This paper explores the extent to which Quality management discourse has become embedded in state education policy and the implications of such a development. It explicitly probes the effect of this in terms of how it has served to reshape current conceptualizations of state education and reformulate its scope and aims. The paper aims to identify the nature of this reformulation and the ways in which it marks a shift from previous and traditional conceptions of education. As Quality management is a dominant global approach, this phenomenon is identifiable across Europe and beyond. The paper seeks to answer two key questions: what is the nature and extent of Quality influence within current education policy discourse, and in what ways does such influence affect the way in which education is understood and promoted within that discourse? The paper is principally a conceptual one, supported by a core exercise in discourse analysis. It initially develops a conceptual outline of the principles of Quality management as a means of informing the subsequent textual analysis at the heart of the paper. These identified principles of the Quality approach are used in the interrogation of selected texts (see below) as criteria against which to measure the form and extent of its influence. The paper concludes by offering a conceptual consideration of the nature of schooling and education and then examines the evidence drawn earlier from the textual analysis in the light of such considerations. The paper intends to expose any gulf between the conception of state education as manifested in policy discourse framed by Quality ideology and that of other traditions, such as liberal humanism, and to identify the consequences and effects of this divergence.

The research study is informed by the thinking of three main theorists in its analysis of the chosen policy texts - a selection of education policy text extracts drawn from a number of different European education systems and from such bodies as the OECD and the EU. It makes use of the work of Foucault (1984) in confirming its own critical role as revelatory, seeking to expose the underlying assumptions and rationale which are foundational to the discourse in question. Secondly, it makes use of the work of Fairclough (2003, 2005) in seeing the analysis of discourse as not simply an exercise in critical linguistics but as involving analysing relationships between the text and wider social practices. Finally, it makes use of the work of Ozga (2000) in structuring the analysis of the chosen policy texts by means of focusing the exploration on their source, scope, and pattern.

The paper suggests that Quality discourse dominates current education policy, and highlights three key effects of this development. Firstly, it suggests that Quality influence has tended to narrow the scope and aims of education to quantifiable outcomes, particularly in the form of academic certification. Secondly, the paper suggests that the internal pre-occupation of Quality management approaches underplays the importance and effects of social contexts on schools and their practices Thirdly, it suggests that Quality has come to narrow the social dynamics of the teacher-learner relationship to a much more functional interaction where the learner is re-formed in the reduced role of customer or client. In conclusion, the paper discusses the possibility that Quality may now have mutated from being an administrative approach used as a way of improving educational provision to a central position where meeting its demands has become not the means, but the very end of education.