By Bruno Manno
The United Kingdom holds a general election on July 4th, the day we former colonists celebrate Amexit—America’s 248th birthday of our self-proclaimed exit from that country. A 2024 Pew Research poll of British adults taken before the call for an election concluded that “Britons see the state of the UK in relatively bleak terms.”
Current U.K. polls show the opposition Labour Party crushing the governing Conservative Party, in power since 2010. Truth be told, the only poll that counts is what voters say on July 4th. But assuming polls are generally accurate, there is value in assessing how Labour’s proposed working family’s agenda for education and workforce training resembles U.S. conversations on what I call opportunity pluralism.
One must begin by acknowledging that U.S. education governance is more decentralized than in Great Britain. Hence, much of the information exchange between representatives from a new Labour government and the U.S. would involve initiatives implemented at the state and local levels in the U.S.