Running up the 'down' Escalator: The Contemporary Approach to Educational Change?

Education systems are constantly changing. The changes are driven by two main pressures. One type of pressure arises from changes in the economic, demographic and technological environments within which education operates. The other type of pressure arises from changes in society's normative values, beliefs and expectations. These two sets of factors can change very quickly while educational institutions, and the regulatory frameworks which govern them, tend to change more slowly. Educational change often involves trying to modernise institutions to bring them into line with recently changed values and environmental conditions. This article presents a conceptual framework for exploring the problems that generate changes to the education system and uses this to highlight how recent policy initiatives by central government, which are intended to address problems, are concurrently creating additional problems. This analysis helps to explain why some education managers might currently feel as if they were being asked to "run up the "down" escalator." (Contains 1 figure.)