2017 Volume 58 Issue 1 Pages 13-25
This paper examines the nature and underlying factors of the features of the English ECEC system: the ‘mixed economy of finance and provision’ and ‘divided education and care’, focusing on the policy-making process under the New Labour government.
In the literature, these features have often been critically discussed as ‘continuity’ from the previous Conservative government. However, the key informant interviews, that were conducted with 13 key government officials in 2015, revealed that these two features were better understood as the particular modes of ‘incremental institutional change’ —the former as ‘drift’ and the latter as ‘layering’. Moreover, ‘environmental changes around policy and market’ and ‘tensions in policy agendas among the key government Ministers’ were identified as underlying factors that impeded the changes from becoming an institutional ‘displacement’, which is a more radical and fundamental change.
