The new articulation of equity education in neoliberal times: the changing conception of social justice in Ontario

ABSTRACT

In this paper, we draw attention to the impact of neoliberal globalisation in rearticulating conceptions of equity within the Ontario context. The Ontario education system has been hailed for its top performance on Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) as a high-equity/high-quality education system and created ‘PISA envy’ in the international context. Our aim in this paper is to provide some critical analysis of the neoliberal rationality and to examine its manifestations for rearticulating conceptions of social justice. Drawing on equity education policies in Ontario and one in-depth interview with an equity practitioner in one of Ontario’s large and most diverse school boards, this paper illustrates how a redefinition of equity has been made possible through neoliberal systems of accountability and performativity involving measurement and facticity. As a result of these strategies, equity policy in education has been concerned with outcome measurement and boys’ underachievement, while racial and class inequalities have become invisible. While this paper is focused on Ontario equity policy, we believe that it serves much broader interest given the current context of global education policy field.

KEYWORDS:

• Equity
• education policy
• Ontario
• neoliberalism
• accountability
• social justice

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada [Accountability and the impact of standardised testing on equity education and the achievement of minority students in Canadian and Australian schools, award no. 435-2014-1014].