| The Nursery Education Voucher Scheme (NEVS) was a British public education policy introduced in 1994 and implemented first as a pilot scheme (policy) in four localities in the United Kingdom in 1996 and second as a fully national scheme in April of 1997. This research was conducted during 1995-1998 in the United Kingdom and United States for the purpose of observing the operation of the scheme in practice: observation of local authority officials, headmasters at schools, teachers and workers at pre-schools and playgroups, and parents were studied using a Criticalist ethnographic methodology as a form of social and cultural criticism of mediated power relations.;There is a continuing academic debate on whether market-based models or privatization-based policy initiatives for reform are appropriate for public goods such as pre-schooling and education. The attempt to answer this question emphasized the need for re-examining the assumptions underlying the "market theory" model of NEVS in light of the evidence provided by the present study. The data from the British experiment examined here strongly suggest that the market-based logic for education reform should be approached with severe caution, and the market metaphors used for promoting public goods should be subjected to critical re-examination.;The Nursery Education Voucher Scheme failed but, in its failure, it succeeded in altering the notion of education as a civic right. As a result, a competitive rather than a cooperative ethos has been planted in the English educational system, in which education has become a prized good that can be taken away at will, or bought and sold to the highest bidder in the market. More fundamentally, the study therefore highlights the need to refocus attention on working with and not undermining state-funded systems of public goods provision as a primary starting point in addressing critical educational policy reforms. (Abstract shortened by UMI.). |
