When worlds collide: excellent and equitable learning communities? Australia’s ‘social capitalist’ paradox?

Abstract

In Australia, a distinct political–educational imagination drives contemporary policy and praxis. This imagination finds root in the social governance models of British Third Way policy and can be considered social capitalist. Central to such politics is a view that social governance is capable of pursuing and achieving the social democratic ideals of equity and social justice, within the architecture of a globalising and competitive capitalist economy. In this paper, I analyse Australian federal and Victorian state education policies to argue that social capitalist politics has significant implications for the ways schools are being imagined and governed. Specifically, I argue that schools are re‐imagined as ‘learning communities’ through which excellence and equity are seen to operate harmoniously amidst a marketising system of educational services. In doing so, I feature empirical data from an ethnographic project conducted in two socially disparate Victorian government secondary schools, to highlight myriad tensions and paradoxes that emerge when each school attempts to govern itself towards policy ideals. In conclusion, I argue that policy imaginations of schools as havens of excellence and equity are difficult to take seriously when infused into the architecture of an education system that is deeply stratified and structured to discriminate between individuals in line with performance hierarchies.

Keywords:

• equity/social justice
• politics
• policy sociology
• marketisation

Acknowledgements

This paper has evolved from a presentation delivered at the University of Cambridge in September 2009, as part of the Education, Equality and Development Group Seminar Series at the Faculty of Education. Many thanks are offered to Jo‐Anne Dillabough for organising this event and to Cambridge staff and students for making it a productive session. The Melbourne Graduate School of Education at the University of Melbourne has also supported this paper through its Manuscript Preparation Support Grant Program. Thanks are extended to John Polesel for mentoring this paper as part of the programme and to Lyn Yates who also provided feedback on the final draft.

Notes

1. Gillard described the multiple elements of her portfolio as intrinsically ‘linked to the question of how we become a more prosperous nation without jettisoning the values of fairness and equal opportunity that made us what we are’ (Gillard 2008a). DEEWR was founded by the Rudd Labor government in 2007 to provide, as its name suggests, a linking up of the workforce and education into one large portfolio.

2. The Melbourne Declaration is oriented around two core educational goals: ‘Goal 1. Australian schooling promotes equity and excellence’ (MCEETYA 2008, 7); ‘Goal 2. All young Australians become successful learners, confident and creative individuals, and active and informed citizens’ (2008, 8).

3. It is important to note that in Victoria, evidence of a Third Way‐inspired approach can be seen in a broad range of social and education policies, several years before Rudd’s election in 2007. In many ways, whilst the federal Liberal Party under former Prime Minster John Howard systematically neoliberalised education policy from 1996 to 2007 (see Connell 2006), successive victories by the state Labor Party in Victoria (led by Stephen Bracks from 1999 to 2007) produced social policy with a distinct social‐democratic and Third Way community focus. As such, I am not suggesting that the 2007 federal‐level party shift towards Rudd’s ALP was a definitive marker for a national break away from neoliberal education logic towards a social capitalist position.

4. http://www.education.vic.gov.au/about/directions/blueprint2008/oneyearon/default.htm (accessed December 31, 2009).

5. An overview of the Effective Schools Model, which describes its relationship to the 2003 Blueprint. http://www.education.vic.gov.au/about/directions/blueprint1/es/default.htm (accessed December 31, 2009).

6. My School was launched in January 2010 by the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA). My School provides information about individual Australian schools, in the form of literacy and numeracy data based on results in the standardised National Assessment Program Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) tests. NAPLAN tests students in Years 3, 5, 7 and 9 in government and non‐government schools across Australia. My School also provides socio‐economic data for each school, in the form of an Index of Community Socio‐Educational Advantage (ICSEA). I explain aspects of ICSEA in Note 9. The My School website is: www.myschool.edu.au.

7. According to current Australian Bureau of Statistic Census data (ABS 2006), there are significant differences between the two areas in terms of unemployment, per household income and educational attainments for both young people and adults in each area. Socio‐economic differences between the Waterbury and Essex Hills school populations are also evident on the Victorian Registration and Qualifications Authority’s socio‐economic indicator, which ranks schools into five categories via SES (High, Mid‐High, Mid, Low‐Mid, Low). Here, Waterbury is ‘High’ and Essex Hills is ‘Low’. See also, the ICSEA quartiles in Note 10.

8. My comments here about gang and racial violence in the Essex Hills area are based on extensive media coverage on such issues that the area has received in Melbourne media. Issues of gangs, violence and young people’s safety in the Essex Hills area are also discussed in the Rights of Passage report, published by the Victorian Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commission (VEOHRC 2008). This report specifically examines the experiences of young Australian‐African people in the City of Greater Dandenong, in which Essex Hills is located, and draws attention to the ‘systemic issues impacting this group’ and related ‘difficult issues’ experienced by the local community (VEOHRC 2008, 5).

9. Reportage of the ICSEA involves breaking down student population data for each school in Australia into four quarters (Top, Bottom and two ‘Middle Quarters’). According to the ICSEA Technical Paper 2009: ‘It shows the proportion of educationally advantaged or disadvantaged students in the school compared with the spread of students across Australia. For example, if a school was exactly representative of the range of students across Australia, the quarter percentages would all be 25%. If a school was providing for students from predominantly advantaged backgrounds, then the top quarter might have 55%, the middle quarters 34% and 11%, and 0% in the bottom quarter’ (ACARA 2009, 8). The technical paper and information about the ICSEA is available online from the My School website: www.myschool.edu.au.

10. The Victorian Certificate of Education (VCE) is the certificate that students in Victoria receive upon satisfactory completion of a largely tertiary‐oriented senior school pathway. The Equivalent National Tertiary Entrance Rank (commonly referred to as ‘the ENTER score’) is used to rank students for university entry and is calculated by the Victorian Tertiary Admissions Centre (VTAC) based on VCE subject exams and assessments. Amongst many VCE/ENTER statistics Waterbury promotes, its prospectus states that in the previous year, ‘25% of students had an ENTER score of 90% or above’, ‘95.81% received an offer for further tertiary study’, and the ‘overall VCE pass rate was 100%’. For non‐Victorian readers, it is important to note the tremendous role ENTER scores play in defining the everyday practices and marketing activities of Victorian schools. Because ENTER scores directly determine whether young people can enter Victorian universities (and, correlatively, the kinds of courses to which they can gain admission), the perceived ‘quality’ and ‘effectiveness’ of schools (especially in the popular media) is often linked to their ability to deliver high ENTER score results and university entry. In terms of the Victorian media, ENTER scores are highly publicised and leading newspapers publish annual pseudo‐league tables to rank and analyse the ENTER performance of schools. For further analysis of the importance of ENTER scores in Victoria, see Kenway and Bullen (2001) and Tsolidis (2006).

11. Waterbury does offer a select few Vocational and Education Training (VET) units (such as hospitality); however, choice is very limited and students must select these units as electives alongside VCE subjects. It is important to note that Waterbury students can, if they wish, graduate and receive the VCE and not apply for university, choosing alternative options such as enrolment in Technical and Further Education (TAFE) colleges. However, the vast majority of Waterbury students apply for and receive entry to university.

12. See: http://www.mcrel.org/programs/dimensions/whathow.asp.

13. This is according to Central Queensland University, who are a key user and promoter of Dimensions of Learning in Australia. See Brief Summary of Dimensions of Learning. http://www.cqu.edu.au/dol/resources/orientation/dol_overview.doc.

14. According to the DEECD’s Rewarding Teaching Excellence paper (DEECD), teachers will be assessed under Teacher Rewards via a ‘balanced scorecard approach’ (2009, 10) under the categories: ‘classroom excellence’, ‘teaming and leadership’, ‘professional learning’ and ‘school contribution’ (DEECD 2009, 10–11). This ‘scorecard’ appears to reward teachers for more holistic forms of ‘school contribution’; however, at a closer look, DEECD requires schools to assign ‘classroom excellence’ a minimum weighting of 40% of the scorecard, with no minimum percentage required for ‘school contribution’. When defining classroom excellence in its model, the DEECD suggest that a central indicator for judgement is ‘evidence of impact on student achievement drawing on student test data’ (DEECD 2009, 11) and discuss performance data in terms of student outcomes on PISA tests. As such, when the DEECD suggest Teacher Rewards will exist to ‘reward high‐performing teachers who “add value” to students’, the meaning of value is understood as linked to one’s ability to prep and position students for excellence on high‐stake testing measures.