Under starters orders: The established market, the Cardiff study and the Smithfield project

Abstract

The early results of a recent, as yet unfunded, study of the impact of markets on schools suggest that schools in Wales have become less stratified since 1988 in terms of indicators of poverty and educational need (Gorard & Fitz, 1998). The Smithfield study in New Zealand, on the other hand, concluded that market-like systems of choice had made segregation worse by advantaging the already advantaged (Waslander & Thrupp, 1997). Commentators in England, impressed by the range of existing secondary evidence from England, as well as from the Smithfield project, showing a relationship between school choice and class, have suggested that the picture for Wales is entirely a Welsh phenomenon. This article shows that this is not so, and that early results from a similar analysis in England confirm that between-school segregation has declined since 1998. It goes on to suggest that a fuller consideration of the interaction of poverty, markets and public monopoly schooling can help to resolve the dispute. The findings from Wales, the Cardiff study, did not fit in with the zeitgeist, appeared to contradict mainstream research on school choice, and threatened to defend the use of market forces in education policy. Of course, none of these are valid reasons for rejecting them. This article suggests that, despite the impressive work of the Smithfield project and others, there are few empirical or analytical reasons for rejecting the new findings either. It is proposed here that the linked notions of the starting-gun effect and the established market can resolve some of the apparent differences in the findings.