New Right Perspective On Education

The New Right believe that the state cannot reach peoples needs. People are better off free to themselves ( marketisation, free schools, academies, privatisation )

PROBLEMS

• Government run education is inefficient 
  • parents cant choose alternative provider of free education
  • publically funded means that schools cannot go out of business
  • therefore they have very little incentive to respond to parents needs, simply because nothing will happen if they ignore it

• Providers of education have too much power
  • new right believe that education reflects interest of teachers
  • rather then consumers
  • education is meant to benefit the consumers not the producers
  • teachers are interested in increasing expenditure on education to make their job secure and improve their chance of promotion
• Too much taxation
  • everyone acts for their own benefit + interets, politicans = votes, teachers = secure job - leads to higher expenditure and taxation which damages the economy

SOLUTUONS

• education should be run as a private business
  • supports marketisation
  • individuals decide what they want and where they wish to go
  • if the school cant provide their needs it should go out of business

• Education should teach a national ethos and academic principles
  • schools should provide norms and values that provide a antional identtiy
    • e.g. british history, shakespeare, etc.
  • Has happened through the introduction of national curriculum
    • more academic content (english baccalaureate)

They illustrate the main arguments of the New Right

They believe that state run education has failed in the USA because:

• Private schools are better - listening to the parents as they pay - higher and better education
• private schools are not constrained by government polices and targets 
  • more flexible to student and parent needs
• In competition with other private schools so offer lower tuition fees than their competitors

Conclusion

state run schools should be run as a business competing against eachother, like private schools

• through a voucher system - entitling them to purchase for their education to the value determined by the government 
• enocourages competition - similar to the pupil funding formula

Gerwitz and Ball

• m/c use their cultural + economic capital to go to better schools
• schools concentrate efforts on middle class - more likely to improve league table position
• curriculum undermines vocational studies which working class are good at

Marxists + Social thinkers

• A curriculum with british identity is one thay imposes the cukture of dominant ruling class minority - leading to obedience 
• ignores and undermines the contribution of ethnic minorities in british societies 

Hugh Lauder

• educational markets could reduce choice if all bad schools closed
• middle class parents more aware of educational standards AND they can oay
• Myth of parentocracy - rural areas are likely to be restriced to one school

Stewart Ranson

• new right proposal will create schools who wont have a mix of social groups
• schools only focus on academic achievement + league table positioning and are unlikely to focus on extra curriculum (after school clubs, school trips, house games)