‘We have never been public’ - Continuity and change in the policy production of ‘the public’ in education in England

Sep 2, 2026

‘Public education’ in England is analyzed as an ideological artefact rather than a settled reality, by foregrounding how “the public” is produced, mobilized, and repurposed through policy processes. Drawing on historical and theoretical perspectives, the paper traces continuities from post-1688 state conceptions and welfare-state assumptions to neoliberal restructuring of education and society. It examines academization, national curriculum mandates, punitive audit cultures, and competitive performance regimes, while outlining possibilities for reconstituting public education in the twenty-first century.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryPresentations

FormatDOCX

Pages25

Reading Time9 min

AccessFree to download

Introduction

Historicising the ‘public’

Always historicize

Academization and wider policy reshaping

‘We have never been public’: Continuity and change in the policy production of ‘ the public’ in education in England Keywords: Public education; academization; neoliberalism; social justice; equality; Introduction: Bruno Latour, in his 1993 book, We have never been modern, problematised the distinction between ‘nature’ and ‘science’ articulated by eighteenth century modernist thinkers, such as Boyle and Hobbes. These thinkers, he argued, deployed a process of purification and separation in relation to the discourses of nature and society so that all traces of one was removed from the other. For Latour, this mutual separation, and the consequent distinctness of the discourses of nature and society, is definitive of modernity. Yet the co-production of nature and society continued in modernity, as it always did and always will (think climate emergency and Covid-19), the strenuous efforts at denial and disavowal on the part of the discourses and practices of modernity notwithstanding. As Latour puts it, “We have never been modern”, despite our insistence that we are. In this paper, we adopt a similar line in relation to the discourse of public education in England. Specifically, we argue that the ‘public’ in English public education is more an artefact of ideologically driven policy production processes than it is, or has been, a fully realised reality. We also suggest that the former policy production process serves to divert attention from the latter unrealised nature of public education in England. In making our arguments we foreground a historical perspective in order to highlight the entanglements of education, politics and society. In other words, our approach in this paper is to foreground how the notion of ‘the public’ in England has a long history of mobilisation in the interests of various ideological developments and political philosophies. This focus on how ‘the public’ is mobilised draws on work that has sought to deconstruct the term (for example, Clarke & Newman, 1997), but is distinct from it in that our concern is with its deployment, particularly in relation to education. This mobilisation can be traced back to financialised conceptions of the state and its subjects emerging from the ‘glorious revolution’ of 1688 (Westall & Gardiner, 2015). More recently, this history has continued through the post-war welfare state, with its “debilitating realist assumptions” of common ownership that serve(d) “to fortify and rationalise the inequalities it claims are being opposed” (p. 122). This history can be traced on into the neoliberal reorganisation of education and society, characteristics of which include: pervasive ‘corporate welfare’; endless reflexivity in the form of audit, conducted in the name of public value yet serving as a substitute for meaningful political action; and obsessive concerns with the competitive performance of the national education system in international league tables. This history can also be tracked through the melancholic strains of neo-conservatism, with its nationalist-inflected yearning to recover and reinstate the fantasmatically reassuring days when Britain was celebrated, confident and ‘great’. As part of this reading, our paper seeks to grapple with the ever-changing nature and context of ‘public’ education in England through past and present political and economic developments in wider society. Against this background, we also attempt to consider possibilities for the imaginary reconstitution of public education in England in the twenty-first century. Historicising the ‘public’ Always historicize. (Frederic Jameson, 1981, p. 9) The recent academization agenda, removing schools from the control of locally elected councils and bringing them under the direct purview of the Secretary of State for Education and the UK parliament, has generated a lot of commentary in mainstream and social media. But this agenda is but one of a number of policy developments that have reshaped the landscape

FAQs

How does the paper define “the public” in English public education?

It treats “the public” as an artefact of ideologically driven policy production processes rather than a fully realized reality, used to divert attention from that unrealized character.

What historical continuities does the paper trace in the mobilization of “the public”?

It traces the term’s mobilization from post-1688 financialized conceptions of the state and subjects, through the post-war welfare state, and into neoliberal reorganization of education and society.

Which policy developments are presented as reshaping public education in England?

The paper highlights academization, a prescriptive national curriculum, a punitive audit and inspection regime for teachers and schools, and fragmentation in teacher education provision.

Sep 2, 2026

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