イングランドにおける学校選択,教育の変化と不平等(提案・3,III 公開シンポジウム)

抄録

In many countries of the industrialised world the 1980s and 1990s saw a reorganization of state-maintained educational systems giving greater choice of school to families with the explicit aim of encouraging competition between schools. These moves towards a quasi-market have often been accompanied by greater financial and ideological support for the private sector and a greater blurring of the distinction between private and state-maintained schooling. The result is that, in many countries, state-maintained schools are now in a situation more resembling the competitive market that was once the province of the private, fee paying sector alone. The official aims of such changes have usually been couched in terms of increasing the efficiency, effectiveness and diversity of schooling by introducing competition between schools. As I will show, the extent to which this has occurred is difficult to evaluate, in particular because many other changes have usually accompanied the move to the quasi-market. In contrast to these positive claims, it has been consistently argued by many researchers that increased choice and competition has led to greater inequalities between schools, and increasing differences in the educational experiences of children from different genders, social classes and ethnicities. The extension of market ideas into education has been a highly controversial issue, and there has been considerable debate about the effects and desirability of such moves. Many critics believe that education should be viewed as a public good and that it is a grave error to treat the provision of schooling as a marketable commodity. In practice, all market-oriented schemes so far introduced have accepted this argument to some degree. The nature of the market introduced into education is not identical to that found in manufacturing or even in major service industries. It is generally recognised that the schooling of a society's young holds benefits for the individual, the family and the society itself, and all Western societies have legislated to ensure that children receive some education whether or not the family or child wishes. Moreover in terms of the curriculum, as I have argued elsewhere following Durkheim, while it is difficult to draw the line between what the state allows and what it prohibits, it is essential that a line be drawn somewhere.