Devolution, market dynamics and the Independent Public School initiative in Western Australia: ‘winning back’ what has been lost?

Abstract

The devolution of public sector schooling systems has been a feature of education reform since the 1980s. In Western Australia, the Independent Public School (IPS) initiative has recently been installed, announced by the state government in 2009. Now over 80% of the state’s public school students attend IP schools. Drawing on interview data from a broader study of devolution and the conditions of teachers’ work, this article explores the cases of two schools – one IPS and one non-IPS. While both schools were ostensibly disadvantaged, they proved to be highly contrasting schooling sites, responding to the school marketplace in markedly different ways. We consider the ways in which the IPS initiative is contributing to the operation of market dynamics within the public school sector in WA, and argue that it has created new mechanisms for the residualisation of particular, and specifically non-IP, schools. Furthermore, while one school was apparently more of a ‘winner’ within the school marketplace, as it was attracting increasing student enrolments, we query what it might actually mean to ‘win’ in such a policy settlement, with staff at both schools reporting significant dissatisfaction in their work.

Keywords:

• Marketisation
• market
• devolution
• neoliberalism
• teachers
• principals

Notes

1. Describing a school as ‘leafy green’ is a common colloquial expression denoting the apparent relative advantage of the area in which the school is situated.

2. The Index of Community Socio-Educational Advantage (ICSEA) measures students’ socio-educational advantage as a function of parents’ occupation as well as school and non-school based educational attainment. The measure also includes school-level factors of location and Indigenous student enrolment. The median is 1000, with a score below indicating relative disadvantage, and a score above indicating relative advantage.

3. An Expert Review Group (ERG) is a team of reviewers especially composed to bring high levels of expertise to evaluate the school. The declared purpose is to enable the principal and staff to receive detailed feedback about their performance. The ERGs also prescribe strategies directed at improving school performance. Based on this feedback the principal will be responsible for developing and implementing an improvement plan. This will be supported by the Director Schools who will provide direction and advice as required.

4. TFA is a programme which aims to place ‘bright’ undergraduate students into disadvantaged and ‘hard-to-staff’ schools, where they simultaneously perform the role of a classroom teacher and complete their teaching certification. Of the 13 public schools in WA that took TFAs in 2016, all were IPS. The TFA program is open to schools that meet certain criteria regarding school disadvantage. While the TFA program itself does not exclude non-IPS schools, the nature of the redeployment system is such that if non-IP schools have a vacant teaching position they must take redeployees. As such they do not have the capacity to take TFA associates.TFA has been widely criticized. It is seen, for instance, to offer ‘simple answers to complex problems’ (Skourdoumbis 2012, 314), relying on individuals as savior figures. In the US, it has also been linked to other neoliberal schooling reforms, namely the devolved charter school movement (Lefebvre and Thomas 2017).