New public management in england: The permanent instability of neo-liberal reform

Abstract

The reform of education in England has been closely associated with a wider programme of new public management focused upon the reform of public services. This article analyses the characteristics of this NPM inspired reform programme as the English education system has moved from a civic-welfarist mode to one in which neo-liberalism has emerged in the ascendancy. Particular attention is paid both to the centralising aspects of reform where there has been a marked increase in central government intervention in education and the decentralising aspects of reform including the creation of schools as business units and the marketization of education more generally. The origins of the reforms are located within a New Right inspired discursive construction of an educational crisis that found later expression in a series of legislative changes that arose from and cemented a cross-politi, nocal party educational consensus that has now endured for over thirty years in this context. The article examines the effects of these NPM reforms on education in England and the continuities and discontinuities between different political administrations as it has moved through successive waves of reform to a new post-NPM period. It concludes that the permanent instability of the English education system can be located within tensions that go to the very heart of the NPM process itself in ways, it is anticipated, that will continue to bedevil a rapidly privatising sector.