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Business-Managed Education
Business Language
Reference: Abraham Yogev, ‘The Spirit of Captialism and School Reform in America’, in Val D. Rust (ed) International Perspectives on Education and Society: Education Reform in International Perspective, Greenwich, Connecticut, JAI Press, 1994, p. 156; Simon Marginson, Markets in Education, Sydney, Allen & Unwin, 1997, p. 5.
The language of school reform borrowed heavily from business management literature (see table below).
Reference: Erika Shaker, ‘Customers in the Classroom’, Education Forum, Fall, 1995, , p. 28.
For example the Minister for Education in Ontario, John Snobelen, described “his vision” for Ontario’s schools in 1995 in terms of “clients”, “customers” and “front-line service providers” (teachers) who would be “customer and client-focused”. Such language was also taken up by the Australian media:
Reference: Press coverage quoted in Jane Kenway and Elizabeth Bullen, Consuming Children: Education–Entertainment–Advertising, Maidenhead, Philadelphia, Open University Press, 2001, p. 123.
Allan White is the general manager of a $4.5 million business with 1000 teenage clients all wanting to buy a bright future. In short he runs a high school… [which] boasts a management team, which includes the executive officer (principal), and line managers (two assistant principals and a pivotal business manager).
Table: The New Language of School Reform
| Bureaucratic professionalism | New managerialism |
|---|---|
| Public service ethos | Customer-oriented ethos |
| Driven by commitment to professional standards and values such as equity | Driven by efficiency, cost effectiveness and competitive advantage |
| Cooperation | Competition |
| Managers with educational backgrounds | Managers trained in economics, business management |
| Focus on inputs, control of processes, teacher qualifications, qualitative outcomes | Focus on goals, measurable results Consequences for poor results – accountability |
| Schools | Educational Enterprises |
| Parents Learning Students Teachers Principals |
Consumers/customers/clients Production/product Products/clients Workers/producers/classroom managers/service providers Managers/leaders/entrepreneurs |
Source: adapted from G. Whitty, S. Power, and D. Halpin, Devolution and Choice in Education: The School, the State and the Market, Melbourne, Australian Council for Educational Research, 1998, p. 54.
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