ABSTRACT

The hallmark of the Conservative Governments’ social policy between 1988 and 1994 was the introduction into social provision of market-led concepts such as competition, purchaserprovider distinctions and the empowerment, in a variety of ways, of consumers. In education the transformation was rapid: professional and essentially bureaucratic modes of managing a largely stable system were replaced by marketized relationships within a competitive, unstable and increasingly fragmented system. The introduction of market-led reforms redefined both the institutional structure of the education system and the task of management within it. Schools were encouraged to think of themselves as competing businesses, providing services and purchasing support and supply systems as they required them. However, whilst the injection of market forces into the system imposed on schools elements of the discipline of competition, there were powerful countervailing pressures in the professional culture of schooling and in the logic of the market place which encouraged schools in a variety of ways to collaborate or to form formal and informal consortia. This chapter explores the logic of the market-led structure of schooling which was created by Conservative legislation between the 1988 Education Reform Act and the 1993 Education Act, and the ways within the structure in which schools were establishing collaborative relationships with other schools. It concludes by exploring some of the managerial and structural implications of the new structures.