The last 25 years have seen a dramatic shift in tuition fee policy in England. This paper uses Critical Discourse Analysis to understand the motivations behind policy setting, comparing the pivotal reviews undertaken by Dearing, Browne and Augar. It concludes that four themes may have influenced tuition fee policy making: national politics and…

Histories of statistics and quantification have demonstrated that systems of statistical knowledge participate in the construction of the objects that are measured. However, the pace, purpose, and scope of quantification in state bureaucracy have expanded greatly over the past decades, fuelled by (neoliberal) societal trends that have given the…

This article examines why the government in England has signed the country up to taking part in the OECD's new international assessment known as The International Early Learning and Well-being Study (IELS). The article highlights the role of IELS as a technology of neoliberal governance. Looking forward it considers how IELS may open up new…

A post-structural approach to exploring identity is taken in this paper in that identity is considered here as being socially constructed through discourse, which has deep implications for the shaping of subjectivity and practice. Given both the potential academisation and Anglicisation of Irish schools, and the additional re-drawing of what…

In this article, we provide a critical explanation and critique of neoliberalism. We attempt an innovative focus ranging from the wider contemporary political and ideological shifts, to the way in which neoliberal policy specifically influences higher education and the consequences thereof. We follow a narrative logic in three parts where we first…

This paper utilises the analytical concepts developed in the work of Basil Bernstein to reflect on the ways in which discourses such as social justice are especially vulnerable in teacher education in England. In particular, under new-managerial regimes the forms of knowledge which are emphasised and valued focus on the instrumental and…

In this article, the author explores the way that neo-liberalism is becoming more entrenched in the fabric of the education system in England. The article begins by setting out a very brief historical trajectory of neo-liberalism to provide a working definition of a complex and disarticulated socio-political and economic system. In part two, this…