The Limitations of Social Democratic Educational Policy: Scotland, Past and Future

1. The Limitations of Social Democratic Educational Policy: Scotland, Past and Future Stephen Baron (NB Draft, not for quotation)

2. Aggregate class structure (all men) in eleven countries by decade

3. A social democratic vision of education • Economic modernisation and efficiency • Social Justice • Realised through • Meritocracy • Teacher professionalism

4. Scotland as an acid test of the social democratic vision • Strong popular commitment to education as a democratic mechanism • Strong teacher professionalism • Thorough comprehensive reform of a pre-existing system of universal secondary schooling • Low levels of school segregation • Small private sector • Reform of curriculum and assessment specifically for comprehensive education

5. The limits of the social democratic vision • Education systems have oiled the wheels of the changing class structure (absolute mobility) • Education systems have had negligible impacts on class life chances (relative mobility) • Examples of Sweden, France and the Netherlands suggest that wider social policies are needed (e.g. redistribution) if education is to have an impact • Coming crisis of mobility, expectations and consent as ‘professionalisation’ reaches saturation point?

6. Women: A discrepant case? • Significant increased mobility of women born 1937-1956 to enter Classes I & II • Rates of entry maintained for later cohorts • From 1980s women have accessed degree level studies disproportionately

7. Possible conditions for the discrepant case • Structural economic changes: • Gender segmentation of labour market • Economic pressure on women through changing housing market • Social policy changes: • Women gaining more from comprehensivation • Equal opportunities policies and programmes • Changes in civil society: the women’s movement as the major social movement of the time

8. Major post devolution Executive policy documents • New Community Schools • Educating for Excellence • Assessment, Testing and Reporting 3-14 • Curriculum for Excellence • Ambitious, Excellent Schools • Schools of Ambition

9. 10 social democratic weaknesses in Executive policy documents • Dearth of primary questions about the relationship education-economy-society • Discourse dominated by a marketised version of the social democratic vision • The individual child as the unit of policy analysis • Parents external to the processes of education, often pathologised • Communities external to the processes of education, often pathologised

10. 10 social democratic weaknesses in Executive policy documents • Professional action as the key driver • Limited role for the analysis of social relations • Citizenship discourse formal and one way • Curriculum focussed on limited visions of justice and economy • Control through twin movements of decentralisation - centralisation

11. 10 alternatives • Primary questions about globalisation and consequent exploitations at the heart of educational debates • Policy discourse dominated by social solidarity, equality and the education of desire • Unit of educational policy analysis ‘nested’ communities • Professionals as supporters of parents in educating the child

12. 10 alternatives • Professionals as supporters of nested communities as they seek collective self realisation • Understanding and altering individual and community conditions as the key driver of education • Analysis of social relations as central to the process of education • Thoroughgoing citizenship of ‘participative democracy

13. 10 alternatives • ‘Really useful knowledge’ as structuring curriculum • Community control of education processes