Could Educational Reforms have something to do with Mundells Triangle of Impossibility?
In this paper we discuss the role given to education and training by policy-makers in France and Britain between 1980 and 2000 in relation to their chosen socio-economic strategies. We highlight conjunctions between levels of economic openness, exchange rate environments and types of educational policies. The two countries are interesting case studies due to the high degree of time-consistency between the policies implemented by stable governments (albeit of opposite political orientations). In Britain, a strategy of deregulated labour markets, a scaled-down welfare state, reduced taxation and monetarist rules against inflation was implemented whilst exchange rates floated for most of the period. Educational policy appeared initially to be part of an ideological package but became a prominent concern ‘of its own’ during periods of semifixed exchange rates (1987-92) and when the value of the pound soared (from 1997 onwards). This indicates that human capital policies as a strategy for i
