Market Forces and the School Curriculum - CiteSeerX

0 downloads 0 Views 53KB Size Report
economic critique was that a market-based school system would produce greater diversity ..... tables, the 'market leader' is the independent school. .... GNVQ intermediate courses in Health and Social Care and Business have already ... range of academic courses in the upper school required by their existing conception of.
Market Forces and School Curriculum Working Paper No: 99.1

Peter Davies* and Nick Adnett Centre for Economics and Business Education, Staffordshire University Business School

* Corresponding author: Economics Division, Staffordshire University Business School, Leek Road, Stoke-on-Trent ST4 2DF. Tel. 01782 294085, e-mail [email protected] wp991.doc

1

Market Forces and the School Curriculum

Abstract

One of the promised consequences of market-based reforms of state schooling systems was an increase in the diversity of curricula offered in schools. In this paper we utilise economic analysis to explore the influence of an increase in competitive pressures within a local schooling market on the curriculum offered. We identify market forces which encourage conformity and inhibit a speedy response to quasi-market reforms. Our analysis suggests a staged response to reforms, with the pressure to innovate being greatest for those schools with the least resources to fund curriculum change. We illustrate this outcome by reference to case studies drawn from research on the development of the 16-19 curriculum and the non-compulsory 14-16 curriculum in a local schooling market.

wp991.doc

1

Market Forces and the School Curriculum The market choice critique of state schooling has inspired educational reform in many developed economies in recent years (Walford, 1996). One of the main claims of this economic critique was that a market-based school system would produce greater diversity of provision, as schools were forced to provide the type of curriculum desired by parents in that segment of the market within which they operated (Levin, 1991). However, economists have only recently begun to formally examine the conditions under which competitive markets promote innovation rather than inertia and produce diverging rather than converging producer behaviour. In this paper we concentrate upon analysing the impact of recent UK educational reforms. We utilise economic analysis to examine the complex effects which an increase in the role of market forces can have on curriculum innovation and the degree of diversity of provision in a local schooling market. We also explain why predicting the outcome of market-based reforms on the basis of the initial responses of schools may underestimate their long-term adjustment.

Recent educational reforms in many countries, including the United Kingdom, have produced a quasi-market in schooling (Bartlett, 1993, Glennerster, 1991). Open enrolment increased consumer choice whilst devolution of additional powers to schools increased their ability to respond to parental and pupil preferences. Some attempt was also made on the provider side to create structural change although this generated few new entrants. We are here concerned only with those aspects of the market reforms which are pertinent to the nature of the curriculum. If the curriculum is wholly dictated by national law, the influence of market forces is restricted to an effect on standards achieved by schools in teaching a given curriculum. National curricula, such as those wp991.doc

2

introduced in 1988 in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, partially create this type of situation (Whitty et al., 1998). However, even in these circumstances, there are many aspects of the curriculum which are not controlled by the state, and the overall extent and prescription of the National Curriculum were reduced following the Dearing Review (Dearing, 1993) Some subjects (e.g. Business Studies) taught by secondary schools were not included in the national curricula for England, Wales and Northern Ireland and the 16-19 curriculum was not included in this legislation at all. Consequently schools were able to choose, at least in their 16-19 curriculum, their balance between academic and vocational courses (Davies & Adnett, 1999), although they are constrained in altering the balance between curriculum breadth and depth (Pound, 1998). In this paper we are concerned with subjects in the 16-19 curriculum and the non-compulsory 14-16 curriculum.

Our discussion is organised as follows. Initially we examine the market choice claim that increased competition will lead to a greater diversity of curriculum in a local schooling market. Employing economic analysis and evidence provided from the largely sociologically based investigations of UK reforms, we challenge the conclusion that increased diversity is inevitable. Instead we explain the likelihood of a staged response by schools to the introduction of a quasi-market. Initially, significant curriculum innovation is unlikely as schools attempt to market their existing product. The creation of active consumers with similar tastes causes a second stage of adjustment in which all schools attempt to alter their curriculum to attract these parents and pupils. This increase in curriculum conformity is only challenged when those schools failing to retain market share are forced to innovate. In the second half of the paper we illustrate these three stages using evidence drawn from a study of two local schooling markets. wp991.doc

3

Competition and the curriculum: developing an analytical framework According to advocates of market forces, competition will lead schools to provide a curriculum best suited to the needs of a post-industrial economy and to specialise in serving the needs of particular client groups (Chubb and Moe, 1990, Tooley, 1995). Implicit in this view is the assumption that information is available to allow client groups to choose between alternative curricula. From a free market perspective, creating consumer sovereignty resolves the conflict between the objectives of preparing for employment and that of meeting the needs of particular client groups. If one group of parents value the development of religious belief or artistic talent above future financial gain through more vocational schooling, then parents should be free to pursue their particular preference. In addition to being well informed about the abilities of their children, parents are assumed to be knowledgeable about present and future labour market rewards to different types of schooling and sensitive to the influence of changes in economic circumstances. Such changes will influence the overall mix of parental decisions without producing conformity.

One possible outcome of market forces is a specialised curriculum which has been overtly chosen by the school management to attract a particular, sizeable, client group and reduce costs through focusing the school’s objectives. Such analysis characterises the process of competition in terms of children and money accruing to schools which provide a curriculum which parents want. If different groups of parents want different curricula then separate markets exist in which schools specialise in meeting particular parental wp991.doc

4

preferences. Schools which are less popular will take note of the curriculum offered by those more popular and adjust their own curriculum to avoid the risk of closure. Innovative schools will directly monitor parental preferences to detect niches of unsatisfied demand. Within this analysis, conformity of curriculum can arise only because of a conformity of parental preferences or through median voter processes in which dissenting parents have preferences too diverse for the market to efficiently satisfy.

U.K. evidence for the above processs is weak. Early research discovered little curriculum change which was attributable to the effects of the quasi-market. Ball (1993) and Bagley et al. (1996) found evidence that schools adopted marketing policies which emphasised promotion rather than reviewing the ‘product’ of the school, with resources being diverted from support of the curriculum. OFSTED (1998) reports a cautious response of schools to the flexibility in Key Stage 4 introduced in 1995, with schools deferring adoption of short course GCSEs and Part One GNVQ "until the picture becomes clearer" (paragraph 119). Bagley et al. attribute schools’ reluctance to change their curriculum to a determination of school managers to pursue their own educational philosophy (see also Deem et al., 1994) coupled with a belief that changing the curriculum is unlikely to alter parental opinion of the school.

Other researchers have noted a concentration by schools upon the preferences of a particular group of parents. Studies of Grant Maintained Schools (Halpin et al., 1997; Power et al., 1996) and City Technology Colleges (Edwards and Whitty, 1997, 1997a) have noted a tendency to conform to a traditional model of an academic curriculum. Gewirtz et al. (1995) found that those curriculum specialisations which were introduced (such as music and dance) formed part of a renewed emphasis on an academic curriculum wp991.doc

5

appealing to middle class parents. This curriculum outcome has been explained by Ball (1993a), Echols and Willms (1995) and others in terms of schools’ response to the preferences of active consumers. This research has shown that middle class parents are better equipped (through ‘cultural capital’) to exploit the opportunities created by markets in education. Working class parents are, in general, placed at a disadvantage since the labour market offers them weak incentives and, as a consequence of their own education, social connections, wealth and employment, they have less knowledge of bureaucratic and educational processes, less skills necessary to exploit this knowledge and less financial ability to switch away from reliance upon local schools. Consequently, middle class parents are more likely to choose to send their children to a school outside their neighbourhood. The market provides incentives to schools to respond to these ‘marginal’ parents who are likely to switch to a competitor, whilst providing no incentive for the school to respond to the curriculum preferences of parents who will, in any case, send their child to the neighbourhood school. Since these active middle class parents systematically value academic achievement more highly than other parents (Echols et al., 1990; Waslander and Thrupp, 1995), the quasi-market encourages all schools to favour a curriculum which reflects this preference.

Associated with this renewed emphasis on the academic curriculum is a tendency towards a more segregated experience of the curriculum even when the subjects studied are the same. The movement of middle class children to popular schools leads to covert selection and overt selection (Walford, 1996a) accelerates this trend. However, it is a trend which also occurs within some schools as setting is introduced to attract middle class parents (Woods et al., 1996; Reay, 1998), although a later contribution by Woods et al. (1998) questions the generality of this finding. Nevertheless, despite initial resistance wp991.doc

6

to market pressures schools have begun to adapt to in ways described by Ball (1993) as a subversion of school managers’ priorities and purposes.

We now develop an alternative economic analysis which challenges the belief that market forces inevitably lead to diversity in the curricula offered by schools and which recognises this dominance of ‘marginal’ middle class consumers. This provides an explanation for the gradual emergence of a rather different kind of specialisation between schools than the account provided by the market choice economics.

In the absence of a price for schooling, quasi-markets encourage parents to respond to the range and quality of schools’ outcomes. First, concerning range, Brown (1992) has argued that where parents are uncertain about the abilities and future employment preferences of their children, they will opt for a common, broad curriculum as a means of shedding risk. This suggests that curriculum diversity should increase as pupils progress through the schooling system, because the uncertainty of outcome decreases. If this argument is combined with the ‘active consumer’ argument outlined earlier, we should expect to find all schools seeking to provide a curriculum broad enough to attract those middle class parents who are most willing to send their children to an out of neighbourhood school.

Second, choosing an appropriate measure of the quality of a school’s outcome is problematic since schooling outcomes are necessarily uncertain and disparate (e.g. average level of academic outcomes, distribution of academic outcomes, vocational preparation, socialisation). Yet consumer behaviour in markets often relies on the application of simple heuristics (Conlisk, 1996). Parents will tend to gear their decision wp991.doc

7

making to one or two key signals which provide partial, biased, information about the full set of outcomes with which they are, in principle, concerned. However, individual suppliers only have an incentive to provide information which they believe will encourage consumers to favour their service. Hence, it is not surprising to find the government determining which measures of quality schools must disclose. This dictation of the basis for comparing schools, establishing competition by comparison (Vickers, 1995), follows a similar logic to the regulatory regimes introduced for privatised utilities. An inevitable consequence of this government intervention is gradual replacement of diverse parental criteria of quality by a uniform government criterion. League tables of schools’ examination results have led, in England and Wales, to a focus on the proportion of pupils gaining 5 or more grades A to C at GCSE level. Together with the associated market-based reforms, this has generated two pressures on schools: (i) to concentrate on academic outcomes; and (ii) to favour the enrolment of more able pupils.

Schools’ response to parental preference is constrained by the costs of change and the uncertainties associated with the outcomes of any particular course of action. Schools are constrained in responding to consumer choice by the specificity of the human capital of their teachers (House, 1996). Teachers’ investments of time and effort into designing and delivering the existing curriculum, their sunk costs, inhibit the speedy initiation of major curriculum change as markets evolve. Often inertia can only be overcome by the threat of closure or changes amongst senior management. This transactions costs argument suggests that minor curriculum changes are more likely than major ones, and that the latter are more likely to be found amongst schools persistently losing market share. Research in Canada (Levin and Riffel, 1997) supports this conclusion whereas Levacic

wp991.doc

8

(1998) found that most English schools still treat funds for curriculum innovation as a residual in their budgeting.

Innovation is risky as well as costly as explained by models of information and network externalities (Liebowitz and Margolis, 1994, Bikhchandani et al., 1998). Schools find it difficult and expensive to accumulate their own information about market conditions, whilst the consequences of their decisions are dependent upon the behaviour of others. For example, in part, the marketability of a new qualification, say GNVQ, depends upon sufficient other schools and pupils choosing this qualification that employers have an incentive to asses the relative capabilities of those acquiring the qualification. Given that both acquiring market information and curriculum innovations are costly, schools over rely on the signals provided by other schools. That is, the presence of these externalities encourages conformity and schools are likely to 'free-ride', relying on gaining knowledge from those schools losing market share who are forced to innovate. This externalities argument suggests a gradual adjustment by schools to the quasi-market, with major curriculum changes again being concentrated in schools experiencing a falling market share. This expectation is confirmed by the observation of lack of curriculum innovation by Grant Maintained Schools (Fitz et al., 1997, Halpin, 1997).

This analysis suggests a staged response by schools to the introduction of a quasi-market. Costs and uncertainty will cause schools initially to avoid change in the curriculum, preferring to devote resources to persuading parents of the benefits of their current curriculum. A second stage is ushered in by the effects of the willingness of some middle class parents to move their pupils and the introduction by the government of a criterion on which parents are encouraged to choose schools. The criterion chosen for England and wp991.doc

9

Wales by the UK government, the publication of examination results in the form of school league tables, reinforces the movement by middle class parents. In this phase, all schools have an incentive to conform their curriculum to a broad menu dictated by the preferences of active middle class parents. This conformity begins to crumble in competitive local school markets if the effects of pupil movement on schools’ finances encourage schools to take on the costs and risks associated with substantive change. Successful innovation by one school is likely to prompt others to follow suit. Unsuccessful innovation substantially increases the likelihood of closure. We now examine the stories of three schools in one competitive local market which offer support for this analysis of a staged response to quasi-market forces.

The study The results presented here are drawn from a study of secondary and tertiary education in two small to medium sized towns. In this account we focus on three secondary schools (an independent, a grant maintained and an LEA financed comprehensive) in the more competitive of the two local markets. This greater intensity of competition is reflected in statements made by the headteachers, a greater fluidity of movement of pupils across former school catchment boundaries and a net inflow of pupils from outside the town.

In each school, data was collected through semi-structured interviews with headteachers, deputy headteachers responsible for the curriculum, and heads of department. These interviews explored the rationale for the curriculum, responsiveness to parents, comparison with other institutions, and curriculum change in Economics, Business Studies and Modern Foreign Languages. Interviews were structured in order: (i) to root wp991.doc

10

the investigation in specific changes which could be cross-checked through the recollections and perceptions of different witnesses; and (ii) to reduce the risk of prompting interviewees to bias their explanations towards the influence of market forces. Detailed results of the investigation into changes in the Business Studies curriculum are reported elsewhere (Davies, 1999).

wp991.doc

11

Results

According to the measure of school success encouraged by the publication of league tables, the ‘market leader’ is the independent school. The intake of pupils into this school is selected by ability and parents’ capacity to pay fees. In the words of the Headteacher, the school aims to ‘appeal to certain types of parent’ who expect their children to attend university and find employment as ‘a lawyer or doctor’. The Headteacher identifies the distinctive quality of the curriculum by referring to the sixth form programme as ‘a high quality academic programme...There has got to be a parity of esteem intellectually for the programmes we offer. We want to make it quite clear that we are an A/AS school.’

In offering a broad choice of ‘A’ Level subjects the school includes some subjects in its sixth form which the Headteacher believes ‘a school like this has to provide’. Some of these subjects (Music, Latin, Greek, Philosophy) are studied by a very small proportion of the pupils at the school. One explanation for their retention is to attract parents who wish their children to have the option of following these courses of study. An alternative explanation is that these subjects act as signals to parents in lieu of less easily observed school characteristics such as the peer group with whom their children will study and an academic emphasis in all areas of study.

According to the Headteacher, during the past five years there has been a sharp increase in competition between schools in the town. One effect of this competition has been an increase in the resources devoted by this school to marketing. Obtaining good coverage in the local newspaper has been a key activity in this effort as the school has tried to exploit wp991.doc

12

the considerable extent of its ‘extra-curricular’ activities in sport and the arts. The school has also devoted more attention to communicating with its existing pool of parents. This attention has not extended to trying to identify parental preferences which might prompt curriculum change. Initiatives such as the introduction of Theatre Studies, English Language ‘A’ level and Politics have been inaugurated by staff on the basis of their existing expertise and interest. The senior management of the school have then allowed the market to decide the survival of these initiatives. Theatre Studies has failed whilst English Language has survived. The credentials of the school may require Classics and ‘A’ Level Music, but not Theatre Studies. Another, important initiative in the school’s curriculum has been the development of AS courses. The school has encouraged pupils who ‘cannot manage’ three ‘A’ Level subjects to opt for a mixture of ‘A’ and AS levels. The range of ability of pupils in its sixth form has widened as the overall number increased.

The state school with the highest performance in school league tables is grant maintained and heavily oversubscribed. Beechville has responded to its popularity by increasing its intake of 11 year old pupils by 50% over the past 6 years although it does not overtly select pupils on the grounds of academic ability. However, there are several reasons for believing that it practices covert selection. First, it investigates the commitment of parents to supporting their children’s education when conducting interviews. Second, it aggressively markets to out of town parents, particularly those who may be commuting into the town. Third, it portrays itself as an ‘A Level School’ resisting requests from some parents to introduce vocational (GNVQ) courses. One of the senior managers expressed the school’s position in these terms:

wp991.doc

13

‘We are under pressure. We have a lot of requests for GNVQ post-16 and we are not a GNVQ school.’

The concept of ‘A Level schools’ and ‘GNVQ schools’ recurred several times in conversations and it was associated with beliefs about the suitability of academic and vocational courses for pupils of different ability. One senior manager suggested that other state schools in the town offered GNVQ courses because:

‘They feel perhaps that GNVQ is more suitable for the kids they have got.’

The reluctance of Beechville to introduce GNVQ courses, despite parental pressure, makes sense if the school’s strategy is to attract those parents who want their children to study for ‘A’ Levels. In this respect, Beechville appears to be opting for a similar curriculum to the independent school. It does not offer Classics, but it markets itself as an ‘A Level School’ and offers a wide choice at this level. This breadth of choice attracts pupils who transfer from other schools. Nearly 20% of Beechville’s sixth form pupils completed their 11-16 education at other schools.

Beechville’s presentation of itself as an ‘A-Level School’ represents the limits of its specialisation. The school has been awarded ‘Technology School’ status and it relies on the resources which this status brings to attract parents. However, it does not place a special emphasis on Technology in the curriculum. One senior manager was very direct in stating

‘We do not believe Technology should be for all.’

wp991.doc

14

The school’s priority lies in maintaining what it considers to be a suitable range of academic courses.

Ashford High School has experienced a serious (33%) decline in the size of its intake since the introduction of open enrolment. Under 30% of the pupils at the school gain 5 or more GCSE qualifications at grades A-C. The academic ability of the school’s intake is heavily skewed with 75% of children below the average reading age for the county and a large proportion of parents do not expect their children to continue with full-time education beyond the age of 16. The Headteacher believes that the school is widely regarded as being a ‘comprehensive/secondary modern’ and, together with his senior staff, is pessimistic about the possibility of competing with other schools in the town. The majority of pupils from the school’s former ‘feeder primary schools’ who transfer to schools other than Ashford at age 11 are from residential areas with a high proportion of middle class parents.

As a result, the management and staff are struggling with what they see as a tension between maintaining the educational opportunities they associate with a comprehensive education and meeting the needs of the bulk of the pupils at the school. This tension is compounded by the small and falling enrolment of the school. A small school has great difficulty providing a wide range of educational opportunity. Ashford maintains a very small sixth form through heavy subsidisation at the expense of resources for the lower school. According to the Headteacher at Ashford, the reason for persisting with small, expensive, A-Level groups in the sixth form is to maintain a range of abilities amongst the pupils at the school:

wp991.doc

15

If we actually do anything which reinforces the perception that we are a secondary modern, that could mean that the few able pupils we do get would go elsewhere.

Unless the school maintains a variety of A-Level courses, parents face a considerable risk that their children will need to transfer to another institution at age 16 if they are to pursue the subjects of their choice at this level. The school is also motivated to pay particular attention to the needs of more able pupils by the benefits which this brings to some of the staff who derive particular satisfaction from teaching A-Level courses. Retention of these courses helps the school to keep and motivate these members of staff.

Indications of market pressure can also be detected in several policies which the school has adopted in order to raise the percentage of pupils achieving 5 or more GCSE qualifications at grades A-C. One of these policies has been the introduction of a banding system in the lower school. This consists of one top stream, two ‘mixed’ ability classes and a special needs class. The Headteacher is not entirely comfortable with the arrangement: ‘I am not necessarily agreed with the philosophy myself. But in terms of pragmatic, what it is like to teach a fully mixed ability in year 7 and make sure you are stretching the more able to achieve what they are capable of, then there are not many teachers who are capable of doing that.’

However, in response to the school’s continuing failure to retain the allegiance of parents of more able children the school managers are now seeking ways of providing a curriculum which they believe is better suited to the needs of the majority of the school’s pupils. GNVQ intermediate courses in Health and Social Care and Business have already been introduced in the sixth form and the school hopes to introduce GNVQ foundation wp991.doc

16

courses in Health and Social Care, Business, Manufacturing and Performing Arts for 14 to 16 year old pupils. These changes have been initiated without any systematic attempt to discover the wishes of the majority of parents in the local area or the influence of the curriculum on parents’ choice of school.

As one of the senior managers explained, falling intake has now brought the school to a watershed in which the comprehensive ideal and survival appear to be alternatives. The cost of maintaining small A-level groups is proving too much for the rest of the school to bear. The school has already ceased offering a second language to 14-16 year old students and staff who teach A Level have been told that they cannot expect this opportunity to continue indefinitely at the school. When compared with other schools in the town the subject curriculum offered by Ashford is very restricted. The school is now moving towards a stage of innovation in its curriculum, but it is doing so with little data relevant to the likely effects of such innovation on its intake.

Discussion

Several common policies were observed in these schools: an absence of systematic investigation of parental preferences, subsidisation of sixth form classes, and an increase in resources devoted to convincing parents of the merits of the school. These policies are underpinned by school managers’ belief that they know what is best for the children, tempered by an alertness to the significance of the breadth of the sixth form curriculum in attracting children to the school. We found no evidence that the curriculum was being changed through the seeking out of new niche markets following research of parental preferences. wp991.doc

17

However, we do detect effects of market forces on the curriculum operating through: government influence on public conceptions of the quality of schools’ outcomes; the unrepresentative characteristics of pupils more likely to attend out of neighbourhood schools and changes in the school roll. These effects can be summarised as three stages of the response of schools to market forces. Although the behaviour of each school is too complex to be captured simply in terms of being representative of a sharply defined stage, the use of stages conveys change over time in which categorically different types of behaviour are observed. The argument here is that we are not simply observing different types of response, but that schools are at different stages in moving through a sequence of responses.

This first stage sees increased resources being allocated to persauding parents that the existing curriculum is well suited to the needs of their children. Curiously, it is the school with the most experience of operating in a market which is still at this stage. Prior to the introduction of market forces in state schooling, the independent school had experienced a long period of competitive stability and had become passive as a consequence. It has now begun to feel the impact of the increasingly competitive behaviour of state schools and has become active in marketing itself.

A second stage has been referred to as a reinvigoration of a traditional curriculum which emphasises academic subjects (e.g. Whitty et al., 1998). This has been encouraged by the government’s promotion of academic attainment as the key criterion for judging quality and the preferences of parents more likely to move their children to an out of neighbourhood school. The grant maintained school in our study illustrates school wp991.doc

18

behaviour at this stage. Subsequent to the introduction of a quasi-market it has taken a number of steps which represent a shift away from providing a comprehensive education: targeting out of area marketing on middle class locations; probing parental commitment to children’s education; resisting the introduction of Technology for All, despite ‘Technology Status’; resisting parental pressure for the introduction of GNVQ courses; and subsidisation of small sixth form classes in some subjects, such as Music, by increasing class sizes lower down the school, in order to maintain a sufficiently broad range of subjects.

Ashford is already at a third stage of response to quasi-market forces. This stage is triggered by a combination of two effects: (i) the school roll falling too low to sustain the range of academic courses in the upper school required by their existing conception of comprehensive education; and (ii) by the continuing loss of more able pupils to other schools outweighing the positive effects on league table performance resulting from changes in the school’s organisation and teaching. The key feature of the school’s behaviour which distinguishes it from schools at other stages is a reluctant willingness to take risks in curriculum planning and staffing. Other schools are able to rely on market signals, observing the characteristics of schools which attract more pupils and copying aspects of their behaviour. Ashford has been through this phase without achieving market success and is being forced to innovate without a local role model. In this position it is able to calculate some benefits and costs (e.g. gains through reducing subsidisation of academic courses, losses through resourcing new vocational courses and loss of specialised staff), but it lacks information on the potential effect of such a move on parental behaviour and has made no systematic attempt to gather such data. This willingness to let curriculum planning dictate a shift a change in staffing is in strong wp991.doc

19

contrast to schools at the other stages. This is a school which has been pushed beyond the human capital constraint identified by House (1996) and is beginning to innovate despite the disadvantages identified above. Given its market position, even if the school is successful, many of the benefits will accrue to other schools which would have a successful model to copy. In changing it curriculum to match perceived demand rather than offering a curriculum which it considers to be ideal this school is beginning to behave in the marketplace in a similar fashion to the local college of further education. However, the college is more proactive in identifying areas of unsatisfied demand. For example, it had recently scrapped an accountancy course and introduced a technicians course in response to evidence of a change in the local labour market and information gleaned from employers. Much of the college’s work is with a client group who are may choose an option of no education and training if they do not value the content of the courses on offer. If schools worked with this kind of client group their behaviour might be different.

wp991.doc

20

Conclusion The notion that quasi-market reforms of the type currently operating in England and Wales will speedily lead to curriculum diversity in terms of subject specialisms is fundamentally flawed. Decisions by participants in the education market are subject to considerable uncertainty and transactions costs. Schools delay their responses to market reforms not just because of these costs but also because in a more competitive market the consequences of their innovations is more sensitive to the behaviour of their competitors. This increased inter-dependency initially promotes inertia and convergence. Our economic analysis of the effect of quasi-markets on the curriculum predicts slow change, spread unevenly around the system. In particular, the greatest burden of change is placed on schools with the least resources to innovate successfully. The current quasi-market arrangements conflict with other government curriculum priorities directed of increasing ‘preparation for employment’ and eliniating the separation of academic and vocational routes in education. Schools have few incentives within the current quasi-market arrangements to reflect these priorities in their curriculum innovation.

wp991.doc

21

Acknowledgments We wish to thank participating schools and LEAs, John Ramsay and participants in the Economics staff seminar at Staffordshire University for help with this research.

wp991.doc

22

References BAGLEY, C., WOODS, P. AND GLATTER R. (1996) Barriers to School responsiveness in the Education Quasi-market, School Organisation, 16, pp 45-58. BALL, S. (1993) Education Policy, Power Relations and Teachers’ Work , British Journal of Educational Studies, 41, pp 106-121. BALL, S. (1993a), Education Markets, Choice and Social Class: the market as a class strategy in the UK and the USA. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 14, pp 3-19. BARTLETT, W. (1993), Quasi-Markets and Educational Reforms. Ch. 6 of J. Le Grand and W. Bartlett (Eds) Quasi-Markets and Social Policy, (London, Macmillan). BIKHCHANDANI, S., HIRSCHLEIFER, D. AND WELCH, I. (1998) Learning from the Behaviour of Others: Conformity, Fads, and Informational Cascades, Journal of Economic Perspectives, 12, pp 151-70. BROWN, B. (1992) Why Governments Run Schools, Economics of Education Review, 11, pp 287-300. CHUBB, J. AND MOE, T. (1990) Politics, Markets and America’s Schools, (Washington, DC, Brookings Institution). CONLISK, J. (1996), Why Bounded Rationality? Journal of Economic Literature 34, pp 669-700. DAVIES, P. (1999) The Changing Definition of Business Studies in the Curriculum, Curriculum Journal, (forthcoming). DAVIES, P. AND ADNETT, N. (1999) Quasi-market reforms and vocational schooling in England: an economic analysis, Journal of Education and Work (forthcoming). DEARING, R. (1993) The National Curriculum and its Assessment, (London, Schools Curriculum and Assessment Authority). DEEM, R., BREHONY, K. AND HEATH, S. (1994) Governors, Schools and the Miasma of the Market, British Education Research Journal, 20, pp 535-550. ECHOLS, F., MCPHERSON, A. AND WILLMS, J. (1990), Choice amongst State and Private Schools in Scotland. Journal of Education Policy, 5, pp 207-222.

wp991.doc

23

ECHOLS, F. AND WILLMS, J. (1995), Reasons for School Choice in Scotland. Journal of Education Policy, 10, pp 143-56. EDWARDS, T. AND WHITTY, G. (1997), Marketing Quality: traditional and modern versions of educational excellence, in Glatter, R., Woods P. and Bagley, C. (Eds), Choice and Diversity in Schooling: Perspectives and Prospects, (London, Routledge). EDWARDS, T. AND WHITTY, G. (1997a), Specialisation and Selection in Secondary Education, Oxford Review of Education, 23, pp 5-15. FITZ, J., HALPIN, D. and POWER, S. (1997) ‘Between a Rock and a Hard Place’: diversity, institutional identity and grant-maintained schools, Oxford Review of Education, pp 17-30. GEWIRTZ, S., BALL, S. AND BOWE, R. (1995), Markets, Choice and Equity in Education, (Buckingham, Open University Press). GLENNERSTER, H. (1991), Quasi-markets for education? Economic Journal, 101, pp 1268-76. HALPIN, D. (1997) Fragmentation into Different Types of School: Diversifying into the past, in Pring R. and Walford, G. (Eds) Affirming the Comprehensive Ideal, (London, The Falmer Press). HALPIN, D., POWER, S. AND FITZ, J.(1997) Opting into the past? Grant maintained schools and the reinvention of tradition, in Glatter, R., Woods P. and Bagley, C. (Eds), Choice and Diversity in Schooling: Perspectives and Prospects, (London, Routledge). HOUSE, E. (1996) A Framework for Appraising Educational Reform, Educational Researcher, 25, pp 6-14. LEVACIC, R. (1998), Local management of schools in England: Results after six years, Journal of Education Policy, 13, pp 331-50. LEVIN, B. AND RIFFEL, J. (1997) School system responses to external change: implications for parental choice of schools, in Glatter, R., Woods P. and Bagley, C. (Eds), Choice and Diversity in Schooling: Perspectives and Prospects, (London, Routledge). LEVIN, H. (1991), The Economics of Educational Choice. Economics of Education Review, 10, pp 137-58. LIEBOWITZ, S AND MARGOLIS, S. (1994) Network Externality: An Uncommon Tragedy, Journal of Economic Perspectives, 8, pp 133-50. wp991.doc

24

OFSTED (1998) The Annual Report of Her Majesty's Chief Inspector of Schools (London, HMSO). POUND, T. (1998) Forty Years On: the issue of breadth in the post-16 curriculum, Oxford Review of Education, 24, pp 167-180. POWER, S., HALPIN, D. AND FITZ, J. (1996), The Grant Maintained Schools Policy: The English Experience of Educational Self-Governance, in Pole, C. and ChawlaDuggan, R. (Eds), Reshaping Education in the 1990s: perspectives on secondary schooling, (London, Falmer Press). REAY, D. (1998) Setting the agenda: the growing impact of market forces on pupil grouping in British secondary schools, Journal of Curriculum Studies 30, pp 545-558. TOOLEY, J. (1995) Markets or Democracy for Education? A reply to Stewart Ranson, British Journal of Educational Studies, 43, pp 21-34. VICKERS, J. (1995) Concepts of Competition, Oxford Economic Papers, 47, pp 1-23. WALFORD, G. (ED.) (1996), School Choice and the Quasi-market. Oxford Studies in Comparative Education, 6, pp 7-15. WALFORD, G. (1996a) School Choice and the Quasi-market in England and Wales, Oxford Studies in Comparative Education, 6, pp 49-62. WASLANDER, S. AND THRUPP, M. (1995) Choice, Competition and Segregation, Journal of Education Policy, 10, 1-26. WHITTY, G., POWER, S. AND HALPIN, D. (1998) Devolution and Choice in Education, (Buckingham, Open University Press). WOODS, P., BAGLEY, C. AND GLATTER, R. (1996), Dynamics of Competition: the effects of local competitive arenas on schools, in Pole, C. and Chawla-Duggan, R. (Eds.), Reshaping Education in the 1990s: perspectives on secondary schooling, (London, Falmer Press). WOODS, P., BAGLEY, C. AND GLATTER, R. (1998), School Choice and Competition: Markets in the Public Interest? (London, Routledge).

wp991.doc

25