Americanisation of Education in the UK
Education Reform, In The News, Testing Thursday, May 3rd, 2007
EducationState has discovered that New Labour seems to be adopting wholesale the reforms and innovations implemented in the USA during the 90′s.
This is not new. It has been well-documented that the PR strategy of Mandelson and his cronies was taken almost ad verbatim from the successful focus group-led Clinton Presidential campaign and administration some years before. The same can also be said of Education.
The slogans and buzzwords – “standards”, “performance”, “targets”, “back-to”basics” and so on – are the same ones used by American Governments. The critics are also, like us, repeating the same things. A US Senator writes:
” Making students accountable for test scores works well on a bumper sticker and it allows many politicians to look good by saying that they will not tolerate failure. But it represents a hollow promise. Far from improving education, high- stakes testing marks a major retreat from fairness, from accuracy, from quality, and from equity.” Heard this before?
If we are living the American dream, apart from where this leaves us democratically, the fact remains that the current New Vapour dogma is not new, is vehemently opposed and, in one of the most unequal countries in the world, exposed as a means of cementing social divisions not offering chances to the needy in society.
