From accountability to digital data: the rise and rise of educational governance

Research interest in educational governance has increased in recent years with the rise to prominence of transnational organisations such as the OECD and the importance attached to international comparison of educational systems. However, rarely do educational researchers consider the historical antecedents that have attended these developments. Yet to more fully appreciate where we are now it is necessary to examine the national and global events that have shaped the current policy context. This paper presents a review of educational governance in the UK from the 1970s seeing in this a trajectory from the emergence of accountability to today’s overriding concern with digital data. In doing this, the paper aims to go beyond providing a historical account, rather its purpose is to shed light on educational change; and further, to analyse the contribution of educational research to an understanding of events as they have unfolded over the past five decades. While it is necessarily rooted within the particular historical context of the UK it can be read as an analysis of the factors influencing educational change in the context of globalised policy spaces more broadly. A recurrent theme is the appearance of the ‘unanticipated consequence’, one of the most important issues the social sciences has to contend with. Thus a tentative theory of ironic reversal as a source of policy failure emerges which is not only of relevance to educational policy but of wider significance

Work, life and time in the new economy: an introduction

International audienc

A 'third way' in welfare reform? Evidence from the United Kingdom

U.S. welfare reforms, whether promoting work first or human capital development, have had in common an emphasis on employment as the key to improving the life chances of children living in single-mother families. We describe in this article a different type of reform-a “third way” in welfare reform. The welfare reforms carried out in the United Kingdom since the “New Labour” government of Tony Blair was elected in 1997 have included promotion of paid work, but alongside two other components-an explicit commitment to reduce and eventually eliminate child poverty, and a campaign against long-term disadvantage under the label of tackling “social exclusion.” Welfare-to-work reforms promoting employment for single mothers have been active but not as punitive as in the United States. At the same time, the tax credit and cash benefit system has been radically overhauled, benefiting low-income families with children, whether or not parents are working. Early indications suggest a more rapid fall in child poverty in the United Kingdom since its reforms began than in the United States since its reforms, and a faster rise in single-mother employment. © 2004 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.