Meritocracy in Crisis?

Peter Mandler, The Crisis of the Meritocracy: Britain’s Transition to Mass Education Since the Second World War (Oxford, 2020)

This is a really fascinating history of education in Britain from the Butler Act of 1944 to the present.  It makes a strong effort to be a bottom-up history and its central argument is that most of the changes to British education over the past 75 years have been driven by popular demand, but parents and students.  There are several key moments that the book highlights.  The 1944 Butler Act (time after the education minister Rab Butler) for the first time promised secondary education for all, and worked through Local Education Authorities (LEAs) to provide it.  [There is a really interesting religious connection here, as the Churches were resisting the state takeover of education].  The 1963 Robbins report created the principle that university places ‘should be available to all who were qualified for them by ability and attainment’ (the Robbins Principle).  The 1988 introduction of GCSEs by Margaret Thatcher’s government had a significant (if unintended) impact on causing more students to want to go to university, after her Secretary of Education Keith Joseph in the early 1980s had fought a rearguard action against the expansion of education.  In contrast, the imposition of fees from 1998 did not reduce student demand, and participation in higher education has never been greater than it is today, even

Mandler argues for a division between meritocracy and democracy, even though he admits that these concepts have been blurred in the way that they have been used.  I’m fairly convinced by his argument that most of the changes have come from the bottom up.  I’m less sure about the argument for a ‘crisis of the meritocracy’ since there is still a strong sense of selection at the university level, and some forms of selection persist.