Rejoinder to Brian Caldwell

Abstract

I found Brian Caldwell's response to my article both illuminative and informative. He is quite right to point to the differences in the policy context between the United Kingdom and Australia. In particular, he notes the degree to which accountability regimes are more rigorous, intrusive and, some would say, oppressive in the UK and the extent to which policy on school education has impacted on initial teacher education (ITE) in the UK but not in Australia. This has resulted in the development of a number of school-based routes into teaching in the UK, at least one of which is now paid. Education in Australia has, so far, escaped from these policy excesses. As Caldwell notes, the dynamic for the changes in British education came from powerful social forces outside education. Those changes included a massive restructuring of the industrial and commercial base of the British economy by the Thatcher government and a reorganisation of welfare provision to cope with demographic changes, especially an ageing population. The sweeping changes in education in the UK were generated by a government that perceived `The Education Establishment' to be resistant to the type and scope of the changes in education, which the government believed were necessary. Caldwell points out that I do not deal with the 1976 speech of Labour Prime Minister James Callaghan at Ruskin College, Oxford. He rightly draws attention to this speech in which Callaghan criticised the control over education that was wielded by teachers and educational administrators. Callaghan also blamed teachers directly for the decline in British economic performance and called for schools to be responsive to individual and national needs. This speech was followed by The Great Education Debate in which a series of meetings were held throughout the country to debate educational issues. This debate informed the Green Paper to which Caldwell refers. I have argued elsewhere (Bell, 1999) that this debate was more a series of closet whispers than a national outpouring of ideas, but Caldwell's assertion that it had little impact is incorrect. Although the Green Paper was a relatively brief document, it mapped out a much more interventionist approach to education policy and contained a set of policy initiatives, which, directly or indirectly, informed the development of education policy for the next two decades. Interestingly, however, the Green Paper had little to say about initial teacher education. Caldwell is correct in pointing out that the Conservatives under Margaret Thatcher came to power in 1979 in a time of economic crisis, but it was not until 1988 and the Education Reform Act that a comprehensive response to the issues raised by Callaghan was fashioned. This is not to say, however, that a number of policy initiatives had not been forthcoming. Attempts had been made to refocus the secondary school curriculum and its patterns of assessment, and to direct resources towards the professional development of teachers and in line with inservice priorities established by government. It was both the successes and the failures of these initiatives which eventually led to the Education Reform Act and the plethora of legislation that followed it under Thatcher, Major and Blair. …