School principals speaking back to widening participation policies in higher education

ABSTRACT

This paper examines school principal responses to the policy discourse of widening participation in higher education. As a critical analysis of how policy is produced, read and responded to by principals [Bacchi, C., 2009. Analysing policy: what's the problem represented to be? New York: Pearson], the paper questions the assumptions underpinning policies aiming to widen participation of young people in schools where families have traditionally not viewed higher education as a possible or desirable option [e.g. Bok, J., 2010. The capacity to aspire to higher education: ‘It's like making them do a play without a script’. Critical studies in education, 51 (2), 163–178]. Policy is adopted, adapted, ignored or countered by principals and teachers due to ‘situated necessity’ resulting from the history, location, pupil and parental social mix, staffing, material and economic conditions of the school and community infrastructure [Braun, A., et al., 2011. Taking context seriously: towards explaining policy enactments in the secondary school. Discourse: studies in the cultural politics of education, 32 (4), 585–596]. The data are drawn from principal interviews undertaken when researching a Year 8 Mentoring and Tutoring programme, one component of a three-year Access Express programme, a federally funded Higher Education and Partnership and Participation Programme, developed by a collaboration between a Victorian university and 7 secondary schools. Access Express’ focus on university-school partnerships captured the trend in Australia, the UK and USA during the 2000s to facilitate transitioning out-of-school through long-term university-school partnerships [Armstrong, D. and Cairnduff, A., 2011. Building university-school partnerships. In: D. Bottrell and S. Goodwin, eds. Schools, communities and social inclusion. South Yarra: Palgrave Macmillan, 268–279].

KEYWORDS:

• Widening participation
• higher education
• principals
• policy

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Jill Blackmore is Alfred Deakin Professor in the Faculty of Arts and Education, Deakin University, and former Director of the Centre for Research in Educational Futures and Innovation. Her research interests include, from a feminist and equity perspective, globalisation, education policy and governance; international and intercultural education; educational restructuring, leadership and organisational change; spatial redesign and innovative pedagogies; and teachers' and academics’ work. Recent publications include Educational leadership and Nancy Fraser (2016, Routledge).

Dr Kirsten Hutchison is Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Arts and Education, Deakin University. She researches university school partnerships in teacher education, literacy teaching and learning in digital environments, home school relations and peer mentoring.

Dr Anne Keary is a Lecturer in the Faculty of Education, Monash University. Her research interests include life, education and work transitions, language and literacy, early childhood education, and international students' academic literacy.

Notes

1. The equity groups included people from low socio-economic backgrounds, people in rural or isolated areas, people with disabilities, Indigenous people and people from non-English-speaking backgrounds and women, especially in non-traditional fields of study and higher degrees. Performance indicators were access, participation, success, retention and completion.

2. The My Schools website is an Australian Federal Government website which allows searching of the profiles of Australian schools. Statistical and contextual information about schools is available. Schools can be compared statistically with other similar schools across the country.

3. ICSEA value is calculated according the following factors: the socio-educational backgrounds of the students’ parents, whether the school is remote … the proportion of Indigenous students, the proportion of students from a language background other than English, or a combination of these factors. (My Schools website)

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Australian Department of Education (Higher Education Participation and Partnership Programme).