ABSTRACT
England has experienced the breakdown of a post-war social democratic settlement where integration of the private with the public through social
welfare, public education, health and key services (e.g. transport), and industries (e.g. coal) was strong and based on notions of the public good and equity of access. We call this the ‘social democratic trust network’. Risk was pooled through the common good, with agreed areas of public life that were treated as non-negotiable through a social and socializing contract that all would fund and could access. However, this ‘settlement’ was not settled, leaving it open to ongoing questions regarding concerns over national economic decline and how state services could respond to an increasingly diverse society. The solutions promoted by and pragmatically implemented by successive Thatcher governments from 1979 was through markets and consumerism entering into the provision of public services. This included the sale of public assets, outsourcing of services, and cultural changes to eradicate dependency through the promotion of the active consumer. We call this the ‘neo-liberal trust network’. Here risk is about reliance on the self in relation with others. It is a question of ‘buyer beware’ where all is open for individual negotiation through negotiated contracts. In education, this neo-liberal trust network has manifested itself in a range of changes to structures and cultures where practice as a taxpayer, a parent, a student, and a professional has seen a shift towards marketized norms and expectations variously as funders, contractors, choosers, and deliverers.
