Equity and excellence

At the Labour Party conference in November 2005, Tony Blair famously declared that:

In his third and final term, Blair, it seems, wants to make the sorts of fundamental and irreversible changes that he believes Margaret Thatcher was able to make, and the public services are the chosen arena for his reforming zeal. It is no surprise, therefore, that education has been a target for further reform in 2005, nor that he described the introduction of this year's Schools White Paper (DfES, 2005a), which embodied many of his radical ambitions, as a ‘pivotal moment for education’ (Blair, 2005b).

The analogy with the Thatcher governments is illuminating. Whereas the Thatcher reform agenda took time to gather pace – it was not, for instance, until 1988 that the most significant reform of the education service was attempted – the first Blair government hit the ground running with a major White Paper appearing shortly after the 1997 General Election and a relentless succession of White and Green Papers, guidance documents and centrally driven initiatives ever since. By 2005, therefore, the direction of policy was abundantly clear. Drawing on a human capital theory of economic development, the principal role of education was seen as being to develop the skill and knowledge levels of the workforce so that the country could compete in globalised economic markets (Wolf, 2002). This demanded the highest possible levels of educational achievement, and these were to be obtained by pursuing policies previously associated with Conservative administrations – the pursuit of ‘standards’, the reform of educational structures and practices in the interests of ‘effectiveness’, the continuing marketisation of the education system and the creation of a culture of performativity (Phillips and Harper-Jones, 2003, p 126). At the same time – and perhaps in distinction to previous administrations – education was also expected to play its part in tackling ‘social exclusion’ (Blair, 1997; SEU, 2001) by ensuring, among other things, that everyone – not just the highest attainers nor those from the most advantaged backgrounds – was equipped to compete in an ever more demanding labour market.