My School, My Market

Abstract

Australia's Education Revolution, launched in 2008, emphasised equity as a key reason for reforms. It identified ‘pockets of disadvantage’ as one of the main problems that needed to be addressed through its reforms. Through a series of translations, the problem of ‘pockets of disadvantage’ was converted to one of a lack of information, a lack of comparable metrics and the absence of an informed public, leading to a number of solutions such as the development of a national assessment scheme and the My School website. In this paper, using the theoretical and methodological resources of actor-network theory, I argue that these translations were also, simultaneously, the processes by which the Australian education space was further ‘marketised’. These marketisation processes involved homogenisation, whereby schools were rendered comparable through the development of common evaluation and common metrics; the development of informational resources that enabled parents to function as economic agents and exert ‘market forces’; and coordinating the activities of the actors through the My School website. The paper concludes with a discussion of how such descriptive analyses might serve as critique.

Keywords:

• Australian education policy
• marketisation
• actor-network theory
• translation
• transparency
• accountability

Notes

1.In this paper, I use ‘assemblage’ as a synonym for ‘actor-network’. ‘Assemblage’ is a term generally associated with Deleuze and Guttari, and is also used variously by actor-network theorists and others in a variety of field such as human geography. This paper does not offer the scope to explore these differences in any depth.

2.http://www.det.act.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0004/109750/My_School_FACT_SHEET_USING_MY_SCHOOL_TO_SUPPORT_SCHOOL_AND_STUDENT_IMPROVEMENT.pdf

3.http://blogs.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/yoursay/index.php/dailytelegraph/comments/julia_gillard_blogs_live_on_my_school_for_parents/