Choosing Futures

Nicholas Foskett, Jane Hemsley-Brown

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2002
• ISBN:
  9781134572564
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Education is becoming more competitive - choice in education is now a key issue. This book will help parents, schools, colleges, universities and policy makers understand how education and training markets work. Choosing Futures offers a wide ranging perspective on how young people, and their parents, make choices as they travel through a lifetime of education and training. The authors challenge traditional views of how choices are made of primary school, secondary school, college, university and career, which assume that choices are rational and objective. Instead this book reveals how choices depend upon a range of factors:
*young people's personal experiences
*individual and family histories
*perceptions of education and careers.
The book compares choice for 5 to 11 year olds, and for 16 and 18 year olds; drawing out models of the decision making process, and at the same time the consequences on schools, colleges and individuals of 'enhanced choice'.

1
Choice, decision-making and the education market place

Choice, society and education

Society is shaped by the process of choice. Choice is a fundamental process of human existence, for in daily life and in the course of our lifetimes the way in which we exist as people is founded on the choices we make for ourselves and also on those made by others. Choice is an expression of human individuality, for through the choices we make we express our beliefs, values and personal priorities. Choice, though, is an interactive process. Our every choice impacts on other people, and their choices impact upon us. The choices an individual, a group or an organisation make result in changes to the world they occupy, and in so doing change the environment of choice for every other individual, group or organisation. The social, economic and cultural environment within which we all operate is the product of choices throughout human history and they constrain and shape the choices open to individuals at any particular moment. Although we are the product of our own choices, many of those choices will be highly constrained by these external environmental structures that define the way in which we live in society.

The domain of choice is a social and political battleground. The history of local, national and global politics is one of tensions between the rights of individuals to make choices and define their own existence, the rights of individuals or groups to be protected from the negative impacts of choice by others in society, and adjusting the balance between the rights and obligations of individuals and the rights and obligations of the communities and societies within which they live. The rise of democracy and the rise of capitalism are expressions of political perspectives on choice as an inherent human right. At the end of the second millennium we may perceive that ‘choice’ is a ‘meta concept’ that underpins much of global society and economy, promoted by most political regimes and championed by the corporate capitalism that increasingly shapes the globalisation of human existence. We live in the era of the ‘consumer-citizen’.

This book is about choice and young people. By the age of 20 young people find themselves in life circumstances which are, in large measure, the product of a choice system. Some of these choices will be those they have made for themselves, either as positive choices to take particular courses of action or negative choices not to take particular actions. Many of the choices, however, will be decisions in which they played little or no part but which have fundamentally impacted on their pathway through childhood and adolescence into the stage of being young adults. These decisions will have been made in the family, in the community, in the formal systems they participate in (health and education, for example), and in political and economic arenas at local, national and international level. We are all, as individuals, both the masters and victims of choice.

The explosion of the debate on choice in education in the last quarter of the twentieth century has implied that consumer educational choice is a new concept. In reality education has historically always been an arena of choice. In many countries, for example, choice has long existed in the dichotomy between state (public) and private (independent) schools, and has always existed in the decisions to continue education, take up training or move into employment made by young people after they leave the compulsory phase of education. Choice has only been constrained by centralised moves to provide universal compulsory education in an environment of limited economic resource and the belief in the role of the state to provide and fund the main social systems including education. We may regard the 1980s and 1990s, therefore, not as a period of the introduction of choice but as a time during which opportunities for choice were increased.

‘Choice’ is not a singular idea which is either present or not. Rather, it occurs across a wide range of circumstances. At one extreme we may as individuals find ourselves in circumstances where we have no choice or almost no choice. In education, for example, traditional ideas of fixed school catchments have meant that for most parents there was no choice – attendance at school for their children was a legal requirement, and the only school available (other than for those who could choose private education) was the local catchment school. At the other extreme we may be faced with circumstances where there is a bewildering range of choices. At age 18 we may choose to participate in higher education or to pursue a job with or without training. The choice of jobs and careers is potentially very large, and the choice of higher education courses is enormous, with over 15,000 courses available at over 300 institutions in the UK alone. Choice is, therefore, a highly contingent concept, and to understand its operation we must move away from generalisations about the presence or absence of choice to an understanding of the precise circumstances under which choice is operating. It is common, for example, to speak of ‘compulsory education’ and ‘post-compulsory education’ (PCE) to distinguish those phases of education and training where participation is statutorily required by government and those where participation is voluntary. In PCE compulsion, by definition, does not exist, but choice will still not be ‘free’ for it will be strongly influenced by government policy and social expectations. In compulsory education, on the other hand, while there is no choice about whether to participate, there may or may not be considerable choice about which school and which curriculum a child might experience.

The notion of choice in education has generated a strong debate about the rights and wrongs of its expansion and its relative role, concealed in a debate about the rights and wrongs of its existence. The argument is not about whether choice does or should exist, but about how far this choice should be constrained or unconstrained by external intervention. Should the shape and nature of education and training systems be driven by the choices of individual ‘consumers’ or should choice be strongly limited to provide more direct control by government on the outcomes of the system? There are strong moral, economic, ideological and political arguments within this question which will be explored later within this chapter. Irrespective of the views that emerge from that debate though, there is an imperative to understand the nature of choice in relation to education, training and careers. We need to know how choice occurs, what the outcomes of choice processes are likely to be, and what factors influence and shape choice. Only then can we fully understand the interaction of individual choice and the socio-economic structures, systems and decisions within which choice is made.

Enhanced choice and social policy

The expansion of enhanced choice in education has occurred in response to two parallel processes. Increasing social and economic expectations have resulted in the expansion of participation in post-compulsory education, which has led to an increase in provision and hence an increase in the options for choice. More important, though, has been the ascendancy of choice in the context of the application of market theory by governments around the world in the sphere of public service provision. This process of marketisation has its origins in the economic ideas of Adam Smith (Copley and Sutherland, 1995) in the eighteenth century, but modern market theory is attributed to the work of Friedrich von Hayek (1976), and is strongly associated with the thinking of Milton Friedman (Friedman and Friedman, 1980). The contention of market theory is that competition and consumer choice stimulate ‘providers’ of goods and services to strive to satisfy consumer ‘wants’ as closely as possible, and to compete by minimising their costs through better and more efficient ways of producing those goods or services. Entrepreneurship amongst producers and freedom of choice for consumers are central elements of market theory, and external intervention in the market, for example by government through policy or statutory constraint, is regarded as reducing the efficiency of such a market system.

The application of market theory to public sector services, including education, has been a feature of many ‘western’ economies during the 1980s and 1990s, based on a fundamental ideological and philosophical thrust that has captured the high ground of policy-making internationally. Although often initiated by conservative administrations, continuity with limited change has been the policy stance of successor governments across a range of political persuasions. The argument for marketisation, and hence enhanced choice, is based on a number of assertions and aspirations.

Most pressing on politicians has been the pursuit of the efficient use of resources. This is in part a reflection of an ideological and economic commitment to limiting public expenditure to sustain economic competitiveness in a global economy. It is not without significance that the most rapid growth of public sector marketisation is associated with periods of economic downturn in national economies. More important, though, is the desire to expand education for social and economic objectives without proportional increases in expenditure. Markets are perceived as driving down unit costs, as providers seek to compete for resources, and customers, which feeds through to efficiency gains in the overall education and training budget.

Tightly linked to the short-term economic benefits of marketisation is the pursuit of higher levels of individual skills and competency within the economy to optimise long-term competitiveness. Such a view sees individuals as ‘human capital’, a resource which can be invested in to produce increased economic gains. The generation of a trained, flexible future workforce is one of the principal aims of the education and training ‘business’, an objective emphasised by the Department for Education and Employment’s (DfEE) explicit target of ‘supporting economic growth by promoting a competitive, efficient and flexible labour market’ (Rajan et al., 1997, p. 2). Indeed, the economic future of the UK in the next century is frequently described as being dependent on our ability to create an internationally competitive economy and raise standards of education and training (FEFC, 1997; Fryer, 1997; DfEE, 1998b). The aim is to raise standards and attainment levels in education and training to match those in other developed countries, for there is a marked economic advantage for societies with skilled, adaptable and learning work forces in an increasingly global economy (Tuckett, 1997, p. 1). This has been an important driver for government in England and Wales in seeking to raise the levels of skills and education within the labour force (Petherbridge, 1997), and led to the establishment in 1991 of the National Advisory Council for Education and Training Targets (NACETT, 1995). Most of the key reorganisations of the education and training system in the last two decades have been predicated on such economic priorities – the push towards enhancing vocational pathways post-16 through the development of GNVQ, the proposals of the National Committee of Inquiry into Higher Education (Dearing, 1997), and the establishment of Curriculum 2000 (DfEE, 1999) are but exemplars of this trend. In particular, the equipping of entrants into the labour market with ‘pre-installed’ intellectual and practical skills and the skills necessary for lifelong learning, career re-orientation and adaptation to the technological and work practice needs of a post-industrial, post-modern society has become a priority in government education and training policy.

But what is the evidence of such objectives being achieved? The answer lies in the pursuit of increased output performance indicators – ‘standards’ has become the watchword of education and training policy across the globe. By establishing markets in which the principal criterion of success is deemed to be output standards in terms of student performance, governments have sought to raise overall levels of economic competency through the choices of individual young people and their parents in the education and training market place. The ‘standards’ debate finds its expression in the institutional (school) effectiveness and improvement movements (e.g. Reynolds and Cuttance, 1992) which have had a high profile in the evolution of professional practice in schools and colleges in many countries. The simple logic from policy-makers goes something like this:

1	We need to raise standards of achievement of young people in education and training to ensure global competitiveness for our economy.
2	Schools and colleges make the difference. It is how they operate the technical processes of education and training that determines whether each young person optimises their achievement. We can identify what processes enhance achievement, and schools and colleges can be charged and directed to follow these principles.
3	To drive schools and colleges to ensure that they manage resources and processes most effectively, an education market is created in which they must compete for resources. Key elements in such a market will be individual choice of school, college or training programme, and to both facilitate choice and demonstrate public accountability of each institution key performance indicators will be identified.
4	Schools and colleges will then be left to make it all work. Furthermore, if it doesn’t work, then because of the empowerment and autonomy of the institutions, policy-makers can blame them for the failure. If it does work, though, then the policy-makers can take the credit.

Social market development has also been founded on an ideological/ moral commitment to the empowerment of the consumer in society, though, and issues of personal liberty and autonomy. In the context of education such a perspective is enshrined in the UN ‘Universal Declaration of Human Rights’, which indicates that ‘parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children’ (Almond, in Halstead, 1994, p. 14). Such a libertarian perspective stresses the rights (and responsibilities) of the individual within society, and enshrines these rig...

Table of contents

• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 Choice, decision-making and the education market place
• 2 Motivation, rationality and the reality of choice
• 3 Choosing schools
• 4 Choosing independent schools
• 5 Young people, choice and the further education market place
• 6 Choosing training pathways at 16+
• 7 Choosing higher education
• 8 Choice or chance?
• 9 Choosing futures
• Bibliography
• Appendix A Centre for Research in Education Marketing – major research projects
• Index