Something Borrowed, Something Blue? A Study of the Thatcher Government's Appropriation of American Education and Training Policy (Oxford Studies in Comparative Education)

A distinct pattern emerged in the British education and training reform process in the latter half of the 1980s. A government minister or a team of policy experts paid a brief study visit to the United States; a short time later a new initiative was announced which bore a close resemblance to a US programme. More recently, the flow of policy ideas across the Atlantic appears to have reversed direction. This book develops a three-tiered approach to the analysis of policy borrowing. The first section draws on a number of different literatures relevant to this area to create an analytical framework for the study of policy borrowing. Section Two examines the specific context in which these borrowing episodes occurred, asking: 'Why did Britain look to America for policy inspiration in the latter half of the 1980s?' The final section examines individual cases of policy borrowing at the local and national levels, attempting to distill lessons about the borrowing process. CONTENTS: SECTION ONE: David Finegold, Laurel McFarland & William Richardson. Introduction; David Brian Robertson & Jerold L. Waltman. The Politics of Policy Borrowing; David Phillips. Borrowing Education Policy. SECTION TWO: David Finegold. The Changing International Economy and Its Impact on Education and Training; Hong W. Tan & Christine Peterson. Post-School Training of British and American Youth; Sarah H. Cleveland. US and UK Government Policy in Youth Training for the New International Economy: lessons from abroad; David Raffe & Russell Rumberger. Education and Training for 16-18 Year Olds in the UK and the US. SECTION THREE: Thomas Bailey. The Missions of the TECs and Private Sector Involvement in Training: lessons from Private Industry Councils; William Richardson. Employers as an Instrument of School Reform: compacts in Britain and America; Laurel McFarland. Top-up Student Loans: American models of student aid and British public policy; Jenny Shackleton. US Community Colleges and Further Educati