ABSTRACT
The Conservative government’s radical reconstruction of education since the late 1980s has been designed not only to improve ‘a service’ but also to play a central role in the wider reform of the polity. The post-war world constituted a political order of social democracy based upon the principles of justice and equality of opportunity and designed to ameliorate class disadvantage and class division. Public goods were conceived as requiring collective choice and action. Thus the significance of systems of administrative planning (the LEA) and institutional organisation (the comprehensive school). Now these beliefs are called into question. A new political order of neo-liberal consumer democracy is being constituted, based upon different principles of rights and choice designed to enhance the agency of the individual. The public (as consumer) is being empowered at the expense of the (professional) provider. Public goods are conceived as aggregated private choices. Individual (negative) freedom will, it is purported, better deliver the goals of opportunity and social change. These political purposes have been invested in a programme of policy formation and legislative implementation as extensive as anything seen for a generation. The policy agenda has embraced the creation of markets and the differentiation of governance, consumer choice and participation, devolved institutional management, and a national curriculum.
