Annual Conference 2013
Education: the end of a public service?

University of Sheffield School of Education,
Sheffield, UK

17 May, 2013, 9.30–4.00 pm

FIRST ANNOUNCEMENT AND CALL FOR PAPERS

For the last two decades, public sector activities have been subject to increasing managerialism and surveillance. In Europe and further afield an economic logic has come to invest public services, including educational services. For example, national and international test scores define the parameters of what does and does not count as value in education. Driven by innovations in the technology of assessment, schools seek to “add value” and improve their marketability. Publically-funded educational institutions undergo transformations in governance. Jurisdiction shifts from elected bodies to charities, companies, consultants and philanthropists. Educators attempt to out-manoeuvre their competitors for contracts across an expanding array of educational services. Governments themselves compete to make their education systems “world-class”.

This conference will investigate what happens to the value of education when it is attached to a price.

What is the price of pricing education? Is education priceless?

The conference promotes critical research, research that explores about how these challenges impact on the values and ethics of public education in settings around the world. We invite submissions that engage theory and innovative methodology in the investigation of issues and debates in education and associated fields.

Keynote Speaker:

Professor Stephen Ball, Institute of Education, University of London.

English Education Policy and the Shadow State

The landscape of education policy in England is changing dramatically with the involvement of new players, the making of policy in new spaces and the application of new methods of policy. New narratives about what counts as a ‘good’ policy are being articulated and validated. All of this is part of a move from government to governance - from bureaucracy and democracy to networks and 'interests'. The networks through which the new players - philanthropists, think tanks, policy entrepreneurs, and edu-businessnes - operate are beginning to re-work and re-populate the education policy community, connecting up the interests and activities of enterprises, governments, philanthropies, and non-governmental agencies in new ways as a 'shadow state' or 'para-political sphere'. This presentation will explore some examples of this 'new' state and consider the consequences for the future education in England.

This conference is organised by The Centre for the Study of Educational Development and Professional Lives