ABSTRACT
The radical reconstruction of education, by the Conservative government, from the mid1980s was designed not only to improve ‘a service’ but also to play a central role in the wider reform of a polity constituted in the post-war era on social democratic principles of justice to ameliorate class disadvantage. Public goods were conceived as requiring collective choice and redistribution. The Conservatives strove to create a new political order of neo-liberal consumer democracy based upon different principles of rights and choice designed to enhance the agency of the individual. The public (as consumer) would be empowered at the expense of the (professional) provider. Public goods, to achieve equity rather than equality, were conceived as aggregated private choices (Ranson 1994; 1995).
