How Public Administration Restructuring Can Contribute to Greek Educational Reform - Information and Communication Technologies in Public Administration - page 301

The second case worth studying is United Kingdom, where school policies were
developed in quite a different way. The Education Reform Act (1988) made con-
siderable changes to the entire system. These changes were aimed at creating a
“market” in education with schools competing with each other for “customers”
(pupils). The theory was that “bad” schools would lose pupils to the “good” schools
and would either have to improve, reduce in capacity, or close.
The reforms introduced at that time were (a) a national curriculum, which
made it compulsory for schools to teach certain subjects and syllabuses, (b) national
curriculum assessments, (c) league tables that began showing performance statistics
for each school (which are regularly published in newspapers and on the Internet),
(d) formula funding (which meant that the more children a school could attract to
it, the more money the school would receive), and (e) open enrollment and choice
for parents was brought back, so that parents could choose or influence which
school their children went to. These arrangements have slightly changed and are
still applied today.
UK education secretary Michael Gove has defended free schools, tougher exami-
nations, and performance-related pay as needed to improve “stagnant” international
rankings after figures published by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation
and Development showed a persistent gap between British schoolchildren and their
Asian peers (Guardian, 2013). One can easily note that UK policies are in the
opposite direction from Finnish ones. This argument contains also nuances of the
dominant political philosophy in those countries.
Mainstream politics in United Kingdom today is neoliberal. This reflects
the majority belief that minimizing the public sector can resolve all pathogenic
situations. The counter objections are that completely “free” schools would hire
untrained teachers, which is a good recipe for further decline. One solution could
be an optimal combination of freedom with accountability and autonomy with
minimum standards and teacher qualifications, but that still remains a sparking
political debate.
14.3 is innovation the First Step?
Innovation is defined as the implementation of a new or improved product, service,
or method; a new marketing practice; even a new business pattern, whose adoption
actually leads to, a large extent, restructuring of the organization. Innovation cre-
ates economic as well as social added value (Windrum & Koch, 2008). Innovation
is a strategic element in the change process because it creates a fine thin line that
connects present to future status. It comes as a complement to the process of “stan-
dardization” or “prototyping”: Whereas the first one is a little chaotic by nature, the
second puts things in order in a realistic manner.
It is clear, at first, that innovative ideas are generated by people. Innovation
stems from the peculiar way of one's thinking, one's mindset, or world view.