Marketisation Archives

The management of resources is a central duty for school and college leaders, but one for which they are often under-prepared. Good, contextual information and guidance are vital, especially as increased marketisation, international comparison and decentralised governance put additional pressure on leaders to manage their resources astutely. This second edition of Educational Resource Management: An International Perspective is an updated guide to all aspects of this key responsibility and how they are applied in today’s real-world situations across the globe.

Following a detailed overview of funding and resource management in public and private provision, the book looks at the criteria by which the effectiveness, efficiency and equity of the management of educational resources may be judged. It goes on to explore cost structures, budgets and the principles of asset management, all illustrated through case studies that draw on practitioner experiences and the authors’ observations in a range of national contexts. Concluding with a review of current tensions in educational resource management and pointers towards further study, the book is a succinct yet comprehensive guide for school and college leaders. It will be essential reading for those studying the subject as part of Masters and Professional Doctorate qualifications.

Written by two leading international experts, Early Childhood in the Anglosphere offers a unique comparison of early childhood education and care services, and parenting leave, across seven high-income Anglophone countries. Peter Moss and Linda Mitchell explore what these systems have in common, including the dominance of ‘childcare’ services, widespread privatisation and marketisation, and weak parenting leave. They highlight the substantial failings of these systems, and the causes and consequences of these failings. But this book is ultimately about hope, about how these failings might be made good through major changes. In other words, it is about transformation: why transformation is both necessary and possible at this particular time, what transformation might look like, and how it might happen. Part of that transformation concerns the need for new policies and structures, but even more it is about how the Anglosphere thinks about early childhood. The authors call for turning away from conceptualising early childhood services as `childcare’ and marketised businesses selling commodities to parent-consumers; and for reconceptualising them as education imbued with an ethics of care, a public good available as a right to all children and families, and complemented by well-paid, individual entitlements to parenting leave. Using examples from the Anglosphere and beyond, and in a context of converging crises, the book argues that transformation of thinking, policies and structures is desirable and doable.