Many disparate groups have written about the effects of globalisation on education. Some have promoted its benefits; others have warned against its ill-effects. This paper is an attempt at coalescing and juxtaposing the respective arguments as they relate to schooling policy and practice in the UK. The growing international pressures of globalisation affect practitioners in unpredictable and different ways, so the development of national policy is tied to the process of translating global trends to local contexts. The current political environment has enabled policy-makers to drive education in large measure using economic imperatives and to devolve liability for ineffective schooling outcomes to a supplicant teaching profession. Whether or not these approaches are justified, there has been precious little debate around the core issues: what is the purpose of education, what is the role of schooling in safeguarding democracy and what obligation does the state have to the individual beyond encouraging economic well-being? This paper seeks to illuminate the background to such a debate in a non-judgmental way; to examine why the skirmishes between opposing factions have instead been had on the periphery--in areas like value-added measurement and performance-related pay--and why the teaching profession has so often been a spectator incapable of challenging or mediating the emerging hegemony. (Contains 9 notes.)