New Labour revived Stalinist planning targets within education

Evidence

It was New Labour which accelerated this development in education by introducing targets — isn’t it interesting that New Labour presented itself as the extreme antithesis of Stalinism, but it ended up reconstituting at a formal level Stalinism’s really bad aspects (not that there were many good ones!). The language of planned targets has come back, like the return of the repressed. — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1658

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the ‘cult of metrics’ literature and to how superficially anti-authoritarian movements reproduce authoritarian bureaucratic form (see also Essential Essays on the culture industry). — connects to: British Further Education colleges were the trial lab for neoliberal education reform — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No…, 44; Neoliberal school reforms operate as Freirean banking education — James D. Kirylo (ed.), Reinventing Pedagogy of the Oppressed:…, 943; Neoliberal marketisation of public services paradoxically produces a Stalinist proliferation of bureaucracy — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 2211

Broader Connections

• Neoliberal school reforms operate as Freirean banking education #expands (0.75) — James D. Kirylo (ed.), Reinventing Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 943
• British Further Education colleges were the trial lab for neoliberal education reform #qualifies (0.70) — Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism, 44