. Such projects are frequently allied with certain notions of participation by the community, in which consultation and empowerment are prominent, if often tokenistic, dimensions. The result is a cost‐conscious, time‐limited welfare environment working towards conditionally inclusive policies. Such time‐limited approaches are unlikely to remediate the high levels of problems in local communities with entrenched histories of social and educational inequalities.</p> <p>This type of remote control politics led Clarke <emph>et al.</emph> ([<reflink idref="bib9" id="ref2">9</reflink>]) to describe the practice as 'fragmentation, decentralization, marketization, mixed economies and dispersal' (p. 254), noting that the resulting disintegration of state professional bureaucracies leads to a situation of 'dispersed service–providing organizations with a degree of autonomy over "operational management"' (p. 254). Paterson ([<reflink idref="bib34" id="ref3">34</reflink>]) counsels against seeing a simple continuity between New Labour policies and previous Conservative policies, and suggests that New Labour's approach to social and educational policies can be conceptualized as three intertwined policy strands:</p> <p></p> <ulist> <item> 1. A New Labour approach that combines some aspects of Thatcherite New Right policies of the 1980s with a reinterpretation of nineteenth‐century liberalism.</item> <p></p> <item> 2. A developmental approach explicitly designed to promote national competitiveness within the context of a neo‐liberal globalize economy.</item> <p></p> <item> 3. An ideology that leans towards that espoused by a number of European social democratic parties, in which 'citizens would be expected to show various kinds of social responsibility in return for receiving full rights of citizenship' (ibid., p. 166).</item> </ulist> <p>Paterson points to the ways in which these strands are played out differently in England, Scotland and Wales, and provides a theoretical position that is helpful in understanding the complex mix of provision and time‐limited projects that characterize the NPM position. Strand 3, as Patterson recognizes, allows a variability in policy and practice, since while the 'new' social democracy embraces the free market as the only efficient way of organizing production and exchange, and uses state intervention to reduce inequalities and social exclusionary forces, it is the <emph>extent</emph> and <emph>type</emph> of intervention that contributes to the differences in structure of educational provision. This variability thus leads to differences both at the macro level of the three countries of Britain and, arguably, also at the local political level.</p> <p>In Thanet, the school system is shaped by a New Labour combination of complex quasi‐markets in education and support services, a differential distribution of power both between educational producers and consumers and between consumers themselves, and a Conservative local authority that is wedded to the Thatcherite principles that form part of Patterson's Strand 1. This combination of social circumstances has created a local situation in which New Labour's 'Third Way has become a <emph>de facto</emph> means of the state reducing its obligations' (Hutton, [<reflink idref="bib18" id="ref4">18</reflink>], p. 102), particularly towards those with the greatest social and educational needs. Hence 'a major problem with the market as a mechanism for ... allocating [social and educational] resources to the needy is that it does not' (Parsons, [<reflink idref="bib31" id="ref5">31</reflink>], p. 170). In consequence, the socially marginalized in deprived areas like Thanet are, by virtue of their circumstances, disadvantaged with respect to exercising the very social responsibilities that the third policy strand requires in order to receive the full rights of citizenship.</p> <p>It has become increasingly popular to include the voluntary sector in projects and funding proposals, particularly in initiatives to tackle social exclusion in education. The Children's Fund enshrines this in its documentation (CYPU, [<reflink idref="bib10" id="ref6">10</reflink>]) and the Social Exclusion Unit ([<reflink idref="bib41" id="ref7">41</reflink>]) is emphatic about the role of the voluntary sector. This sector is the third player, alongside statutory agencies and business, in having resources and expertise to offer. Voluntary organizations, although often bidding for project monies, or being contracted to carry out statutory duties, also have their own funds or are attractive beneficiaries in the fund raising competition. This leads to a context in which welfare provision is characterized by a hierarchy of responsibility between central and local government through which centrally devised targets are delivered by local action, and results in a working partnership across statutory, voluntary and, where possible, business organizations that collaborate to deliver short term projects. These projects are frequently judged by an audit approach to effectiveness (Power, [<reflink idref="bib36" id="ref8">36</reflink>]) which, in turn, sometimes appears to leave local implementation as the prime culprit for any shortcomings.</p> <p>Education as a service has both similarities and differences when compared with other public services. Thus, unlike social service provision, there is a legal requirement that young people should receive education. Further, with the exception of those who use either private sector provision or opt for home tutoring, the majority of education is provided by the public sector and delivered through state funded schools. There has always been some structural diversity within this state provision, and social stratification has long been a feature of the English educational system. The 1944 Education Act introduced a tripartite scheme of secondary education which, in Thanet, was fully implemented, and resulted in pupils being allocated places in either grammar, technical or secondary modern schools. Stratification, undergirded by education, still exists in Thanet today, but in a more complex structural form; the Technical School in Thanet has become a grammar school, while many of the secondary modern schools now market themselves in a variety of specialist school guises.</p> <p>There is, however, an important ideological difference between the value systems that underpinned the post‐1944 stratification and that currently found in Thanet. Post 1944, the allocation of school places was enacted within a public service context that sought to place pupils in schools on the basis of their educational need, as measured by tests. The context of today's stratification is quite different, and derives from the 1988, and subsequent, Education Acts. Thus although 11+ testing still features in Thanet, the actual allocation of school places is notionally based on an individual consumer's ability to exercise choice within a complicated educational marketplace.</p> <p>Consumer choice in the marketplace—which implies an impossible equality of outcomes, since educational producers and consumers are differently and variously empowered—is now superordinate to communitarian notions of meeting needs within an overall framework informed by a public service ethic. The post‐1944 public service ethic, however, which was based on ideas about opportunity, also proved to be a recipe for class‐based inequalities in education. Thus what is needed is a redefinition of an egalitarian agenda in a more nuanced way (Leonard, [<reflink idref="bib23" id="ref9">23</reflink>]) which recognizes that the most pressing questions about access to life chances relate to issues of social justice, social policy and delivery (Powell, [<reflink idref="bib35" id="ref10">35</reflink>]).</p> <p>The current New Labour education policy maintains the previous Tory distinction between grant maintained and local authority schools—now respectively known as foundation and community schools—while pursuing a greater diversity of provision than was the case under the preceding Tory administrations. In addition to technology schools or colleges, there are now specialist arts, performing arts, sports, language and media studies schools/colleges, and city academies, all offering statutory age provision. Additionally, there has been a drive to involve the private sector in the provision of public education services (Gewirtz, [<reflink idref="bib15" id="ref11">15</reflink>]). Thus some individual schools and LEAs have been franchised to the private sector, and are run by private companies or trusts. Similarly, private sector management expertise has been imported into the education service, in the ideological belief that it could improve the education service's management practices. Gewirtz cautions, however, that the continuing drive to marketize education services leads to a resource redistribution 'from the least to the most advantaged', and results in working class and minority group pupils being 'increasingly concentrated in under‐resourced schools' (Gewirtz, [<reflink idref="bib15" id="ref12">15</reflink>], p. 310).</p> <p>The public‐private management mix in education is a peculiarly English, rather than UK, phenomenon in that it is not found to nearly the same extent in Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland. These three countries have legislatures among whose specific responsibilities are the provision of education services. Wales and Scotland also have a long tradition of equitable public education provision underpinned by a strong public service ethic, while Northern Ireland retains a system of largely unreformed denominational and selective provision. It could well be that the ownership and traditions of public education, as expressed through these legislatures, have enabled them better to resist the deconstruction of public service provision, and the degradation of the public service ethic which, in England, is caused by the radical zeal of the right wing, neo‐liberal social policies being pursued by the business‐deferent New Labour Government.</p> <hd id="AN0022088958-4">Aspects of the social topography of Thanet</hd> <p>The south‐east region of England is the second most prosperous region in the UK, although it contains some pockets of severe deprivation, particularly on the coastal fringes (South East Economic Development Agency (SEEDA), [<reflink idref="bib42" id="ref13">42</reflink>], p. 1). Thus, on average, 1 in 11 residents across the south‐east region is living in areas that are among England's most deprived localities. In Thanet, which is a coastal district in east Kent, the proportion of residents living in deprived localities rises to more than one in two (SEEDA, [<reflink idref="bib42" id="ref14">42</reflink>], p. 3), and includes areas within which there are high levels of social and educational need (Thanet District Council, [<reflink idref="bib44" id="ref15">44</reflink>]).</p> <p>Thanet is the most deprived district within the county of Kent, and ranks as the 60th most deprived local authority district out of 354 districts in England (Kent County Council, [<reflink idref="bib20" id="ref16">20</reflink>]). Further, Thanet contains the most deprived, and the second most deprived, electoral wards within the county (Kent County Council, [<reflink idref="bib20" id="ref17">20</reflink>]). Table 1, which is based on the Year 2000 Index of Multiple Deprivation (IMD) (DETR, [<reflink idref="bib11" id="ref18">11</reflink>]) shows that 5 of the 10 most multiply deprived electoral wards in Kent are found within the district of Thanet, and that there is no other district within the remaining five that is represented more than once.</p> <p>Table 1. IMD 2000: 10 most deprived wards, by district, in the county of Kent</p> <p> <ephtml> <table><thead valign="bottom"><tr><td>Ward</td><td>District</td><td>IMD 2000 score</td><td>National Rank (out of 8414 wards)</td><td>KCC Rank (out of 331 wards)</td></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>Pier</td><td>Thanet</td><td char=".">70.64</td><td char=".">77</td><td char=".">1</td></tr><tr><td>Ethelbert</td><td>Thanet</td><td char=".">63.64</td><td char=".">194</td><td char=".">2</td></tr><tr><td>Stanhope</td><td>Ashford</td><td char=".">55.68</td><td char=".">366</td><td char=".">3</td></tr><tr><td>Folkestone Central</td><td>Shepway</td><td char=".">55.09</td><td char=".">386</td><td char=".">4</td></tr><tr><td>Newington</td><td>Thanet</td><td char=".">53.48</td><td char=".">452</td><td char=".">5</td></tr><tr><td>Sheerness West</td><td>Swale</td><td char=".">49.57</td><td char=".">585</td><td char=".">6</td></tr><tr><td>Northdown Park</td><td>Thanet</td><td char=".">48.86</td><td char=".">610</td><td char=".">7</td></tr><tr><td>Shepway West</td><td>Maidstone</td><td char=".">48.77</td><td char=".">615</td><td char=".">8</td></tr><tr><td>Cecil</td><td>Thanet</td><td char=".">48.07</td><td char=".">648</td><td char=".">9</td></tr><tr><td>Buckland</td><td>Dover</td><td char=".">47.55</td><td char=".">671</td><td char=".">10</td></tr><tr><td>Source: KCC (Strategic Planning Intelligence Group).</td></tr></tbody></table> </ephtml> </p> <p>Young people living in the socially disadvantaged areas of Thanet thus represent a particular case of deprivation within the otherwise relatively affluent county of Kent (Ofsted, [<reflink idref="bib30" id="ref19">30</reflink>]). In Thanet, as in other deprived areas, that disadvantage is unevenly distributed (Townsend <emph>et al.</emph>, [<reflink idref="bib48" id="ref20">48</reflink>]), and results in identifiable communities containing subgroups suffering from high levels of deprivation, social marginalization and educational need (Welsh & Brassart, [<reflink idref="bib51" id="ref21">51</reflink>]). These social circumstances have recently been further aggravated by an influx of unaccompanied minors, for whom the local authority must make provision. This adds to the already high number of vulnerable 'looked after' children in the care of the local authority and they, together with others 'imported' from outside Thanet by private fostering agencies, represent 'a significant factor contributing to the high levels of deprivation in the district' (Thanet District Council, [<reflink idref="bib44" id="ref22">44</reflink>], p. 4).</p> <p>Many of these young people, and their families or carers, are clustered in and around the towns of Margate and Ramsgate (EKSS, [<reflink idref="bib13" id="ref23">13</reflink>]), where there are 'large numbers of ex‐hotels and boarding houses that lend themselves to conversion into institutional accommodation such as children's homes, or for housing high dependency individuals in non‐institutional settings' (Thanet District Council, 2000, p. 4). The relatively high levels of social deprivation in these parts of the district contribute to the formation of a culturally distinct sub‐group of disaffected young people (Welsh <emph>et al.,</emph>[<reflink idref="bib52" id="ref24">52</reflink>]), who 'feel labeled and discriminated against by adult society ... and let down by the education system' (Bentley & Oakley, [<reflink idref="bib4" id="ref25">4</reflink>], p. 8). Such young people, and their carers, often need help and support in accessing educational provision.</p> <p>Both the district and local authority recognize that vulnerable young people, including those in care, give rise to heavy and disproportionate demands on the local public services. Thus, proportionately, nearly twice the number of children in Thanet have statements of special educational need when compared to the rest of the Local Education Authority, while approximately 70% of the educational psychology caseload of the district consists of children in care who have been placed in Thanet from outside Kent. Other statutory agencies in Thanet are equally pressed in trying to mitigate a diversity of social problems.</p> <p>The statutory agencies involved in these services often struggle to provide a coordinated response to multiply‐disadvantaged clients. Each of the major agencies (Social Services, the Police Service, etc) is committed to delivering regeneration targets for Thanet under the aegis of The Kent Agreement (Thanet District Council, [<reflink idref="bib44" id="ref26">44</reflink>]). This details 12 measurable targets that Kent County Council and its partners will attempt to meet through increased performance levels. Although this agreement potentially provides an integrated way forward, target delivery is likely to continue to be hampered by a lack of resources — Social Services, for example, has difficulty in recruiting suitably qualified staff, while coping with approximately twice the number of referrals per practitioner than any other area of Kent. Further, the marketized context in which the public services operate requires them to deliver service‐specific business plans and performance targets, which makes it more difficult to deliver a joined up, multi‐agency service in the District.</p> <p>The statutory agencies are complemented by a plethora of voluntary agency and business involvement. There is thus an Education Business Partnership, an Education Action Zone, and a range of interventions including Children's Fund projects, Sure Start and Invest to Save, which are underpinned by time‐limited finance. The district also attracts various European Union funded projects focused on economic development, employment regeneration and the alleviation of social disadvantage. Similarly, voluntary agencies and groups such as the Children's Society, Thanet Community Development Trust, the churches and various charities—one of which, for example, provides counseling to troubled young people and their families—are active in Thanet, while the District Council encourages the empowerment of communities by providing support for residents' associations and funding a number of local initiatives.</p> <p>These policy responses to social deprivation in Thanet are dominated by the two concepts of mixed public/private service provision and neo‐liberal freedom of choice. This combination has created a complex patchwork of over‐stretched and insufficiently resourced statutory services, complemented by short‐term projects and transient voluntary provision. In consequence, deprived areas of the district, which have the greatest need for support and equitable access to education, receive 'service outcomes that are frequently less good than in areas where the population faces fewer challenges' (Thanet District Council, [<reflink idref="bib44" id="ref27">44</reflink>], p. 3).</p> <p>Table 2. Selective schools in Thanet</p> <p> <ephtml> <table><thead valign="bottom"><tr><td>School</td><td>Roll 2002–2003</td><td>Designation</td><td>Status</td><td>% 5 or more GCSEs at A*–C</td><td>% free school meals, 2003</td><td>% statemented pupils, 2003</td></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>A</td><td char=".">766</td><td>Community; grammar</td><td>Girls</td><td char=".">97.2</td><td char=".">3.5</td><td char=".">0.0</td></tr><tr><td>B</td><td char=".">797</td><td>Foundation; grammar</td><td>Boys</td><td char=".">94.5</td><td char=".">3.1</td><td char=".">0.3</td></tr><tr><td>C</td><td char=".">1135</td><td>Foundation; grammar</td><td>Mixed</td><td char=".">97.8</td><td char=".">5.1</td><td char=".">0.5</td></tr><tr><td>Sources: KCC <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="bibr21">Admission to secondary school booklet, 2004</xref>, and LEA statistics.</td></tr></tbody></table> </ephtml> </p> <hd id="AN0022088958-5">Secondary provision in Thanet</hd> <p>There are 11 secondary schools serving 8900 pupils (in 2002–2003) and their parents in the district of Thanet. Some parents of pupils about to transfer into the secondary sector mistakenly believe they have the right to choose one of these 11 schools for their children, and that their choice will be met. The legislation, however, only gives parents the right to express a preference for a school (DfEE, [<reflink idref="bib12" id="ref28">12</reflink>]), while the schools' admissions authorities are only obliged to meet the parental preference if two conditions are fulfilled: the school must have vacancies in the pupil's year group, and the pupil must meet the admissions criteria. In Thanet, the realization of such preferences is heavily circumscribed by a plethora of different criteria that structure the system of admission to secondary schools in a way that is exclusive and, in part, reflects the pre‐existing patterns of social deprivation in the district.</p> <p>A complex mini‐market in school places exists within the district. Three of the 11 secondaries are grammar schools. Of the remaining eight, two are foundation schools, one is voluntary aided, another is a technology college and four are community schools, two of which offer single sex education. Entry to these 11 schools is via six different admission authorities. Parents who hope to exercise choice with respect to a secondary school for their child thus require an accurate assessment of their child's characteristics relative to a particular school's admission requirements, a knowledge of how the different admissions procedures work individually, and a sophisticated understanding of how individual procedures can interact to constrain the realization of parental preference. The parents of children with the greatest educational needs are also those who are least likely to have the social competences and skills necessary to cope with the complex requirements of the admission procedures for transfer to a secondary school (Gewirtz <emph>et al.,</emph>[<reflink idref="bib16" id="ref29">16</reflink>]).</p> <p>In 2003, the Schools Adjudicator ruled that entry to Kent secondary schools should be via a Common Application Form, and that the practice of conditionality—whereby some non‐selective schools disallowed applications from parents whose children had been entered for 11+ selection, or would not hear appeals for places unless they were the first preference school — must cease. The Common Application Form is centrally administered by an LEA admissions team at County Hall. A statutory requirement to give children in local authority care the first preference of a place when resolving oversubscription was also introduced in 2003. Both of these measures have the potential to reduce the producer capture of secondary education in Thanet and may, once embedded, reduce the covert selection of pupils by schools (West & Hind, [<reflink idref="bib53" id="ref30">53</reflink>]; Welsh, [<reflink idref="bib50" id="ref31">50</reflink>]), thereby returning some power to parents as individual consumers.</p> <hd id="AN0022088958-6">The selective schools</hd> <p>The baseline entry requirement for the three grammar schools is a 'pass' in the Kent LEA 11+ selection procedures. However, two of these three are also foundation schools and, as such, are their own admissions authorities.</p> <p>The admissions procedures for the two foundation grammar schools currently enable the governors to admit up to 10% of pupils whom they consider will make a particular contribution to the life of the school. This mechanism also enables the schools to top up their intake in the event that there was an insufficient number of 11+ passes or first preferences to fill their places. At the time of writing, and unlike the majority of Thanet's non‐grammar schools, the numbers of applicants for places in these schools were not published in the LEA's admissions handbook.</p> <p>The grammar schools produce consistently good public examination results—over the school years 2000–2003 inclusive, all three schools have averaged a pass rate greater than 90% for five or more GCSEs at grades A* to C. There is also relatively little evidence, when compared to the non‐selective schools, of social deprivation as measured by free school meals entitlement or percentage of statemented pupils, among the grammar schools' pupil populations.</p> <hd id="AN0022088958-7">The non‐selective (with respect to LEA 11+ testing) schools</hd> <p>The remaining eight Thanet secondaries, listed in Table 3, admit without reference to performance in the LEA's selective tests. They, however, form a structurally complex subset of schools with a variety of admissions criteria.</p> <p>Table 3. Non‐selective (with respect to 11+ selective testing) secondary schools in Thanet</p> <p> <ephtml> <table><thead valign="bottom"><tr><td>School</td><td>Roll (2002–2003)</td><td>Designation</td><td>Status</td></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>D</td><td char=".">1156</td><td>Community; technology</td><td>Mixed</td></tr><tr><td>E</td><td char=".">718</td><td>V. A. (Roman Catholic)</td><td>Mixed</td></tr><tr><td>F</td><td char=".">1085</td><td>Foundation (C. of E.)</td><td>Mixed</td></tr><tr><td>G</td><td char=".">455</td><td>Community</td><td>Girls</td></tr><tr><td>H</td><td char=".">895</td><td>Foundation</td><td>Mixed</td></tr><tr><td>I</td><td char=".">532</td><td>Community</td><td>Boys</td></tr><tr><td>J</td><td char=".">749</td><td>Community</td><td>Mixed</td></tr><tr><td>K</td><td char=".">648</td><td>Community</td><td>Mixed</td></tr><tr><td>Source: <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="bibr21">KCC Admission to secondary schools booklet, 2004</xref>.</td></tr></tbody></table> </ephtml> </p> <p>Two of the eight are foundation schools, one of which is also denominational, while a third is a voluntary aided denominational school. All three are their own admissions authorities, with the right to admit or resolve oversubscription in relation to school‐specific criteria, which include musical ability or church affiliation. One of the community schools is a technology college, and can admit up to 10% of its entry in relation to performance in technology aptitude tests. Another of the community schools is scheduled to close in August 2005. A city academy will open in its place in 2005.</p> <p>The city academy will replace the least popular and lowest achieving secondary school in Thanet. The academy can be understood as a market response to a 'failing' school, as it introduces a new producer and increases the diversity of the educational marketplace in the district. The academy will be differently empowered in comparison to existing producers, as it will not be subject to the same curriculum, financial constraints or structure of the school day requirements that apply to the other schools. More significantly, from the consumers' perspective, the admissions decisions and procedures will be managed by the academy authorities, and will not be subject to any common admissions procedures that apply to other secondary schools in the district. The academy may thus have the potential to alter the dynamics of the relative popularity of Thanet secondary schools—but, in market terms, it will only be able to do this at the cost of another vulnerable school sliding to the bottom of the popularity gradient.</p> <p>An indication of the gradient of popularity is obtained by comparing the numbers of applicants for places at a school with its planned admission number—the latter being the number of pupils that a school has to admit into a given year group.</p> <p>Table 4, in which the last column indicates school popularity, requires some careful interpretation and contextualization. Schools D to I inclusive are oversubscribed and, except for the 2003 requirement to offer places to children in local authority care, have previously been able to safeguard their market position by ensuring that they do not have unfilled places into which transient pupils can be directed. Schools G and I are proximate to the least popular school in Thanet, and benefit from the efforts of parents who are trying to avoid School K. Parental preferences indicate that Schools J and K are the two least popular secondary schools in Thanet, with School K normally having the greater number of unfilled places. Schools G, I, J and K are all located in the more socially deprived areas of the district and, as such, have limited capacities for sustainable renewal within a market system of education because 'beyond the school gates are underlying social issues such as poverty, unemployment, poor housing, inadequate health care and the frequent break‐up of families' (Ofsted, [<reflink idref="bib29" id="ref32">29</reflink>], cited in Tomlinson, [<reflink idref="bib47" id="ref33">47</reflink>], p. 73).</p> <p>Table 4. Numbers of applicants in 2002–2003, expressed as a ratio of the schools' planned admission numbers</p> <p> <ephtml> <table><thead valign="bottom"><tr><td>School</td><td>Type</td><td>Number of applicants (2003)</td><td>Planned admissions number</td><td>Applicants/PAN</td></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>D</td><td>Community; tech; mixed</td><td>350</td><td char=".">210</td><td char=".">1.67</td></tr><tr><td>E</td><td>V.A.; mixed</td><td>190</td><td char=".">120</td><td char=".">1.58</td></tr><tr><td>F</td><td>Foundation; denominational; mixed.</td><td>305</td><td char=".">217</td><td char=".">1.54</td></tr><tr><td>G</td><td>Community; girls</td><td>134</td><td char=".">90</td><td char=".">1.48</td></tr><tr><td>H</td><td>Foundation; mixed</td><td>252</td><td char=".">201</td><td char=".">1.25</td></tr><tr><td>I</td><td>Community; boys</td><td>'Oversubscribed'<sup>1</sup></td><td char=".">120</td><td>> 1.00</td></tr><tr><td>J</td><td>Community; mixed</td><td>'Undersubscribed'?<sup>2</sup></td><td char=".">150</td><td char=".">(1.00)</td></tr><tr><td>K</td><td>Community; mixed</td><td>'Undersubscribed'<sup>3</sup></td><td char=".">150</td><td char="."><1.00</td></tr><tr><td>Source: Kent County Council's <xref ref-type="bibr" rid="bibr21">Admission to secondary schools, 2004</xref> booklet.Notes: (1) Instead of quoting a number, the booklet states 'School I has been oversubscribed for the last three years ...'; (2) Instead of quoting a number, the booklet states 'In Sept 2003, School J was able to offer places to all parents ...'; (3) Instead of quoting a number, the booklet states 'There is an excellent chance of parents securing a place for their child at this school'.</td></tr></tbody></table> </ephtml> </p> <p>The non‐grammar schools can also be ranked according to the proportions of their pupil populations who have LEA‐recognized special educational needs or are entitled to free school meals.</p> <p>Table 5 clearly shows that the three schools that are their own admissions authorities are also those with the smallest proportions of SEN pupils and pupils entitled to free school meals, while the four schools serving the deprived areas of the district all have special needs complements approaching half of their intakes and free school meals entitlements between 16% and 34% of their pupil populations. These rank orders (columns 5 and 6 in the above table) are, in part, a result of the admissions policies and practices of previous years. They also illustrate the way in which school admissions procedures in Thanet correlate with the distribution of social and educational needs within the secondary schools to 'enhance disadvantages for particular groups' (Tomlinson, [<reflink idref="bib47" id="ref34">47</reflink>], p. 3) within the district.</p> <p>Table 5. Thanet non‐selective secondary schools ranked by special needs and free school meals, 2000–2003</p> <p> <ephtml> <table><thead valign="bottom"><tr><td>School</td><td>Type</td><td>Average % pupil population with statements, 2000–2003 inc.</td><td>Average % pupil population with SEN, but not statemented, 2000–2003 inc.</td><td>Total % SEN (i.e., statements + LEA SEN)</td><td>% entitlement to free school meals (2002–2003 only)</td></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>E</td><td>V. A.</td><td char=".">1.93</td><td char=".">16.65</td><td char=".">18.58</td><td>4.1</td></tr><tr><td>F</td><td>Foundation (denominational)</td><td char=".">1.98</td><td char=".">26.13</td><td char=".">28.11</td><td>9.1</td></tr><tr><td>H</td><td>Foundation</td><td char=".">3.45</td><td char=".">32.38</td><td char=".">35.83</td><td>10.3</td></tr><tr><td>D</td><td>Community; technical</td><td char=".">3.55</td><td char=".">32.58</td><td char=".">36.13</td><td>17.2</td></tr><tr><td>G</td><td>Community; girls</td><td char=".">3.05</td><td char=".">39.73</td><td char=".">42.78</td><td>16.0</td></tr><tr><td>J</td><td>Community</td><td char=".">2.70</td><td char=".">42.10</td><td char=".">44.80</td><td>22.7</td></tr><tr><td>K</td><td>Community</td><td char=".">6.45</td><td char=".">38.98</td><td char=".">45.43</td><td>34.0</td></tr><tr><td>I</td><td>Community; boys</td><td char=".">8.68</td><td char=".">37.13</td><td char=".">45.81</td><td>19.3</td></tr><tr><td>Source: LEA statistics.</td></tr></tbody></table> </ephtml> </p> <p>Table 6 gives a comparison of GCSE results at Grades A*–C across the years 2000 to 2003. The three schools with the greatest populations of SEN and free school meals are ranked at the bottom of the performance table, while two of the three schools that control their own admissions are at the top of the table. The highest performing community (LEA) school is the technology college, which is able to select up to 10% of its intake on the basis of testing for technological aptitude. The two schools at the bottom of the table are also those that have difficulties in reaching their planned admission number. The consequential deficit in pupil numbers leads to a reduction in the schools' incomes, and therefore resources, potentially makes them 'receivers' of pupils (including excludees) from other schools and contributes to circumstances in which schools in this position offer 'their remaining pupils an increasingly impoverished educational experience' (Riddell & Tett, [<reflink idref="bib38" id="ref35">38</reflink>], p. 6).</p> <p>Table 6. Thanet non‐selective secondary schools ranked by GCSE performance, 2000–2003</p> <p> <ephtml> <table><thead valign="bottom"><tr><td>School</td><td>Type</td><td>Average % 5 A*–C GCSEs, 2000–2003</td></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>E</td><td>V. A.</td><td char=".">52.00</td></tr><tr><td>H</td><td>Foundation</td><td char=".">43.00</td></tr><tr><td>D</td><td>Community; technical</td><td char=".">41.25</td></tr><tr><td>F</td><td>Foundation; denominational</td><td char=".">35.50</td></tr><tr><td>G</td><td>Community; girls</td><td char=".">32.58</td></tr><tr><td>I</td><td>Community; boys</td><td char=".">22.00</td></tr><tr><td>J</td><td>Community</td><td char=".">18.75</td></tr><tr><td>K</td><td>Community</td><td char=".">3.75</td></tr><tr><td>Source: LEA statistics.</td></tr></tbody></table> </ephtml> </p> <p>When presented graphically (Figure 1), the GCSE results for all 11 Thanet secondary schools show that the grammar schools easily outperform the other eight schools, while the 'non‐selective' schools which have barriers to open admission cluster towards the higher end of the performance profile. The schools that have fewest barriers to admission return the worst public examination performance. This is particularly true over time for Schools J and K, which both serve deprived areas and struggle to recruit a full complement of pupils.</p> <p>Graph: Figure 1. Five A*–C GCSE results for all Thanet secondary schools, 2000–2003</p> <p>Schools C, A and B are the grammar schools. Schools E, H, D and F admit by reference to other selection criteria. Schools G, I, J and K admit by reference to the LEA's standard admission criteria. School G perhaps benefits from the 'girl' factor, although it does cater for a relatively deprived clientele. Schools G and I also benefit from parents trying to avoid School K. Schools J and K cope with the greatest levels of social and educational disadvantage, with the pupil body at School K being particularly multiply challenged. This is also the school that has been subject to the greatest staffing instability, and has had the largest number of interventions from statutory and voluntary agencies. There have been times during which two or more projects have been operating concurrently within the school. Further, the different funding streams mean that some Thanet schools, including School K, have chosen to bid for several different activities—sometimes to find new money to continue a project when the original funding stream has come to an end.</p> <p>The public examination results mirror the popularity gradient among the secondary schools in Thanet. The gradient can be divided into three subsets:</p> <p></p> <ulist> <item> 1. The grammar schools which overtly select by academic ability and, in consequence, have relatively socially non‐deprived pupil cohorts.</item> <p></p> <item> 2. Schools that are able to select by other admissions criteria.</item> <p></p> <item> 3. Schools G, I, J and K, which have standard LEA admissions policies. They serve relatively deprived areas; all struggle to compete with schools in categories (a) and (b) above, and some seriously struggle to produce 'good' GCSE results.</item> </ulist> <p>The gradient has remained fairly constant over the last five years. It is a result of value judgments based on consumer perception of the schools. That perception is underpinned by an amalgam of complex social and educational factors, some of which are in the personal domain, while others are due to structural or institutional arrangements. Some of the factors leading to that perception are not within the control of individual schools, while others—such as league tables—are partial expressions of school output, and are subject to the possibility of the simplistic misinterpretation of a school's performance.</p> <hd id="AN0022088958-8">Consumerism, choice and competition for school places</hd> <p>The education policy of the County Council in Kent has created a variety of secondary schools within the district of Thanet. This variety, which is one possible variant within Paterson's 'renewal of social democracy' ([<reflink idref="bib34" id="ref36">34</reflink>], p. 176), is politically congruent with New Labour's neo‐liberal desire to support a diversity of school provision while maintaining the marketization of the education service. Market theory further suggests that providing choice to consumers increases consumer satisfaction. In these circumstances, however, it is the market, rather than educational need, that determines policy, and competition becomes the basis for a complex set of social relations between consumers and providers. Theoretically, the consumers' role in the market for school places is to exercise choice, while the education producers supply and manage provision. Neither of these roles is a value‐free activity; consumer choice is based on a ranked order of preference, while the individual institutional control of entry engenders tensions between organizing provision in the interests of consumers or in the interests of the providing school (Welsh, [<reflink idref="bib50" id="ref37">50</reflink>]).</p> <p>A number of the Thanet secondary schools' admissions procedures contain structural barriers which inhibit open access to school places. Many of these barriers have been erected since the 1988 Education Reform Act formalized competition between schools. They legitimately enable some schools to restrict access to places to those pupils who meet specified sets of criteria, such as allegiance to a particular faith, or talent in a specialist subject area. These barriers also create a subgroup of schools in which governors, or head teachers operating policies on their behalf, have had the power differentially to curb the abilities of parents to exercise choice. Such restrictions can be based on a subjective assessment of talent or allegiance, and hence provide opportunities to restrict access for reasons that lie outside of the published admissions criteria. They are open to operation in the interests of the school rather than the applicant, and show that the quasi‐markets operating in Thanet do not redirect resources to those with the greatest educational and social needs. When admissions barriers are operated in the interests of the school rather than the applicant, they also reinforce the structural relegation of disaffected and disadvantaged pupils to the least popular schools and help to maintain a popularity gradient between schools.</p> <p>Many have argued that 'free' markets in education reinforce inequity, social class differences and associated educational underachievement (see Ball, [<reflink idref="bib1" id="ref38">1</reflink>], [<reflink idref="bib2" id="ref39">2</reflink>]; Lauder <emph>et al.</emph>[<reflink idref="bib22" id="ref40">22</reflink>]; Noden, [<reflink idref="bib27" id="ref41">27</reflink>]). Although some recent research shows that the operation of the market may not lead to a <emph>spiral</emph> of decline for unpopular schools (Gorard <emph>et al.,</emph>[<reflink idref="bib17" id="ref42">17</reflink>]), there is evidence that market forces contribute to maintaining the patterns of social stratification between schools (Gorard <emph>et al.,</emph>[<reflink idref="bib17" id="ref43">17</reflink>]). Further, a comparative study of school effectiveness demonstrated that 'in data set after data set, "ineffective" schools are found in low socio‐economic areas' (Thrupp, [<reflink idref="bib45" id="ref44">45</reflink>], p. 205). This observation is true for Thanet, and acts as a significant factor in reinforcing consumer unpopularity and the class related constraints acting on schools 'serving areas of low socio‐economic status, especially when operating in educational quasi‐markets' (Thrupp, [<reflink idref="bib46" id="ref45">46</reflink>], p. 3).</p> <hd id="AN0022088958-9">Educational need, freedom and social justice</hd> <p>Educational policy‐making and delivery is underpinned by the 'enduring struggle along the structure‐agency continuum' in which human actions are viewed as either 'consequences of the structural conditions of a person's life, or as a consequence of individual choice' (both Parsons <emph>et al.,</emph>[<reflink idref="bib33" id="ref46">33</reflink>], p. 381). In Kent, the free market policies of selection and school autonomy tend towards the 'agency' end of the continuum, and have resulted in 'a mosaic of different local markets' (Taylor <emph>et al.,</emph>[<reflink idref="bib43" id="ref47">43</reflink>], p. 244) in which some consumers are better equipped to exercise choice than others. This, in the context of Thanet's mini market of secondary school places, helps to ensure that the pattern of between‐school stratification remains high, with the consequence that some schools are always in demand, whereas others struggle to find pupils. This 'creates a clear system of winners and losers' (Gorard <emph>et al.,</emph>[<reflink idref="bib17" id="ref48">17</reflink>], p. 369) which, if it leads to an increasingly disadvantaged intake by some schools, could have 'serious implications ... for social justice' (Gorard <emph>et al.,</emph>[<reflink idref="bib17" id="ref49">17</reflink>], p. 381).</p> <p>The market overrides the public service ethic of provision based on need, and replaces the notion of entitlement with the concept of the primacy of individual gain. The resulting struggle excludes a consideration of the social or educational entitlements due to individual citizens, irrespective of their ability or desire to compete, and leads to a withering of the communal ethic among citizens (Williams, [<reflink idref="bib54" id="ref50">54</reflink>]). Consumerism, and its attendant marketization of public services, has not delivered an equitable distribution of educational goods in Thanet and risks stereotyping the needy as undeserving losers adrift in a hegemonic market place.</p> <p>Freedom of choice is a characterizing policy vector of neo‐liberal free marketeers. Freedom of choice of school, even when reduced to the lesser consumer freedom of expressing a preference, is a particular example of the negative freedom from restraint—in this case, the restraint of direction or expectation that individuals would normally use their local schools. A central tenet underpinning this concept of freedom is that 'state activities beyond the minimum must necessarily violate the fundamental rights of citizens' (Miller, [<reflink idref="bib25" id="ref51">25</reflink>], p. 10) which, in turn, reflects an ideological commitment 'to leave people alone to direct their lives as they themselves see fit' (Miller, [<reflink idref="bib25" id="ref52">25</reflink>], p. 59). The exercise of this freedom, however, is based on the exercise of a value judgment—namely the short‐term consumer choice of 'I want that school', rather as one might similarly say 'I want that television, or this washing powder'. Market theory predicts that the aggregate of these choices will lead to production of greater amounts of the good. However, the consumer value judgment that is exercised in choosing a school is qualitatively different from that involved in choosing a washing powder, while the value judgment which drives the production of school places is not the same as that which drives the production of washing powder in three important respects:</p> <p></p> <ulist> <item> 1. The provision of educational opportunity entails a judgment of greater social importance than that involved in other short‐term consumer choices, since it impacts upon the long term future of young people.</item> <p></p> <item> 2. The frequency with which people choose consumer goods, such as washing powder, is very much greater than the frequency with which they choose public goods, such as school places. The market data with respect to preference for consumer goods is therefore much denser, and more immediate, than that which obtains for public goods. It is these data characteristics—which are missing from public choices—that sensitize producers to consumer preference.</item> <p></p> <item> 3. The realization of consumer choice with respect to school places has the direct and immediate consequence of reducing choice for others, since the number of school places is limited. This means that the children of some consumers will be excluded from the school of their choice, except in circumstances where that school is undersubscribed.</item> </ulist> <p>The drive for neo‐liberal consumer choice in education leads towards a circumstance in which the role of the citizen is subordinate to the role of the consumer. Further, the quasi‐market in education does not equally empower all consumers, and leads to circumstances in which the more enabled will be able 'to obtain services that the state now provides from a variety of different sources—personal protection from one supplier, [educational services] from another, transport facilities from a third, and so forth—thus rendering the state, in its present form, redundant' (Miller, [<reflink idref="bib25" id="ref53">25</reflink>], p. 11). This style of neo‐liberal freedom leads to a potentially unstable system of possessive individualism founded on the changing edifice of consumer choice. Such individualism leaves some consumers satisfied while others, who have been unsuccessful at choosing from a limited supply of public goods, are 'presented with a strong dose of their own irrelevance' (Falk, [<reflink idref="bib14" id="ref54">14</reflink>], p. 5). The resultant free market outcome is a transient and unpatterned provision of public goods determined by the whim of consumers at any given instant (Nozick, [<reflink idref="bib28" id="ref55">28</reflink>]; Wolff, [<reflink idref="bib55" id="ref56">55</reflink>]), in which the individual is sovereign in 'his own valuational universe, having abandoned that which, for most people, is fundamental to their capacity to lead meaningful lives: an acknowledged membership of a wider community' (Lomasky, [<reflink idref="bib24" id="ref57">24</reflink>], p. 77).</p> <p>Rawls ([<reflink idref="bib37" id="ref58">37</reflink>]) offers an alternative theory of social justice founded on a concept of liberal individualism in which each person has an equal right to the most extensive set of basic liberties, while recognizing that social justice requires structural and procedural fairness. The requirement for fairness means that the distribution of social goods—including education services—requires 'the engaged cooperation of citizens as free and equal persons, and ... a society effectively regulated by a public conception of justice' (Kelly, [<reflink idref="bib19" id="ref59">19</reflink>], p. 5), in contrast to a society driven by the vagaries of the operation of quasi‐markets in public goods.</p> <p>Rawls argues that institutions—which, in the context of this paper, includes the institutions governing access to public goods—'are just when no arbitrary distinctions are made between persons in the assigning of access [to social goods], and when rules determine a proper balance between competing claims to the advantages of social life' ([<reflink idref="bib37" id="ref60">37</reflink>], p. 5). When this concept is applied to the Thanet context, disallowed arbitrary distinctions would include the oppression of consumers by powerful producers through the selection of pupils on the basis of musical, or other, abilities, denominational affiliation, or social class background. Rawls further argues that 'procedural justice obtains when ... there is a correct or fair procedure such that the outcome, whatever it is, is likewise correct or fair' ([<reflink idref="bib37" id="ref61">37</reflink>], p. 75). Social justice thus requires procedural justice and, if the procedure is fair, citizens can be 'secure in the knowledge that whatever the outcome is, no one has any complaint against it on grounds of fairness' (Bedau, [<reflink idref="bib3" id="ref62">3</reflink>], p. 104).</p> <p>This conception of social justice requires that the provision of public goods be arranged through a political, rather than a market, process since the two procedures are 'designed to achieve distinct ends; the market leading to efficiency, and the political process, if possible, to justice' (Rawls, [<reflink idref="bib37" id="ref63">37</reflink>], p. 316). It also recognizes a deep unfairness in any system that cedes the power to discriminate among applicants for social goods to the producers of those goods. Rawls's model of social justice is thus based on the 'enforcement of rules by the state ... even when everyone is moved by the same sense of justice' (Rawls, [<reflink idref="bib37" id="ref64">37</reflink>], p. 236), and requires the direct involvement of the state as an arbiter, rather than enabler, in order that 'the success of markets will not be achieved at the expense of the well‐being of peoples' (Falk, [<reflink idref="bib14" id="ref65">14</reflink>], p. 7).</p> <p>The concept of justice as fairness has an implicit communitarianism that potentially puts citizens in a better position to manage their own affairs (Vincent, [<reflink idref="bib49" id="ref66">49</reflink>]), by enabling them to participate in social cooperation on the bases of mutual respect and equal fairness. Thus, unlike the market, it offers the opportunity for positive freedom; a sense in which people are free <emph>to</emph> do something, instead of merely being free <emph>from</emph> constraint. But for this freedom to be realized, there has to be a real and significant exercise of community ownership of local public services; a sense of ownership and control that is much more focused, local and empowering than the current diffuse ownership of such services by a distant state, local authority, denominational interest or professional cadre. This ownership would engender a common bond allowing cooperation between persons with disparate aims and purposes, and provide 'principles accepted [by all] as limiting conditions' (Scanlon, [<reflink idref="bib39" id="ref67">39</reflink>], p. 54). It could therefore lead to circumstances in which citizens would be more likely and willing to support their local school or neighbourhood services.</p> <p>Rawls's model of social justice offers an alternative that 'combines into one conception the totality of conditions that we ... recognize as reasonable in our conduct with regard to one another' (Rawls, [<reflink idref="bib37" id="ref68">37</reflink>], p. 514). It also provides a credible and cogent alternative to the neo‐liberal free marketization of social goods that, in practice, ranks parents by their differential ability to exercise choice (Gewirtz <emph>et al.,</emph>[<reflink idref="bib16" id="ref69">16</reflink>]), sustains the popularity gradient between schools (Gorard <emph>et al.,</emph>[<reflink idref="bib17" id="ref70">17</reflink>]; Welsh, [<reflink idref="bib50" id="ref71">50</reflink>]) and gives those 'parents most able to improve schools for everyone no incentive to do so, since they can always opt out' (Brighouse, [<reflink idref="bib6" id="ref72">6</reflink>], p. 208).</p> <p>The use of a common secondary schools' application form in Thanet is a welcome step towards a potentially more socially just system. However, three structural barriers remain which still inhibit the greater inclusion, as defined by Booth <emph>et al.</emph> ([<reflink idref="bib5" id="ref73">5</reflink>]), of marginalized young people in Thanet. Firstly, teacher training, in general, does not systematically teach many inclusive techniques. This omission is compounded by the fact that some teachers are recruited directly by schools, thus by‐passing formal training schemes, with the consequence that they have to teach and learn inclusive strategies at the same time—a circumstance that is particularly true of School K. Secondly, multi‐agency working requires the cooperation of many professionals and, in practice, struggles to work well (Neighbourhood Renewal Unit, [<reflink idref="bib26" id="ref74">26</reflink>]; Parsons <emph>et al.,</emph>[<reflink idref="bib32" id="ref75">32</reflink>]). These difficulties are further compounded by the transient nature, and project basis, of many policy approaches. Thirdly, there is a tension between inclusion and raising standards of attainment in national curriculum subjects by the use of testing since 'test scores are not the only measure of excellence in a system and ... do not tell us how well children who achieve especially poorly are being educated' (Brighouse, [<reflink idref="bib6" id="ref76">6</reflink>], p. 3). Some of our most troubling pupils demand a lot of support and human resources to address their marginalization. Many projects are concerned with addressing this marginalization, but they too often work <emph>within</emph> a standards and testing agenda that tends to exclude troubled young people. A 'Third Way', market‐based compromise between attainment, as simplistically measured by tests, and inclusion is not sufficient to overcome the tension between these two goals in the English school system.</p> <p>In neo‐liberal consumerism, the deprived and marginalized pay the social price of the advantages enjoyed by the more privileged groups, since their benefits accrue from the superordinacy of competitive individualism and acquisition over concepts of equity and social justice. However, a cultural shift from a society in which the public services are 'dominated by private enterprise and competitive markets' (Tomlinson, [<reflink idref="bib47" id="ref77">47</reflink>], p. 3), to an empowered communitarian ownership of the means of production and distribution of social goods has the potential to address some of the inequities that drive the multiple dimensions of deprivation in areas like Thanet. A system of social justice as fairness requires the generality of citizens to have access to the powers which underpin choice in society. Such a society should thus be organized in a way that ensures the highest amount of real choice, and hence the greatest amount of freedom. Without these conditions the promise of freedom of choice, for the majority of citizens, is little more than a nominalistic fallacy.</p> <p>Such a policy shift is currently politically unlikely, since any social policy which impedes the ability of the middle classes to pass on advantage to their children is 'in tension with the electoral priority that New Labour has placed on winning the support of former Tory (Conservative) voters' (Brighouse, [<reflink idref="bib7" id="ref78">7</reflink>], p. 3). However, if New Labour is serious about promoting social inclusion and reducing child poverty, it must move away from post‐welfare market solutions to social and educational problems, and acknowledge that properly resourced and justly functioning public services are 'necessary conditions for assuring any degree of personal liberty' (Skinner, [<reflink idref="bib40" id="ref79">40</reflink>], p. 211).</p> <ref id="AN0022088958-10"> <title> References </title> <blist> <bibl id="bib1" idref="ref38" type="bt">1</bibl> <bibtext> Ball, S. J.1990. Markets, morality and equality., London: Tufnell.</bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibl id="bib2" idref="ref39" type="bt">2</bibl> <bibtext> Ball, S. J.1993. Education markets, choice and social class: the market as a class strategy in the UK and USA,. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 14: 3–19.</bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibl id="bib3" idref="ref62" type="bt">3</bibl> <bibtext> Bedau, H. A.1999. "Social justice and social institutions,". 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  Data: Public Sector Policies and Practice, Neo-Liberal Consumerism and Freedom of Choice in Secondary Education: A Case Study of One Area in Kent
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  Data: <searchLink fieldCode="AR" term="%22Parsons%2C+Carl%22">Parsons, Carl</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="AR" term="%22Welsh%2C+Paul+J%2E%22">Welsh, Paul J.</searchLink>
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  Data: <searchLink fieldCode="SO" term="%22Cambridge+Journal+of+Education%22"><i>Cambridge Journal of Education</i></searchLink>. Jun 2006 36(2):237-256.
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  Data: Routledge. 270 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016. Tel: 212-216-7800; Fax: 212-244-1563; Web site: http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals.
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  Data: <searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Secondary+Schools%22">Secondary Schools</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Public+Policy%22">Public Policy</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Case+Studies%22">Case Studies</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Academic+Freedom%22">Academic Freedom</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Consumer+Education%22">Consumer Education</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Foreign+Countries%22">Foreign Countries</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Disadvantaged+Youth%22">Disadvantaged Youth</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Equal+Education%22">Equal Education</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Politics+of+Education%22">Politics of Education</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22School+Choice%22">School Choice</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Access+to+Education%22">Access to Education</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Social+Services%22">Social Services</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Social+Stratification%22">Social Stratification</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Selective+Admission%22">Selective Admission</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Competition%22">Competition</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Educational+Principles%22">Educational Principles</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Justice%22">Justice</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Educational+Discrimination%22">Educational Discrimination</searchLink>
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  Data: This paper details the impact of New Labour's neo-liberal social and educational policies on disadvantaged groups in the district of Thanet. It notes that the post-welfare policy responses to social and educational problems reinforce both the disadvantages of deprived groups and the gradient of popularity among secondary schools within the district. It further argues that the nature of individual consumer choice inherent in the concept of neo-liberal negative freedom systematically discriminates against deprived groups by overriding wider concepts of equity and social justice. The paper concludes that a fair system of social justice, which recognizes the need for personal liberty, requires properly resourced and justly functioning public services that are equitably and inclusively available to all. (Contains 6 tables and 1 figure.)
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      – Text: English
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        PageCount: 20
        StartPage: 237
    Subjects:
      – SubjectFull: Secondary Schools
        Type: general
      – SubjectFull: Public Policy
        Type: general
      – SubjectFull: Case Studies
        Type: general
      – SubjectFull: Academic Freedom
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      – SubjectFull: Consumer Education
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      – SubjectFull: Foreign Countries
        Type: general
      – SubjectFull: Disadvantaged Youth
        Type: general
      – SubjectFull: Equal Education
        Type: general
      – SubjectFull: Politics of Education
        Type: general
      – SubjectFull: School Choice
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      – SubjectFull: Access to Education
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      – SubjectFull: Social Services
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      – SubjectFull: Social Stratification
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      – SubjectFull: Selective Admission
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      – SubjectFull: Competition
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      – SubjectFull: Educational Principles
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      – SubjectFull: Justice
        Type: general
      – SubjectFull: Educational Discrimination
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      – SubjectFull: United Kingdom (England)
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      – TitleFull: Public Sector Policies and Practice, Neo-Liberal Consumerism and Freedom of Choice in Secondary Education: A Case Study of One Area in Kent
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