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Fantasies of empowerment: mappingneoliberal discourse in the coalitiongovernments schools policyAdam Wright aa Department of Government , University of Essex , Colchester ,UKPublished online: 14 Sep 2011.

To cite this article: Adam Wright (2012) Fantasies of empowerment: mapping neoliberal discoursein the coalition governments schools policy, Journal of Education Policy, 27:3, 279-294, DOI:10.1080/02680939.2011.607516

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Fantasies of empowerment: mapping neoliberal discourse in thecoalition governments schools policy

Adam Wright*

Department of Government, University of Essex, Colchester, UK

(Received 18 April 2011; nal version received 19 July 2011)

The swift nature of school reform enacted by the new Conservative-led coalitiongovernment has sparked debate over the future of state education in Britain.While the government rhetoric suggests a decisive break with past policies,there is evidence to suggest that these reforms constitute the next stage of a longrevolution in education reform, centred around neoliberal market discourse. Inthe following paper, I examine the current governments education policy dis-course and, by employing techniques of post-structuralist discourse analysis,reveal the governments attempts to rearticulate education around the logics ofmarket, responsibilisation and self-esteem, which act to shift responsibility forsocial problems from the state to the individual. Furthermore, I shall argue thatsuch rearticulation has been coupled with an ideological fantasy of empower-ment, which conceals the subordination of actors to these neoliberal logics byconstituting the parent and, more recently, the teacher as powerful actors whohave been freed from legal and bureaucratic constraints forced upon them bycentral government.

Keywords: discourse/analysis; critical analysis

Introduction

One of the rst acts of the newly established ConservativeLiberal Democrat coali-tion government was to cram through a major restructuring of state education beforesummer recess. Secretary of State for Education, Michael Gove, described the newpolicies, which are likely to create a new drove of autonomous schools, as a revo-lution which suggests a sudden and marked change from the education policy ofthe previous government (BBC 2010a). Arguably, however, the changes are betterobserved as part of a long history of neoliberal policy discourse in education. TheConservatives in coalition are eager to continue with the neoliberal agenda that wasan important dimension of New Labours policy discourse which they themselveshad inherited from Thatcherism. Yet whilst the New Labour project had been partlyan attempt to balance neoliberal ideas with a strong communitarian dimension, aswell as the remnants of a statist social-democratic tradition, the current wisdom ismuch less sceptical of neoliberalism and enthusiastically supports the growth ofmarket logics in the public services. As a result, we appear to be entering a new

*Email: [email protected]

Journal of Education PolicyVol. 27, No. 3, May 2012, 279294

ISSN 0268-0939 print/ISSN 1464-5106 online 2012 Taylor & Francishttp://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02680939.2011.607516http://www.tandfonline.com

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phase of neoliberal hegemony in which once seemingly incompatible goals of socialjustice and fairness are being collapsed upon and subsumed by market logics.

In the following paper, I will employ a broadly post-structuralist approach toexamine the articulatory power of the coalition government to continue to entrenchneoliberal discourse within a new discursive framework centred around empower-ment and stabilised through a strong opposition to bureaucracy. In educationpolicy, the empowerment agenda has focused on constructing a fantasy in whichthe parent and, more recently, the teacher and school leadership team are seen to befreed from the control of central government and the impediments of state bureau-cracy. I investigate the relationship this empowerment agenda has with the policiesof previous governments through deconstructive and genealogical policy mappingmethods, concluding that the current governments agenda in education is part of abroader neoliberal agenda entailing the shift in responsibility for social problemsfrom the state to individuals through logics of the market, responsibilisation andself-esteem.

There are obvious limitations in examining a government that has been in powerfor such a short period of time. At the time of writing, the main focus of the newDepartment for Education is the academies and free schools agenda, with theAcademies Bill being passed at the end of July 2010. As a result, I focus my atten-tion on schools policy, although early indications suggest that policy discourses inhigher education as well as in other policy areas, such as healthcare, may be follow-ing similar trends but are nonetheless beyond the scope of this article. The bulk ofthis analysis is based on four documents. Two of these documents are policy paperspublished by the Conservative Party in opposition: Raising the bar, closing the gap(2007); and Giving power back to teachers (2008). The other two documents werereleased after the election, the rst being the Department for Educations Draftstructural reform plan (2010), the second being a pair of letters sent to schools byGove (2010a, 2010b) shortly after his appointment as the education secretary. Onefurther point to note is that there is no analysis of Liberal Democrat policy papers.This is simply because, hitherto, the education policy of the coalition government isalmost exclusively derived from Conservative proposals.1

I begin by contextualising the current policy discourse in the development ofneoliberal discourse in education policy since Thatcher, highlighting the central roleof fantasies of empowerment in the maintenance and expansion of market logics ineducation. I will then turn to focus on the current education policy discourse bydeconstructing key texts and mapping the articulatory characteristics and dimensionsof the discourse. This discourse analysis reveals the centrality of empowerment tothe current education policy as well as the importance of the negative image ofbureaucracy to help dene the governments policy agenda as post-bureaucratic.In the nal section, I critically examine the role of empowerment as a key signi-er in the discourse, arguing that its presence results in a fantasy of empowermentfor parents and teachers, concealing the intensied control that market logics nowhave over these actors as a result of the deepening of neoliberalism in educationpolicy.

The long revolution: neoliberal discourse in education

Neoliberal discourse has had a long and complex history in the education policy inBritain. Its origins are diverse but as Codd, Olsen, and ONeill (2004) have

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suggested, its theoretical underpinning is linked to the academic developments ineconomics which were capable of inuencing and crossing over into politicalthought. A highly inuential development of this thought is found in public choicetheory, which Mueller (2003, 384) has described as a citizen-over-the-state tradi-tion because of its assumptions about the sovereignty of consumers over providersin a marketplace. Unlike more traditional liberal discourses that saw the state as anenforcer of negative rights (the freedom from interventions), neoliberal discoursehas rearticulated the state as an active facilitator of market logics, which are deemedthe most efcient mechanisms for individuals to interact with to freely achieve theirdesires (Codd, Olsen, and ONeill 2004, 136137). As a result, the inux of neolib-eral discourse into mainstream politics has had profound effects on the way publicservices are structured and managed.

Two particular theoretical models in public choice literature have underpinnedthe reform of public service provision. According to Niskanens (1971) budget-maximising bureaucracy model, public bureaucrats are driven by non-market logics.Unlike the private corporation, prestige, power and increased salary in the publicsector are not determined by prot-making, and therefore there is no incentive forbureaucrats to increase efciency. In fact, the opposite holds true: bureaucrats arebudget-maximisers because salary, expenses and power are all positively correlatedwith the size of the departments budget. In Brennan and Buchanans (1980)Leviathan model, the state is seen as holding a monopoly over public service pro-vision and exploits its hegemonic position in the market by increasing the size ofthe public sector. Brennan and Buchanan add that citizens have little control overgovernment expenditure, because they are not provided with the relevant informa-tion regarding the real impact of scal policy and public debt.

The two models above have been applied to state education to show the nega-tive effects of a producer-driven education system. State-run education is seen interms of the interest maximisation of the actors involved in the production (bureau-crats and teachers) who drive the salaries and expenses up and the workload downfor their own benets. This leads to inefciency in the provision of education, espe-cially in relation to private schooling. This is because in private education, thenancial income is dependent on the quality of schooling. Parents hold consumersovereignty over the choice of whether to spend their money on private educationor not, and if private schools do not maintain a qualitative advantage over the statesystem, parents will not have any incentive to pay for education, putting suchschools out of business. Based on this logic, Chubb and Moe (1990) argue that theonly way to drive up efciency in state education is to take the budgetary controlfrom the bureaucrats and hand it to the consumers (the parents), forcing schools toimprove efciency and standards in order to compete for funding in a simulatedmarketplace.

Neoliberal discourse treats individuals as rational and self-interested actors, andthe market, a neutral mechanism by which they can compete for various goods,such as education. Education is thus articulated as a commodity and markets offerindividuals the freedom to choose from a range of providers. Of course, as stateshold a monopoly over the public provision of education, neoliberal discourse, inpractice, has tended to involve the creation of market mechanisms to create choiceand diversity in the provision of state education. The logic behind this move is thatmarkets are overcoded by a logic of competition. If education providers are forcedto compete in order to survive, this will provide schools with an incentive to raise

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their standards (see Chubb and Moe 1990, 1997; Friedman 1962). In turn, suchcompetitive pressures have been seen to affect the ethos and style of schooling, par-ticularly in the shift from a social-democratic discourse of schooling based on com-prehensive values and a more managerial style of schooling based on marketvalues (Gerwitz 2001; see also Ball 1990, 1994).

Neoliberal education reform principally began in the 1980s under the Conserva-tive government of Margaret Thatcher and was principally driven by the belief inthe market and its positive outcomes of freedom of choice and raising standardsthrough competition. The 1988 Education Reform Act gave parents the right tochoose the school their child attended. Coupled with a change to school funding, sothat school budgets became dependent on enrolment numbers, these changes pro-duced what has been called a quasi-market (Whitty, Power, and Halpin 1998). Par-ents were seen as consumers in their choice between different schools. This, inturn, marked the school and its staff as producers of education as a commodity. Asfunding became dependent on the number of pupils a school could attract, schoolswere forced into the market logic of competition, which introduced competitive val-ues of self-interest and proteering to the school. To win over the public, parentalchoice was articulated in combination with signiers such as right and freedom,showing parents as having gained freedom and power through these reforms. The1979 Conservative Party manifesto, for instance, referred to parents having theright of choice in determining their childs education (Conservative Party 1979).Competition is also positively framed by linking it to the public choice argumentthat competition drives up standards by forcing failing schools to improve or faceclosure.

One of the ingenuities of Thatcherism was to build within the public a fantasyof empowerment, especially in relation to public services. Government publica-tions like The parents charter (DES 1991) helped to sediment the belief thatpower had shifted from the government and the educational establishment to indi-vidual parents, regardless of the fact that the accompanying legislation providedno clear or substantive change to the role of parents. What mattered, however,was that the parents felt empowered. Not only did this have a legitimising effecton the neoliberal reforms in education, it also had a performative effect on paren-tal subjectivity in many cases parents began to act empowered because they feltempowered. Of course not every parent was immediately and entirely captured bythe fantasy. The effects on parental subjectivities were varied along the lines ofclass and ethnicity as well as local contexts, such as the level of market competi-tion between schools (see Ball, Bowe, and Gewirtz 1996; Woods, Bagley, andGlatter 1998).

On the supply side, the role of the education workforce was also changing as aresult of this discourse. The school began to take on the characteristics of a busi-ness, mainly due to the introduction of competition for school funding by linking itto pupil enrolment. Head teachers and management teams were forced to actaccordingly in such market conditions, concerning themselves more and more withthe attractiveness of their school to the consumer and thus focusing great effort onmarketing and public relations. Management of schools became driven by thesemarket forces, fostering forms of self-management that synchronise the subjectivityof teaching staff to the rationality of the business world (Ball 1994). These effectsof neoliberal discourse in education policy were not immediate, nor were they uni-form. However, the structural changes to funding, admissions and school manage-

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ment meant that the environment in which parents, pupils, teachers and manage-ment interacted not only helped to foster neoliberal discourse in practice but alsoactively limited the possibility for alternative educational ideas and practices to per-sist or resurface.

After 18 years in government, the Conservatives under Thatcher and Major hadgone far in sedimenting a neoliberal framework for education. When New Labouremerged as victors in the 1997 general election, education reform was on top of theirpolitical agenda but this by no means meant an end to neoliberal education policy.Certainly, New Labour marked a signicant shift in policy discourse. Under the Con-servatives (especially Major), the neoliberal dimension of education was balanced upagainst a traditional conservative model of schooling which sought to whitewash overthe politicised curriculum of progressive education, replacing it with real knowl-edge, strong national tradition, strict discipline and pseudo-Christian morality. NewLabour sought a different mix, one which used neoliberal ideas as an underpinningfor excellence in education, whilst admitting concerns over leaving everything to themarket.

Within two months of their election, New Labour published the White PaperExcellence in schools (1997). This document unmistakably reveals the dimensions ofNew Labour discourse. First, there is a distinct commitment to neoliberal ideas andpractices but in a different form to that of Thatcherism. Under the Conservatives, theneoliberal dimension was a strong transformative force; many aspects of society wererearticulated under the economic logic of the market, and included the active creationof a new rational economic subject based on the citizen-over-the-state tradition inpublic choice theory. In contrast, New Labour presented many of these neoliberalideas as already existing facts that can neither be challenged nor ignored. Therefore,instead of attempting to overturn the wave of neoliberal transformations born out ofThatcherism a strategy they argued would absorb a great deal of energy to littleeffect (DfEE 1997, 12) New Labour focused on building on the existing marketstructures, with the acknowledgement that the market could not be left to run educa-tion on its own.

New Labour answered with the development of a communitarian dimension totheir project, one which allowed them to offer a more inclusive electoral packagecompared to the Conservatives. New Labours communitarianism sought out waysof rearticulating old elements of social democracy, such as social justice andequal opportunities, so that they were compatible with a market society (Fairc-lough 2000). In order to achieve this, elements of conservatism also re-emerged inthe form of active responsibilities and duties that citizens owe to society. Freeden(2005) has argued that this combination of conservative and social-democratic ele-ments appeared to provide a pragmatic Third Way approach to problems high-lighted on the Left. This assortment of ideas was held together by the idea of thestrong community which works on reciprocity, offering social inclusion in returnfor the acceptance of individual responsibility. In their education policy, there areclear examples of this communitarian dimension. The development of partnershipsbetween schools and local businesses, charities and voluntary groups is one suchexample, aimed at building strong links within local communities and to utilise thesocial capital latent within them. The darker side of this dimension was the suddenemphasis on accountability in schools. Government would play an active role inpenalising and often making an example of failure. A strict regime of performance-related targets, audit practices and rigorous inspection followed, with the enforce-


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ment of zero tolerance on schools which failed to meet the standards set out bygovernment.

The enforcement of strong communitarianism through targets, audit regimes,inspection and zero tolerance derived from New Labours image of the good soci-ety. It is clear that New Labour were far less convinced that the market could yieldreturns if left to itself, but believed that government could intervene and build onthe neoliberal market society with strong communitarian values. Intervention wastherefore a key feature of the New Labour project and linked the neoliberal andcommunitarian dimensions together in a peculiar form of liberal paternalism. NewLabours insistence on keeping a rm grip on the direction of social change led tothe tightening of government control over the education agenda, but their paternal-ism is apparent in many aspects of their social policy, not just education. Public ser-vices are rigorously scrutinised and managed by audit and inspection regimes,which Newman (2001) suggests have been specically geared to keep track of thedelivery of New Labours policy agenda: i.e. they were designed to ensure thatwhat government believes is right for the society continues to be implemented.

Such a centralised and controlling stance goes against the image New Labourwished to portray, the image of inclusion, autonomy and compassion, employed notleast to contrast themselves to the image of the Conservatives as the nasty party.Despite great emphasis on the ideas of diversity and inclusion, New Labour stipu-lated a one-dimensional model of educational success, offering little to no autonomyto institutions which failed to adopt the preferred government strategy. This wascertainly the case in the use of Ofsted and the Audit Commission, who wereengaged in the task of inspecting schools (and local authorities) based on the gov-ernments own narrow criteria for a good school. Moreover, when educationalstructures were deemed to be failing, the advice given out by government or itsauditing arsenal are clearly obligatory (Bache 2003). In order, however, to deectattention from the contraction between New Labours inclusive rhetoric and thereality of their increasing control over education, the policy discourse continued toemphasise a fantasy of empowerment, one which, in the words of the former educa-tion secretary, Ruth Kelly, means freedom for schools and power for parents(Kelly cf. BBC News 2005). The policy was driven by the diversity rubric andlinked to personalised learning, boasting not only choice between schools, butparental micro-control over what their child will learn and how they will learn it.Under Kelly, the DfES (2005) published the White Paper Higher standards, bettereducation for all, which focused on a further re-establishment of choice and paren-tal power as the central mechanism for raising standards. Parents were seen as thedriving force behind change in the school system, primarily through market mecha-nisms. As such, the education system was framed in terms of meeting the needs ofparents as powerful consumers and the powers of both the school and local authori-ties are diminished, as the became subordinate to the needs of the parent as a con-sumer.

Yet in this attempt to suture the contradictions of the New Labour project, thefantasy of parental empowerment only opens up new contradictions. First, withthese new powers and responsibilities offered to parents, the government gave noindication of how this builds up shared values in the community or more insipidforms of cooperation between parents and the school. This coupled parentalinvolvement with individual choices rather than collective interests, spreading thekinds of selsh, individualistic values of market rationality that the government was

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trying to offset with communitarian discourse. Second, there has been a tendencyfor parental empowerment to have adverse effects on the relationships between par-ents, schools and local authorities. The reaction of teachers to parental empower-ment is varied, depending on local contexts, but it can often create resistance andantagonism. As Vincent (1996) has shown in her analysis of parental empowermentin the 1990s, teachers often take measures to defend their status against what theysee as an attack on their professionalism. On the other hand, greater parentalempowerment can push certain schools in the other direction, becoming subservientto the will of an outspoken cadre of active parents.

One can see then that New Labours continuation with neoliberal education pol-icy was both complex and contradictory. Evidently, the contradictions were a con-siderable burden to New Labour and were a signicant factor in their demise.While being quite adept at driving forward neoliberal reform and further cementingmarket values in education, New Labours attempt to supplement a market societywith the values of strong communitarianism was severely limited by the alreadydeep-rooted market logics within state education. Ultimately, the failure of NewLabour to implement their idea of the good school without accumulating greatercentralisation, control and planning gave the Conservatives a new opportunity tofurther their commitment to neoliberalism when in government by standing onceagain on an anti-bureaucracy platform. It is worth noting, however, that NewLabours education policy discourse showed a considerable shift away from manyaspects of neoliberal discourse after Gordon Brown took ofce and Ed Balls wasappointed education secretary. Their White paper Your child, your schools, ourfuture (DCSF 2009) focused predominantly on collaboration and partnershipbetween schools, turning away from the competitive, parent-driven model they hadpreviously espoused. Of course, this move was too late to have any real effect onpolicy and has, therefore, gone relatively unnoticed, but it is worth noticing the pos-sibility that, had Labour won the 2010 election, we may be seeing a very differenteducational landscape from what we have currently and what had been practisedpreviously.

Mapping the coalition governments post-bureaucratic education policy

The coalition governments education policy agenda has been difcult to catalogue.There are some elements which suggest continuity with New Labour, while otherelements clearly illustrate a decisive break. There have also been suggestions thatthe policies mark a return to the Conservative policies of the 1980s and 1990s,especially with regard to the proposals for new Academies and the qualities compa-rable to the Grant Maintained schools of that period (see BBC News 2010b). Theseideas evidently need some unpacking before one can get a picture of how the poli-cies t together in a discourse. There are a number of key discursive moments ofthis new policy discourse, many of which are deeply rooted in this long revolutionof neoliberalism in education. They have been rearticulated by the Conservatives ina way which provides continued legitimacy to the neoliberal dimension of educationpolicy, whilst also providing a rm basis for critique of the New Labour project.These changes derive from a deeper commitment in the Conservatives to expandthe neoliberal dimension of social policy as opposed to simply building on thefoundations, removing the scepticism of markets found in the New Labour dis-course. The Conservatives themselves were a little more hesitant, especially during


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the 1990s, to expand neoliberal market forces without providing a safety net of tra-ditional moral values favoured by the one-nation Tories. It seems perhaps, after overa decade in the wilderness, that the neoliberal modernisers in the party have wonthe chance to sediment their public choice intuitions into the heart of big CConservative discourse. Certainly Grifths (2009, 108) agrees that Camerons Con-servatives, by and large, have an intuitive belief in the benet of greater competi-tion in the public services, largely through quasi-markets. What the Conservativessee as running contrary to such an intuitive belief is the top-down, bureaucraticmanagement of these quasi-markets that New Labour favoured. Thus a crucial partof the articulation of Conservative education policy discourse is the drawing of afrontier between their vision and that of the previous government.

New Labour are identied explicitly as the enemy in Conservative educationpolicy discourse. This contrasts the New Labour belief that opposition to Conserva-tive education policy was futile and instead would provide a base to be carefullymanaged. This was not merely an electoral game by Cameron to swing opinion, butrather it was a necessary move to help the Conservatives unify their own positionon education. As Laclau and Mouffe (1985) have explained, political projects arealways open and contestable, never stable or complete. This sometimes means thatit is necessary for a political project to focus attention on a unied enemy throughwhich the full identity of the project could be constituted against, thus helping tocover over any inconsistencies, contradictions and antagonisms that may arise inter-nally. It was testament to the uniqueness of New Labour that their political dis-course attempted to absorb rather than oppose much (but not all) of theConservative agenda. Whilst the coalition government certainly have absorbed andrebranded some elements of New Labour, their discourse requires a more antagonis-tic relationship with their predecessors in order to help situate themselves.

The main opposition to New Labour is centred around a negative image ofbureaucracy. Consistently, the Conservatives paint a picture of the education systemas being stied by an inefcient, centralised, target-driven, domineering bureaucracythat has been put in place by a Labour government committed to an outdated ide-ology where the state takes onboard ever greater responsibility and moral author-ity, encroaching upon individual rights and freedom (Conservative Party 2007, 4).In Raising the bar, closing the gap (2007), the term bureaucracy is explicitly men-tioned in a negative context 15 times along with several other implicit references. Itoccurred a further six times in Giving power back to teachers (2008), which is ofsimilar frequency when the length of the document is considered. Not all of thecases where bureaucracy is attacked are linked directly to the New Labour govern-ment, but this was not necessary to secure an image where New Labour andbureaucracy are synonymous. Other negative attacks on bureaucracy are linked tothe inefciency of local education authorities and, after the election, educationquangos which came under attack in the governments spending review (TES2010). Bureaucracy, the target culture and centralised planning were all placed ina discursive chain of equivalences with New Labour.

If New Labour, and all the bureaucratic baggage associated with it, is the enemyof the Conservative education policy, their alternative project can be said to be anti-bureaucratic, or, as they prefer to call it, post-bureaucratic (Conservative Party2007). The post-bureaucratic image of a society which they construct is generallythe one in which the citizen-over-the-state sentiment of neoliberal discoursebecomes the underpinning for the state policy. The new Conservative motto, which

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turned up in Camerons leadership election victory speech and has since been writ-ten in many of their documents including the most recent election manifesto readsthere is such a thing as society, its just not the same thing as the state. Thisemphasises a far narrower remit for the state, where it is to become an engine forindependence, freeing society from state control (Conservative Party 2007, 5). Thisproposal assembles around the term empowerment, which is dened as transferof power and control from the state to citizen (ibid. 6).

The decidedly vague denition of empowerment in the governments policydiscourse, drawn from the neoliberal citizen-over-the-state tradition, allows the bulkof the meaning of the term to be generated through the naming of particular policiesas empowering. As Laclau (1996) has explained, often the most important signi-ers in a discourse are those which display a lack of meaning, an emptiness in whichsubsequent concepts and ideas be used to ll. Laclau calls these empty signiersdue to their lack of meaning which can often take on a mythical nature, an examplebeing the idea of the nation in some populist political discourses. It would bewrong to suggest that empowerment is wholly emptied of meaning in the currentpolicy discourse but much like the term big society elsewhere in the governmentssocial agenda, it certainly displays many of the traits of an empty signier, particu-larly in the way it acts as a central point of reference for the bulk of the govern-ments policy intentions in schools.

As I explained above, empowerment (or the fantasy of empowerment) was acrucial part of both New Labours education policy discourse and that of theConservatives in the 1980s and 1990s. In the past, however, empowerment has lar-gely been related to parents and their right to involve themselves in decisions overtheir childs education, especially their right to choose a school. This previous focuson parents meant that the teaching profession and education ofcials were not posi-tive recipients of the empowerment agenda and indeed, in many ways appeared tolose power in their subservience to both the consumer and the watchful eye of thestate. This is not the case, however, with the current policy discourse. Two separatepolicy dimensions have facilitated the possibility of framing both parents and theteaching profession in empowerment fantasies. While the former continue to be por-trayed as powerful consumers to whom the government must remove barriers tomarket choice through a supply side revolution, the latter is placed into a newprogramme designed to return powers of discipline back to the teachers. Note thatwhilst teachers (including managerial and support staff in schools) and parents arethe key actors and recipients of the reforms, in contrast, the local education author-ity is notable by its absence. Indeed, the current policy continues with the trend toerode the power of LEAs that began back in the 1980s. Local authorities are men-tioned primarily in relation to the negative image of bureaucracy which I referred toabove. The actual role of the LEA in this discourse is never really sketched out,although it seems clear that the move to empower teachers and parents will be cou-pled with a shift of power away from the local authority, particularly their ability tocontrol and manage schools.

The supply side revolution is represented in the policy discourse as a meansby which the state can catch up with the expectations of a post-bureaucratic soci-ety by removing the bureaucratic and legislative obstacles that prevent individualstaking control of education. In the governments words this means taking poweraway from Whitehall and putting it into the hands of people and communities(DfE 2010, 1). The government suggests that this empowerment of people and


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communities will improve standards in education through the mechanisms of localdemocratic accountability, competition, choice, and social action (Ibid). It is inter-esting to note that whilst the government seems willing to give away power, it setsrm limits by specifying the mechanisms through which it can be used. Thesemechanisms are predominantly market mechanisms based around the governmentscommitment to a neoliberal discourse. Thus, once again, parents are to be empow-ered primarily as consumers, through mechanisms of choice and competition.However, the government refers to such powers as the rights of citizens and notmerely of consumers. This corresponds to a marketisation of citizenship, wherebythe subject position of the citizen overlaps that of the consumer in the Conser-vative policy discourse, just as it does in the public choice understanding of citi-zen. Yet although citizen is made synonymous with the rational egoistic individual,it does have a further dimension. It is clear from the Conservative talk of the bigsociety and the continued importance of community that the model Conservativecitizen is both active and responsible. This suggests some continuity with NewLabours idea of strong community and stresses not only the rights of the parentin the education marketplace, but also their moral responsibilities in helping toprovide and maintain the quality of educational choice available. The free schoolsagenda, for instance, provides parents with greater consumer choice, but it alsorequires parents (or at least some of them) to become actively involved in settingup and running new free schools. Parental responsibilities also emerge in the areaof behaviour and discipline, making sure their child attends school and behaveswhen he or she is there. So it is clear that the policy discourse in the supply siderevolution focuses on empowerment through market mechanisms based on theview of the citizen as a consumer. It also shares with New Labour a belief thatwith such powers come serious responsibilities, yet it is unclear as to preciselyhow the government is expecting such responsibilities to be ingrained within par-ents and, as I will highlight later, this moral dimension is more clearly mergedwith market rationality rather than being a counterweight to it, as it was in theNew Labour project.

The rather unambiguous title of the Conservatives working paper Giving powerback to teachers is accompanied on its front cover by an image of a young boyrepeatedly writing the line I will respect my teacher, in chalk, on a traditional(and now obsolete) blackboard. One would struggle to nd a more traditional con-servative image of the school and school discipline without resorting to a gownedschoolmaster wielding a slipper or cane. Discipline has previously functioned as adimension of the Conservative education policy which can be called upon to rallythe more traditionalist wing of the party. Under their current policy agenda, it takesa more central position under the concept of empowerment. This new angle is dif-ferent from that of the more traditional concern with the moral implications ofbehaviour and the teaching of traditional values through stern discipline. Behaviouris now seen in a more broader sense, where poor behaviour is emphasised as a sig-nicant cause of educational failure as well as a serious threat to the authority ofteachers. In this context, the policy discourse articulates the teachers position asone of disempowerment, mainly as a result of legal and bureaucratic obstacleswhich prevent bad behaviour from being dealt with in schools, thus linking theproblem to the negative image of New Labour and bureaucracy (Conservative Party2008, 2). By emphasising the disempowerment of teachers by New Labour, theConservatives can more easily capture teachers in their own empowerment agenda

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by offering a removal of the barriers which have been highlighted as disempower-ing. Consequently, teachers and heads are to be given back the power to disciplineby being given certain legal powers of detention, exclusion and conscation as wellas being legally protected from false allegations.

Unlike parents, who are interpellated as both rational self-interested consumersand active responsible citizens, the main effect of the policy discourse on the iden-tity of teachers is to provide a discursive framework which reprofessionalises theirstatus. Teachers and heads are referred to repeatedly as professionals, with Gove(2010a) calling teaching the most important profession in the life of our nation.This professional identity comes partly from a distinction made between the teach-ing profession and bureaucrats. Blame for educational failures has been shiftedaway from teachers and onto bureaucrats and (New Labour) politicians. This allowsthe coalition government to shape a warmer relationship with teachers, which isarticulated around the signier trust. Teacher empowerment is therefore not soobviously concerned with changing the identity of the teacher to something moremarket-orientated. Rather, it appears as part of an esteem-building dimension withinthe policy discourse, which also functions as a catalyst for teachers to take greatercontrol and responsibility over their position, in a form of self-regulation based onprofessional autonomy, rather than the managerial, target-driven style of self-regula-tion typical of the public sector under New Labour. In other words, the governmentassume that by offering greater powers to teachers in areas of discipline and alsostating that they trust teachers with these powers, teachers will be compelled toact more powerfully in general, taking greater control and responsibility over allaspects of their workplace. But this form of empowerment, just like that of parentalempowerment, is built on a fantasy constructed within the policy discourse and noton a tangible shift in the balance of power in education initiated by the policiesthemselves. I will now turn to critically explore these fantasies of empowerment ingreater detail and reveal how it relates to the governments neoliberal agenda.

Fantasies of empowerment and neoliberal governmentality

Although power is often conceived of as a commodity or possession which canbe passed from one entity to another, from the post-structuralist perspective, poweris not something that can be owned or possessed by subjects, rather, it is constitutedby and exercised through discourse; it is impersonal and subjectless. Power is alsorelational in the sense that it is always concerning the power relations between indi-viduals, groups and institutions. These relationships are not always negative andunidirectional, playing out between the oppressor and the oppressed. Actors can beboth subjected to discourses and actively challenging and rearticulating them.

This conception of power is markedly different from the neoliberal conceptionfound in the governments education policy discourse. Neoliberal theory regardspower in terms of a struggle between organisation and the individual. It is focusedon the case for individuals having power over the state, seeing state power as a limi-tation on the power of the individual to act freely. Framed within this view, empow-erment means the state relinquishing some quantity of power and handing it toindividual citizens. It therefore presupposes that power is indeed something whichcan be possessed, either by an organisation such as the state, or by an individual.The case of empowerment by the state will typically involve the relinquishment oflegal power by the removal of legislative or regulatory barriers to individual free-


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dom, or through the legal endorsement of certain rights, for instance, the parentsright to school choice, or the teachers right to search a pupil. Analyse the coali-tion governments education policy through a liberal or neoliberal conception ofpower and one would conclude that the policies are designed to shift power from thestate to individual teachers and parents. From a post-structuralist conception,however, both strategy and outcome are, in comparison, far more complex.

Let me return to the earlier example of the supply side revolution and its rolein empowering parents. I previously mentioned that parental empowerment is con-tingent on the acceptance of a marketised identity whereby the parent takes on theneoliberal subjectivity based on the fusion of market rationality with moralresponsibility. This requires the constitution of subject positions based on the parentas a consumer and the parent as an active and responsible citizen. From the post-structuralist perspective this means that, far from being a simple transfer of powerfrom the state to the individual, the state is imposing its own discursive power uponthe individual by attempting to capture them as subjects in a neoliberal policy dis-course. The supply side revolution offers market mechanisms as the source ofempowerment, which must be utilised and prioritised over other mechanisms thatmay once have provided support for parents. Through these mechanisms, certainlogics, or what Foucault (1988) would call technologies of the self, manifestthemselves and direct the activity of parents. The logics of rationalisation and com-petition, for instance, drive parents to act in a selsh, individualistic manner, basedon rational decision-making over economic cost and benet to oneself. These logicsmilitate against forms of cooperation and compassion that may well have onceentered this sphere. To a greater or lesser extent, these logics have been presentsince the onset of neoliberal education policies under Thatcher and have simplybeen extenuated by the current government.

A further logic of responsibilisation is also being extenuated by the supply siderevolution and is in fact characteristic of the whole big society agenda of the Con-servatives. Responsibilisation is to Lemke (2002) a product of the neoliberal politi-cal project attempting to shift the responsibility for a range of social problems fromthe state to the individual, making them into issues of self-care. The empowermentof parents as neoliberal subjects leads to the onus of their childs development, notto mention through the expectation of parental involvement in the running of newfree schools the quality of the education system in general, to be placed on indi-vidual parents. The inaction of parents to involve themselves and become responsi-ble for education in their community will be used as a reason for educationalfailure, limiting the governments own responsibility for providing quality educa-tion. This places great pressures on parents to be self-responsible in the way inwhich the market desires and will in turn lead parents inevitably to blame them-selves for social problems which are impossible for them as individuals to x andmay paradoxically be caused by the very market mechanisms parents are offered asthe solution (for instance, the polarisation of school quality or the increase in class-based inequality in educational attainment).

The empowerment of teachers follows similar logics. As Evans (2008, 103) hasnoted, the image of professionals in the Conservative policy discourse is not one ofincreased power but of increased scrutiny. The clever move by the Conservativeshas been to give the principle role of scrutiny to the consumer of public services,through the logics of market choice and competition. As a consequence, theempowerment of teachers is contingent upon teachers taking greater responsibility

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and accepting their subordination to the market and the preferences of parents asconsumers. So, whilst teachers feel empowered through a loosening of the legal andregulatory controls of the state, this is a distraction from the deepening control ofeducation by the logic of responsibilisation.

There is a further and more critical consequence of teacher empowerment thatbodes additional control of teachers. I mentioned earlier the possibility that teacherempowerment will lead to new forms of self-regulation under the auspices of pro-fessional autonomy. Part of this stems from the logic of responsibilisation alreadymentioned. However, a further logic is at play in the governments attempt to buildup self-esteem in teachers through re-professionalisation. The logic of self-esteemhere relates to what Cruikshank (1996, 234) has called a technology of the self forevaluating and acting upon ourselves so that the police, the guards and the doctorsdo not have to do so. It demands a regime of self-criticism, self-discipline andself-assessment in order to keep external forces of control at armslength. Theencouragement of this logic of self-esteem allows the teacher to feel as though theyare in control of their work, setting their own targets, managing themselves, ratherthan having politicians or bureaucrats making decisions for them. Yet self-esteem issimply another logic which helps to extenuate a fantasy of empowerment. In orderto feel empowered, teachers must submit themselves to a gruelling regime of self-assessment and, far from controlling the contours and boundaries of this regime, theregime is set by the terms of the neoliberal policy discourse, articulated by govern-ment and policed by the market mechanisms that the discourse emphasises andempowers.

The logics of the market, self-esteem and responsibilsation are working togetherin the empowerment agenda to control and manage the behaviour of parents andteachers in education. Those who conform to the neoliberal image of the rational,responsible citizen gain the feeling of empowerment and can act on this fantasy toseemingly help solve the problems of society. On the ip side, the penalty for fail-ing to engage with this identity is cast as a bad parent, a bad teacher, a bad citizen;plainly as someone contributing to the problems of society rather than attempting tohelp solve them. In the rhetoric of the big society, the government reduces thecauses of social problems and their solutions to the will of the individual to over-come them, based on a simplistic public choice view of economic rationality. Theneoliberal citizen, who is rational, responsible and of high-esteem, is able to, as anindividual, make a social contribution. But in order to do so, the individual mustexercise power over themself and conform to the image of citizenship laid out inthe policy discourse of the government, accepting all of the assumptions which goalong with it. Those unwilling to conform to the neoliberal image of the citizen arecast as part of the problem and are consequently penalised and excluded. With thegovernment proposing to make it easier to sack teachers and to make certain paren-tal responsibilities legally enforceable, it is clear that high-stake penalties are on thetable.

It is too early to tell whether the current discursive push to recast and controlthe subjectivity of parents and teachers under a fantasy of empowerment will beany more effective than those previously. The fantasy of empowerment has been astrong force in the education policy discourse throughout the neoliberal period, butthe complexity of local contexts and the multiplicity of factors affecting identities,beliefs and practices have always prevented the homogenisation of the subject posi-tions of the parent and teacher into the logic of a single discourse. What is clear is


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that the government are ready to roll out radical reforms in education, and as theybroaden and deepen the neoliberal agenda in schools, they will come to rely moreand more on the fantasy of empowerment to justify the changes.

Conclusion: the expansion of neoliberal hegemony

The coalition government has referred to its education policy agenda as one whichempowers both parents and teachers. I have attempted to show in this paper thatthe result of the empowerment agenda is the exact opposite of the fantasmatic pic-ture it projects; that is to say, instead of giving power to individuals, it is a frontfor an assemblage of neoliberal logics designed to provide greater control over theindividual. In this sense, one can argue that the policy discourse of the coalitiongovernment is one which attempts to further establish the political project of neolib-eralism as the next stage in the development of what I have called the long revolu-tion of neoliberal policy discourse in education. Although previous governmentshave used fantasies of empowerment in a number of ways, the current empower-ment agenda acts not as a supplement, but as a central point in which neoliberaldiscourse can unify around. The empowerment agenda has become the primarymethod of legitimising, cementing and reproducing the ideas and practices thatcoincide with this neoliberal project. Furthermore, it continues to conceal aspects ofneoliberalism, now with even greater vigour, which from a critical standpointaggressively undermine the power of citizens by contributing to a more atomisedand unequal society driven by greed and avarice.

Currently, the empowerment agenda of the coalition government is in its infancy,and much of what I address in this paper is the implication of policies and policydiscourse to come. The Conservatives have so far stuck closely to the policy dis-course they articulated in opposition and although certain parts are likely to berevised, rewritten or dropped in the evolution of the discourse, the key elements arealmost deantly here to stay. Whilst it may appear hasty to some to criticise the newgovernment before the society has felt the effects of its policies, it is important topoint out to these sceptics that the policies may well be new, but they are alsoundoubtedly contextualised in a long process of neoliberal hegemonisation in educa-tion policy discourse. Since Thatcher, education policy has been part of a neoliberalpolitical project designed, in the words of Lemke (2002, 60) to create a social real-ity that it suggests already exists. In other words, neoliberalism as a political projectendeavours to discursively construct ideas, practices, identities and relations that neo-liberal political theory assumes are born of underlying laws of human nature andthose of economic markets. If in the critical history of this hegemonic formation,one looks back on New Labour with contempt for their complicity in the continuityof neoliberal discourse, one should do so with the fact rm in mind that New Labouracted with a profound scepticism of the market, despite pragmatically accepting itsdominance. I make this judgement not only on the genealogy of the New Labourproject, but in light of the current governments agenda in policy discourse. In short,the empowerment agenda of the Conservatives in coalition may mask itself quitecleverly as a form of strong communitarianism and even make explicit remarks onhistorically left-wing issues such as poverty, inequality and social justice, but it doesso by collapsing the issues of the Left onto the agenda of the Right. The only solu-tions to Britains educational failures, and the growing miasma of social problems ingeneral, are neoliberal market solutions in the current policy discourse; and with the

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rolling out of the empowerment agenda it may well be that the public will have toface these problems and operate the solutions alone. Britain should prepare itself forthe tightest and toughest round of neoliberalism yet, because the government isevidently not prepared to be responsible for the outcome.

Note1. Even the Liberal Democrats agship policy of the pupil premium appeared in

Conservative literature (including those working papers cited above) some time beforeit became an important Lib Dem pledge, although the Conservatives may well havegot this idea from Labours earlier Pupil Learning Credits pilot scheme (see DfES2001).

Notes on contributorAdam Wright is a PhD candidate in the Ideology and Discourse Analysis programme at theUniversity of Essex. He is currently researching into UK education policy discourse underNew Labour and its effect on youth identity. Other research interests include Marxist andpost-Marxist thought, identity and fantasy in anti-fascist movements, radical democratictheory, radical political economy and community economics.

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wright neoliberal discourse in schools.pdf

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