282
which they must agree with their competitors. Their fees are now subject to the
possibility of capping by the regulator, so they no longer exercise the level of
financial control they once held. Yet there is much more to the story than a simple
collapse into virtual serfdom.
Firstly, although I stand by the case that the Boards have become centrally controlled,
I do not claim they are alone in experiencing this shift. The move toward central
control could be seen in terms of an unstoppable cultural - or even global -
phenomenon rather than simply an aspect of the “managerial state” (Clarke 1997) or
what has been described as “Labour’s atavistic centralising urge” (Education
Guardian 25 January 2005: 17).
A different slant on increased centralisation is suggested by John Kay in his recent
article on ‘Market States’:
Modern European government is principally a provider of goods and services.
The most important of these services are economic and physical security plus
health, education and the infrastructure of everyday life. This makes
government an economic agent little different from other economic agents, and
modern government is judged by similar criteria.
(Kay 2005)
These two interpretations neatly encapsulate what I now perceive to be the shift that
has gradually taken place in my interpretation of the Clarke and Newman concept of
“the managerial state”. (Clarke 1997) When I began my research, I saw increasing
central control as one of the negative functions of marketisation. The evidence I
uncovered has suggested that perhaps my position was a rigid, ideological one.
The first inkling that I was perhaps overlooking something came when I re-read Peter
Gosden’s suggestion that in the 1940s Board OfEducation officials were motivated by
other factors than a simple quest for power: