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Building a big society: Will charity's creeping reach generate a new paradigm for state schools?
Abstract
The traditional distinctions between state schools and fee-charging independent schools have been challenged over the years, with charitable status at the core of the crossover. The changing relationship between the state and charitable sectors and the resultant blurring of the dividing line between them leads us to examine the role that charities now play within the coalition government's Big Society agenda. In the context of schools, a new paradigm, acknowledging the profoundly significant contribution of charity to state schools, is suggested, and evidence is provided to support this new paradigm by way of two waves. The previous and the current government have embraced charitable provision, such that it is now deeply embedded within state education. Charity-led community involvement in education services may well come to dominate rather than simply back up state provision and this leads us to question the distinction between those schools with and those without charitable status.
... Voluntary action has a long and established role in the education of children in England (Miller et al., 2009;Morris, 2011;NCVO, 2016), and the blurring of boundaries between the state and voluntary sector (Alcock, 2010) places it firmly on the political agenda. Driven by a neoliberal ideology (West, 2014), education policy in England has undergone a series of sweeping changes and disjointed reforms (Stronach, 2010), with funding of education coming under scrutiny. ...
... The role of volunteers within primary education has long been encouraged. The influential Plowden Report (Plowden, 1967) emphasised the value of parents being involved in school activities, fundraising, volunteering in the classroom and as governors (Morris, 2011). Indeed, many have recognised volunteers in the classroom as a positive feature that can aid development of both volunteers and the children they seek to support (Brooks et al., 1996;Tracey et al., 2014). ...
... The framing of voluntary action by individual primary schools reflected how and to what intensity the school sought to increase their voluntary action. For just over one third of the participating schools, voluntary action in terms of both volunteering and fundraised income was a historical activity within the school and accepted as a routine part of school life (Morris, 2011). They sought to neither actively increase nor channel the activity but viewed any additional support as 'a bonus ' (head teacher, Community School). ...
Voluntary action has long played a role in state education, with Parent Teacher Associations being one of the most common forms of charitable organisation in England. However, education policy, driven by a growing free-market discourse and policy initiatives such as localism, is increasingly pushing for greater voluntary action. This article explores the distribution of voluntary action for primary schools in one local authority area in England. Drawing upon primary data from 114 questionnaires completed by head teachers and secondary data from the financial records (2013/14) of 380 primary schools, we find evidence of considerable uneven dispersal of voluntary action between schools. These disparities are related to factors including school size, location, leadership ideology and the socioeconomic profile of the school. The consequence of this uneven distribution is that schools catering for more affluent communities are more likely to have additional resources than those with poorer profiles.
... As such, free schools are positioned as being part of the 'Big Society' provision of local services (Morris, 2011), whereby the needs of localities are increasingly met through pluralist, community-based provision. Importantly, the potential of free schools to raise levels of educational attainment, particularly in the most deprived neighbourhoods, is celebrated in political discourses (Department for Education, 2013). ...
... We define voluntary action as the voluntary giving of time (in the form of volunteering), money or items for no financial incentive, of one's own free will and to benefit the environment or someone (individuals or groups) other than, or in addition to, close relatives (Payton and Moody, 2008). While voluntary action has a long and established role in education in England (Miller et al, 2009;Morris, 2011), the scale on which it is currently occurring is beyond any seen since the state took responsibility for education provision in the early 20th century. As fiscal pressures increase (school budgets have fallen by 8% in real terms since 2010; IFS, 2018) and the marketisation of education increases, schools increasingly turn to parents and citizens to collectively support them to continue to deliver a public education service. ...
In this paper we explore the extent and distribution of collective co-production across the single policy area of primary education in England. Whilst much attention has been paid to the virtue of co-production, often drawing on particular, single, case studies, there is less literature exploring the wider impacts. However, ongoing marketisation, fiscal pressures and increased competition in education has led school leaders to turn to co-production as one mechanism for survival, while recognition of some of the potential benefits has led to a surge in efforts to implement co-productive activities. Focusing on collective co-production efforts, this article explores voluntary income data from over 300 primary schools and their respective Parent Teacher Associations, supported by 70 questionnaires exploring volunteer contributions were completed by Head-teachers and 10 in-depth interviews with Head-teachers. Our data reveals three significant findings: the extent of collective co-production in primary education is increasing; this activity is driven by fiscal challenges resulting in schools feeling coerced into co-production which has wider implications and; this is resulting in increasing inequalities. We conclude with a discussion about what this means for the wider policy agenda.
In this article I use the concept of `re‐agenting' to explore and explain the role of non‐state agencies, principally private companies and business entrepreneurs, as key instruments in the government's transformation of the school system in England. Their role takes both for‐profit and not‐for‐profit forms. The outsourcing to private companies of the implementation of government education policies and the delivery of educational services to schools and local authorities has created a profitable market. Equally significant is the growing involvement of the private sector in schools through the sponsorship of specialist schools and Academies on a non‐profit basis.
What makes organizations so similar? We contend that the engine of rationalization
and bureaucratization has moved from the competitive marketplace to the state and
the professions. Once a set of organizations emerges as a field, a paradox arises:
rational actors make their organizations increasingly similar as they try to
change them. We describe three isomorphic processes--coercive, mimetic, and
normative-leading to this outcome. We then specib hypotheses about the impact of
resource centralization and dependency, goal ambiguity and technical uncertainty,
and professionalization and structuration on isomorphic change. Finally, we suggest
implications for theories of organizations and social change.
Is the privatisation of state education defendable? Did the public sector ever provide a fair education for all learners? In Education plc, Stephen Ball provides a comprehensive, analytic and empirical account of the privatisation of education. He questions the kind of future we want for education and what role privatisation and the private sector may have in that future. Using policy sociology to describe and critically analyse changes in policy, policy technologies and policy regimes, he looks at the ethical and democratic impacts of these changes and raises the following questions: Is there a legitimacy for privatisation based on the convergence of interests between business and the 'third way' state? Is the extent and value of private participation in public education misunderstood? How is the selling of private company services linked to the remodelling of schools? Why have the technical and political issues of privatisation been considered but ethical issues almost totally neglected? What is happening here, beyond mere technical changes in the form of public service delivery? Is education policy being spoken by new voices? Drawing upon extensive documentary research and interviews with senior executives from the leading 'education services industry' companies, the author challenges preconceptions about privatisation. He concludes that blanket defence of the public sector as it was, over and against the inroads of privatisation, is untenable, and that there is no going back to a past in which the public sector as a whole worked well and worked fairly in the interests of all learners, because there was no such past. This book breaks new ground and builds on Stephen Ball's previous work on education policy. It should appeal to those researching and studying in the fields of social policy, policy analysis, sociology of education, education research and social economics.
The Conservative government that was in power in Britain from 1979 to 1997 introduced a range of policies designed to restructure education provision. The Assisted Places Scheme was one of its first major reforms, enabling academically able children with limited financial means to attend private schools. Although subsequent provisions have focused more on the marketization of the public sector, the scheme was identified by the Conservative Government as the first significant step towards more far‐reaching restructuring. This paper draws upon interviews in private and maintained schools to explore the effects of the scheme. It discusses the scheme's articulation with the discourses of diversity, selection and choice, the relationship between privatizing and marketizing policies, and the nature of similar initiatives elsewhere. It concludes that, while there are differences between schemes that use public funds to subsidize private provision, those that seek to marketize public provision, and fully fledged voucher systems, they all tend to compound the promotion of individual decision making within education at the expense of collective responsibility.
The Charities Act 2006 provides a statutory definition of charity for the first time and a positive requirement for all charities to prove public benefit. This brings into focus once more the issue of charities charging for the provision of their services. This paper considers the impact that the changes in the Charities Act 2006 will have on the charitable status of fee-paying hospitals. In particular, it will consider the Charity Commission's guidelines on public benefit and will question whether or not the changes in the law, as interpreted in the guidelines, will make any difference to fee-paying charities and hospitals in particular.
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