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The Walmartisation of education
PHIL BEADLE traces the impact of marketisation on education, arguing that standardisation and efficiency-driven reforms have crushed creativity and critical thinking in the classroom
Under Thatcher, the Education Reform Act of 1988 outlined ways to introduce marketisation into the education system by treating the parents as consumers, increasing the level of choice they might have and by trying to inculcate competition into the system.
NICK WRIGHT considers how the isolation of Israel and a new film on the controversial Italian communist leader are creating new reference points for Italy’s left
CARLOS MARTINEZ says Cuba’s achievements in the face of a criminal blockade are startling, but the island’s future if the United States succeeds in crushing it looks bleak
AMNON BROWNFIELD STEIN reports that far-right MPs who mobbed the event organised by Hadash may have helped raise awareness of the brutality of the Israeli right
Born on this day in 1931, the heroic revolutionary faces a dangerous new wave of White House aggression. We must treat his birthday as a rallying cry to resist the illegal siege of Cuba, writes ROGER McKENZIE
RAMZY BAROUD decries the rats of Gaza, the rodent and human type. Both abound as profiteering from tragedy reaches obscene levels
“THE issue is, Phil,” says a friend of mine, “that there’s just no time to do anything well. The compulsory lesson format is so rigid that we rapidly flick through a few facts, read a bit of a text to them, make them do some written activity and then it’s on with the next one.
“Everyone is so heavily timetabled there’s no time at all to do any marking. There’s no depth to the learning, no quality. Kids in British state schools have to be the worst-educated in the world.”
“The market’s not interested in quality,” I say, “it’s interested in efficiencies.”
Under Thatcher, the Education Reform Act of 1988 outlined ways to introduce marketisation into the education system by treating the parents as consumers, increasing the level of choice they might have and by trying to inculcate competition into the system in order to improve its (and here’s that word again) quality.
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