Post on 19-Jan-2017
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Lecture 4Competition, Marketisation, and
School Choice
Week 3 OverviewGlobalisation
• What is globalisation?
• What has globalisation got to do with education?– School retention– International education– International assessments
All in a context of neo-liberalism and neo-conservatism
This week….Competition, marketisation and school choice
School as a ‘big business’ due to neo-liberal reforms
Education as ‘commodified’ – a product to be bought and sold
Consequences for:Schools
PrincipalsParents
Students
Implications for social justice
School Choice: Made Simple?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9G9MtANh4RM
School Choice – It’s simple really….The argument is that school choice provides an opportunity for parents to choose
schools that best suits their children’s needs
Proponents suggest that without school choice• No incentive to improve processes• Lazy teachers• Poor academic outcomes
Proponents further argue with school choice• Competition promotes innovation• Motivated teachers• Improved academic outcomes
BUT THINGS ARE RARELY THIS SIMPLE……IS ‘SUPERMARKET’ OPEN TO ALL?
Campbell’s School Choice
• Historical overview of education in Australia
• Historical context of current educational policy and practice, especially neo-liberal reforms
School for all?
The history of education in AustraliaTHEN
Education as an elite system
Education as a public system
Education as an elite system???NOW
Historical Context – School ChoicePublic schools as form of ‘social control’
Wealthy attended private school
Free, Compulsory and SecularGovernment Concerns
• Sparse population• Economics and efficiency• Range of religions• Social division
1880• Free, compulsory and secular• Growth in government sector• No public funding for private schools
The Private Turn…..
The late 1960’s saw the reintroduction of State funding to non-Government schools
WHY?• The Cold War• Baby boomers• Migration and multiculturalism• Rise of neo-liberal ideology
Neo-liberalism, Ideology & Hegemony
Neo-liberalism: Values of efficiency and economy are used as the benchmark with which to assess the worth of social initiatives or programs. The view that the economy should serve society is reversed – now, society should serve the economy. This whole model of school reform assumes that they way to improve education is to control it more rigidly (accountability) and to hand it over to the market
IdeologySet of beliefs, values, ideas, social practices, rituals, way of viewing the world, accepted as ‘natural’ and ‘common-sense’, lived out by people in everyday life
HegemonyIdeology achieves dominance through hegemony. Hegemony is the domination of one group by another without coercion or force. Thus the ideologies of a dominant group are accepted as ‘natural’ and ‘common-sense’ by all in society
SO – CLAIMS ACCEPTED BY SUBORDINATE GROUPS THAT CERTAIN ACTIONS AND POLICIES ARE IN THEIR BEST INTERESTS
Neo-liberal Influence on
Schooling
• What is private is good, what is public is bad• Public schools are a ‘black hole’ into which
money is poured• Economic rationality the only way to proceed• Efficiency and ‘cost-benefit’ analysis
dominate• Students become ‘human capital’ – ‘clients’• Need to produce most ‘economically viable’
contributors to the economy• ‘Consumer choice’ becomes the key view• The shifting of ‘blame’ and ‘responsibility’
from state to private sector
‘Social good’ becomes marginalised and replaced by rhetoric of individual rights, or ideologies of ‘choice’ and ‘efficiency’
Creating a School market
If education is big business, a service for select clients, what happens to free public education
and the education of all?
The Growth of School Marketisation
‘Enterprising Schools’
• Competition between ALL schools
• Focus on ‘efficiency’• Deregulation of schooling
zones• School self promotion and
marketing• Failures ‘axed’• Focus on results in
standardised testing
WHAT HAPPENS TO SCHOOL LEADERS?
Principals and School Leaders as Managers
• Efficiency, profit and strategy become their new language (policy as discourse)
• Managers• Salespeople
WHAT CAN (but not you!) HAPPEN TO TEACHERS?
Teachers as Robots?
• Respond to performance goals
• ‘dumbed down and spruced up’ (Meadmore & McWilliams, 2001)
• Pressure (teach to the test etc.)
WHAT HAPPENS TO PARENTS AND CARERS?
Parents and Carers as Consumers
• Market savvy• Individualism• Competitiveness• Self presentation and self
promotion
And changing economic climate for parents means…
They are concerned about securing the best future possible for their children so….• Class and ethnicity of school important factors• Greater chance of influencing school practices• Perception that private schools are better disciplined• Excellent facilities and teachers• Excellent extra-curricular activities• Scores well on standardised tests and examinations
WHAT CAN (but NOT yours! HAPPEN TO STUDENTS?
Students as winners or losers?
• Performance goals• Competitive• Self-promoters• Standardised• Efficient and productive
SCHOOL CHOICE?HOW IS IT THAT…
• Children can be pitted against each other and ranked according to their level of advantage or disadvantage?
• How is it that some students, due to their social and cultural privilege get to go to schools with lots of everything?
• How is it we allow a system where public schools are demonised in the media as residual systems of education?
• How is it that private schools are rewarded and public schools are seemingly punished?
ReferencesBourdieu, P. (1986). The forms of capital. In J. G. Richardson (Ed.), The handbook for theory and research for the sociology of education (pp. 241-258). New York: Greenwood Publishing Company.Bousfield, K., & Ragusa, A. T. (2013). NAPLAN and the commodification of parenting. Paper presented at the TASA 2013: Reflections, intersections and aspirations: 50 years of Australian sociology, Melbourne, Australia. Bousfield, K., & Ragusa, A. T. (2014). A sociological analysis of Australia’s NAPLAN and My School Senate Inquiry submissions: the adultification of childhood? Critical Studies in Education, 1-16. doi: 10.1080/17508487.2013.877051Campbell, C., Proctor, H., & Sherington, G. (2009). School choice : how parents negotiate the new school market in Australia. Crows Nest, N.S.W.: Allen & Unwin.Lareau, A. (2011). Unequal childhoods: Class, race, and family life, second edition with an update a decade later (2nd ed., with an update a decade later. ed.). Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.Mills, C. (2013). Implications of the my school website for disadvantaged communities: A Bourdieuian analysis. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 1-13. doi: 10.1080/00131857.2013.793927