ABSTRACT
One of the main arguments mounted against comprehensive education by Right-wing critics of educational reform in the 1960s and 1970s was that it was a form of social engineering. One of the difficulties that arise within policy discussions about social markets in fields of public service like education is that advocates and critics alike confuse the 'market-in-theory', the perfect market, with the 'market-in-practice', the real or realizable market. Chubb and Moe, two very influential prosletizers of the market in education, make, in passing it has to be said, two crucially important points about market imperfections. The market is not simply a value-free, mechanistic alternative to partisan planning, as some advocates and choice-politicians suggest. Social markets are part of a 'bigger picture' both in terms of class politics, cultural engineering and government accountability and economics. In substantive terms, within the UK education system there is now a struggle underway over values.
