Election or selection? School autonomy reform, governance and the politics of school councils

ABSTRACT

Neoliberal policies promoting school autonomy reform in Australia and internationally have, over three decades, appropriated earlier social democratic discourses of parental participation and partnership in school governance. Recent school autonomy reforms have repositioned school council/boards within a narrow frame of accountability and management operating in marketized systems of education. This paper considers the perceptions of 12 stakeholders in public education across four Australian states of how the latest school autonomy reform policies, including Independent Public Schools, supports corporatized and seemingly depoliticised repositioning of school councils. This data indicates there is a shift from elected parental representation to principal selection of ‘skill-based’ community members, with the greatest implications for those schools in disadvantaged communities experiencing difficulties gaining voluntary parental participation. We offer new theoretical insights into the links between school autonomy, governance, the role and composition of school boards and social justice informed by Nancy Fraser’s theorising of social justice. We identify an emerging tension between first, parent movements as counterpublics claiming participatory parity in decision-making in school councils; and secondly, principal selection of self-interested and politically influential actors onto school councils, potentially politicising school councils.

KEYWORDS:

• Actors institutions
• equity/social justice
• School governance

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. The terms for parental involvement in school governance varies across state jurisdictions in Australia. In this paper, we use ‘council’ unless referring to particular state jurisdiction.

2. This research approved by the Deakin University Human Research Ethics Committee (HAE-19-029).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Australian Research Council [DP190100190].

Notes on contributors

Jill Blackmore

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 and Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences Australia. Her research interests include, from a feminist perspective: globalisation, education policy and governance; international and intercultural education; educational restructuring, leadership and organisational change; spatial redesign and innovative pedagogies; teachers’ and academics’ work, all with a focus on equity. Recent higher education research has focused on disengagement with and lack of diversity in leadership, international education and graduate employability. Her research has focused in particular on the re/constitution of the social relations of gender in and through education in the early 21st century.

Katrina MacDonald

Katrina MacDonald is a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow in the School of Education, Deakin University, Australia. Her research and teaching interests are in educational leadership, social justice, educational research history, and the sociology of education through a practice lens (feminist, Bourdieu, practice architectures). Katrina is a former anthropologist, archaeologist and primary and secondary teacher in Victoria, Australia. She tweets at @drfreersumenjin

Amanda Keddie

Amanda Keddie is a Professor of Education at Deakin University within REDI (Research for Educational Impact). Her published work examines the schooling processes, practices and conditions that can impact on the pursuit of social justice in schools. Amanda’s qualitative research has been based within the Australian, English and American schooling contexts and is strongly informed by feminist theory with a particular focus on gender. Her recent book with Routledge is Autonomy, Accountability and Social Justice: Stories of English Schooling (2019).

Brad Gobby

Brad Gobby is a senior lecturer in the School of Education at Curtin University, Western Australia. He has published widely on the topics of education policy, politics and school autonomy in international journals and edited books, and is an editorial board member of the Journal of Educational Administration and History.

Jane Wilkinson

Jane Wilkinson is a Professor of Educational Leadership at Monash University, Australia. Jane's research interests are in educational leadership for social justice and practice theory (feminist, Bourdieuian and practical philosophy). Jane has conducted extensive research with refugee studentsinschools and universities in regional and urban Australia. Jane’s books include: Challenges for public education: Reconceptualising educational leadership, policy and social justice as resources for hope (with Richard Niesche and Scott Eacott, Routledge, 2019) and Educational leadership as a culturally-constructed practice: New directions and possibilities (with Laurette Bristol, Routledge, 2018). Jane is co-editor (with Amanda Heffernan) of the Journal of Educational Administration and History.

Scott Eacott

Scott Eacott is Professor and Deputy Head of School, Research in the School of Education at UNSW Sydney and Adjunct Professor in the Department of Educational Administration at the University of Saskatchewan. He has developed a distinctive relational approach and further details can be found at www.scott.eacott.com You can connect with him on Twitter @ScottEacott

Richard Niesche

Richard Niesche is an Associate Professor in the School of Education at the University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia. His research interests are in the areas of educational leadership, the principalship and social justice in education. He has published his research in a number of peer reviewed journal and books. His latest book (co-edited with Dr Amanda Heffernan) is “Theorising Identity and Subjectivity in Educational Leadership Research” published with Routledge in 2020.