Education

New Right

For the New Right, the purpose of education is to promote drive, enterprise and initiative in young people. This will come from encouraging competition between schools just as in a wider marketplace; education is a business like any other.

A useful overview for the beginner can be found here:

Discover More According to the New Right’s beliefs, the role of education is to instil drive

Students could then spend time researching examples of education policies over the last 50 or so years. From their research they can be asked to provide a succinct overview of the policy followed by a New Right commentary on the policy.

As an extension task, the following website contains a more detailed synopsis of the perspective with clear definitions of key terms as well as some questions to answer:

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This page contains a wealth of links to information on the New Right in education. Particularly useful for recent and contemporary Conservative policies, the page has some links to materials on the coalition that formed in 2010 with policies many political commentators view as being influenced by the New Right:

Discover More Conservatism, Thatcherism, The New Right and Education Policy

This piece from the FT looks at Conservative policies more widely but provides a helpful summary, with comparisons to Labour Party proposals.

Discover More How the Labour and Conservative election policies compare

This could prompt discussions around the appropriateness or otherwise of independent schools attracting charitable status (affecting their taxes) and the proposals to involve independent schools in the operation of state schools.