Should you buy? Neo-liberalism, neo-HPE and your neo-job

Abstract

Have you noticed a proliferation of commercial services and programmes to help schools do Health and Physical Education (HPE), school sport, or physical activity better? It is no accident that more and more businesses want to promote their product to schools and that schools are seeking a "competitive edge" by purchasing these new products. This paper addresses the socio-political conditions, reflecting the ideology of neo-liberalism, that have shaped the rise of a market philosophy in education. HPE and school sport, important educational spaces for the production of healthy, self-managing citizens, are ripe for the intervention of market forces. Often commercial providers have no educational expertise yet, through their co-option of the "right" language, they find themselves teaching a simplified or populist version of HPE. This ultimately raises the question, "What is the value of HPE teachers' expertise to 'trade' in the education market place?" Time for a neo-job?