SPEAKER

The Education Reform Claimocracy And The Emal Field

» Prof Helen Gunter

(United Kingdom) - University of Manchester

Bio: Helen M Gunter is Professor Emerita in The Manchester Institute of Education, University of Manchester, UK. She is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences, and recipient of the BELMAS Distinguished Service Award 2016. Her research focuses on the political sociology of knowledge production in the field of education policy. Her most recent book is: A Political Sociology of Education Policy (2023, Policy Press).

Abstract: The education reform claimocracy (ERC) or rule by assertion within and for local, national and global knowledge production is integral to UK education policy for the provision of and access to school places in England. Integral to the ERC is the accusation that public education is failing, and the shift to private provision will secure higher standards through a revitalised market. Declarations of crises and solutions are evident in education policy texts and practices, and are communicated through simplifications (spin and soundbites), fictions (myths and lies) and mimicry (impersonating and ventriloquising).The significant achievement of the ERC is to proclaim a focus on education but actually shift attention towards the organisational conditions in which education is provided and accessed. The talk may be about children, but in reality the focus is on the protection, enhancement and legitimacy of hierarchy through organisational and systemic arrangements such as school autonomy and leadership. I base this analysis on over thirty years of independent primary research, and I examine what is to be done through drawing on the resources from within our intellectual histories.