Show Me the Money! Neoliberalism at Work in Education

Neoliberalism is often addressed by commentators and critics as a set of ideas or a doctrine. This article considers neoliberalism as a set of financial practices and exchanges --about money and profit --goes on to suggest that as practitioners, researchers, activists we need to understand and engage with that logic and its mechanisms. Examples are given of the role of money in all aspects of education policy and education reform. The unstated and usually unexamined subtext of neoliberalism is not doctrine but money, particularly and crucially in the form of profit. Of course, states are also about money. Policies cost money, and that money must come from somewhere, and one of the responses of states around the world to the 2008 financial crisis has been to make 'cuts' in public spending and to look for ways of doing policy cheaper -- - marketisation and privatisation are taken to be one way of doing policy cheaper, as well as more effectively. 'The expansion of market relations allows, in theory, a lower level of public spending, and therefore a lower level of taxation' (Connell et al, 2009, p. 332). However, in most education policy research money is rarely mentioned and is overwritten by a focus on ideas and practices. Even when subjected to the arcane mercies of the economics of education, issues of funding are dealt with as abstractions. However, in the interface between education policy and neoliberalism money is everywhere. Policy itself is now bought and sold, it is a commodity and a profit opportunity, and there is a growing global market in policy ideas. Policy work is also increasingly being out-sourced to profit-making organisations, which bring their skills, discourses and sensibilities to the policy table, for an hourly rate or on contract to the state.