MA Introduction

Introduction
In the discourse of school choice supporters, schools have often been idealistically portrayed as agents in the perfectly competitive markets of theory. However, this theory does not seem to be reflected in reality. It may be argued that like conventional firms in goods and services markets, many schools have degrees and forms of monopoly power. To ignore this and to pretend that reality is the same as theory would be a form of ‘innocent fraud’ (Galbraith, 2004).

Taking the marketisation of school systems as a form of Lakatosian Scientific Research Programme (SRP), the reality of monopoly power may be thought of as an ‘anomaly’ which threatens the viability of school choice arguments. However, the concept of countervailing power, a force that has the potential to counter monopoly power, could be a useful addition to the ‘protective belt’ and defend the ‘hard core’ of the marketisation SRP.

This report will firstly briefly introduce the market based reforms enacted in England through the Education Reform Act of 1988 (Chapter 1). It will also be shown how the economics of school markets may be seen and analysed as a Lakatosian SRP (Chapter 2). Then it will be argued that in reality, monopoly power has emerged and has proved to be pernicious, perhaps especially so towards equity. However, it will also be argued that as a response to the rise of monopoly power among schools, countervailing power has or will come forth to restrain the excesses of monopolies (Chapter 3).