Marny Dickson

Unravelling a ‘spun’ policy: a case study of the constitutive role of ‘spin’ in the education policy process

The term ‘spin’ is conventionally used to refer to the process and products of purposively managing information in order to present institutions, individuals, policies, practices and/or ideas in a favourable light and thereby mobilize support for them. Attempts to manage news and political communications are not new. However, the New Labour Government in the UK is frequently presented—by the media and political opponents—as being obsessively concerned with spin to the detriment of both transparency and substantive policy‐making. In the collection and analysis of the data from the ESRC‐funded study of the English Education Action Zones (EAZs) policy upon which this paper draws, spin arose as a prominent theme. For example, spin was often raised explicitly by those interviewed as an activity that they needed to be reflexive about and engage in. It was described as shaping the fortunes of the policy or in some cases as constituting the policy. Frequently overt attempts were made by those being researched to try to ‘persuade’ the researchers of a particular spin which should be put on the research questions and/or reports. The overarching purpose of this paper is to illustrate the complex relationship between spin and policy, using the English EAZs policy as an example. The first section of the paper defines spin and places the concept in historical context. It then goes on to explore the role of spin in the construction and evolution of the policy, drawing particular attention to the dynamic, endemic, and disciplinary nature of the policy of spin. Whilst spin is conventionally understood as something separate from policy, as something that is ‘done to’ policy in order to make it attractive to particular constituencies, the central argument of this paper is that spin needs to be understood as operating on two levels, often simultaneously. At one level it operates as a strategy of impression management, where a range of tactics are used to attempt to control the impression that ‘the public’ gets of New Labour policies. However, those policies and the spin that represents them to ‘the public’ cannot be understood as distinct and separate entities because the policies cannot be neatly abstracted from the spin. Thus, at another level, one also needs to focus on the constitutive role that spin plays.

Area-based approaches to educational regeneration

The Education Action Zone (EAZ) experiment is one of a number of area-based regeneration initiatives (ABRIs) that have been introduced by central government in recent years in England in an attempt both to tackle social exclusion and lever up educational achievement in some of its disadvantaged localities. The policy, regarded by some of its advocates as the epitome of New Labours ‘Third Way’, is premised upon the idea that different bodies (public, private, voluntary and community) can work together to deliver localised ‘joined-up solutions’ to ‘joined-up problems’ – in this case those to do with how to address successfully persistent educational failure in poor neighborhoods. Drawing on the findings of a three and a half-year long ESRC-funded research project designed to investigate the origins, operation and impact of the EAZ policy, this article reflects on the degree to which this approach to educational regeneration is delivering on its objectives and highlights the lessons that can be learnt from its operation so far.

Education Action Zones and democratic participation

Education Action Zones and their forums seek to draw together diverse constituencies of interest in order to develop and implement local plans for school improvement. As such, it has been suggested that they may better empower parents and communities (Blunkett 1999) than existing forms of school governance. This article, which is based on a textual examination of the first 25 applications for zone status, interviews with forum members, including seven EAZ Directors, and observation within two EAZs, explores the extent to which the early evidence suggests that EAZ Action Forums are offering a new way to democratise education.

Education Action Zones: Model Partnerships?

The English Education Action Zone (EAZ) policy is one of a number of area-based initiatives2 introduced by the first New Labour administration (1997–2001) which aims to develop integrated solutions to complex social problems within regions of social disadvantage (Glendinning et al., 2002). Intended to develop innovative local solutions to social exclusion and educational underachievement, at the time of the policy’s launch in January 1998, the EAZ initiative was described by a key government minister as a “forerunner for the future delivery of public services in the next century” (Byers, cited by Rafferty 1998, p. 4). The concept of partnership is at the heart of the EAZ policy—partnership between different public sector providers and between private, voluntary, public and community sectors—and embodies two core New Labour beliefs about the value of partnerships. The first is that neither the state nor the market acting on their own can provide an adequately responsive and fair way of organizing welfare services. The second is that “joined-up problems” require “joined-up solutions.” In other words, the view is that different government departments and different welfare sectors need to work together in order to ensure that individuals receive services that are efficient, coordinated, and integrated rather than inefficient, fragmented, and contradictory (Cabinet Office, 1999).

Curriculum innovation within an evaluative state: issues of risk and regulation

The English EAZ experience illustrates the difficulties of developing an innovative, responsive and inclusive curriculum within an evaluative state characterized by high stakes testing. Consequently, while government exhortations to ‘raise standards’, ‘innovate’ and ‘promote social inclusion’ clearly serve an important rhetorical function, they may underestimate the challenges involved and overestimate the capacity of schools within disadvantaged areas to ‘make a difference’.

Education Action Zones: A new way of governing education? Foreword

Englands Education Action Zones are a flagship New Labour policy geared towards raising standards and reducing social exclusion in areas of educational under-performance. This introduction outlines key features of the policy, considers its broader significance in relation to new models of educational governance and pulls out some of the key issues that arise from the contributions to this special feature.