New Policy Spaces in Education

Molly Warrington, University of Cambridge

Focus + structure

• Spaces of inequality – places where educational deprivation concentrated

• Despite unprecedented emphasis on education + spatial policies – equity hasn’t improved

• Factors contributing to overall failure to improve equity

• Although new policy spaces of education, policy still driven by the centre

An emphasis on education

• Education Acts passed almost every year• Emphasis on standards and assessment• Policy centralisation • But also localisation• Increasing focus on parental responsibility• Greater role for private sector – quasi-

markets

Spatially-focused initiatives

• Education Action Zones• Excellence in Cities• Academies• Increased resources with a redistributive

element• A government committed to a socially

inclusive education system• New data (eg PLASC) enable greater

knowledge of equity issues: who is achieving / not achieving and where

A socially inclusive education system?• Little evidence that equity achieved (Ainscow et

al, 2008)• Segregation between secondary schools

increased (Gorard, 2009)• A widening achievement gap between the most

and least successful schools (Barker, 2008)• Socially mobility stagnant (Cabinet Office, 2009)• Policies to improve education benefiting the

middle classes (Commission for Social Mobility, 2009)

• Children of parents in manual occupations less likely to be in education, training or work post-16 (Archer, 2005)

• Fewer students from working-class backgrounds go to university (Vandenberghe, 2007); tend to choose ‘new’ universities (Reay, 2001, Warrington, 2008), with poorer labour market outcomes (Keep & Mayhew, 2004)

• Overall impact of spatially-focused policies limited (eg, Morris & Rutt, 2005, Machin et al, 2005)

• ‘No clear evidence that academies work to produce better results than the kind of school they replaced’ (Gorard, 2009)

- though someexceptions: ‘a phoenix rising from the ashesin the very heart ofthe inner city’

People & Places

WHY DOES INEQUITY PERSIST?

Schools Policies

Socio-economic / Socio-culturalfactors

Context of challengingenvironments

Choice andmarketisation

•Education holding little value•Lack of cultural capital•Effects of peer pressure

•Not all parents equally able to exercise choice

New policy spaces or a continuation of old ones?• Academies as the new policy space – private sponsors

- have role in schools’ governance, staff terms and conditions – publicly-funded private schools

• YET ‘old’ policy spaces remain • A growing centralisation, leading to tension between

national and local space• Policy driven by needs of capital and demands of

knowledge economy, with inadequate recognition of complexity of place

• Thus, ‘in relation to social class the more things change the more they stay the same’ (Reay, 2003)