Introduction by Guest Editor: Education and the Trend to Markets

The trend towards market forms and behaviours in education (‘marketisation’), associated also with the growing role of corporate forms of organisation, is transforming the state-built mass education systems characteristic of the period since World War II. Although this transformation foregrounds the role of consumer choice and is linked to a measure of deregulation and commercial involvement in education, it has above all been orchestrated by neo-liberal government. So far the great change in education has been undertheorised and under-investigated. Governments have been reluctant to place their own policy experiment under scrutiny. Yet the evidence of a recent UNESCO study of student achievement suggests that marketisation may not be the optimum path to school improvement, and the potential for negative effects on education's role in ‘liberal’ personal formation is of concern.