EEP442EEP418

Lecture 4Competition, Marketisation, and

School Choice

Week 3 OverviewGlobalisation

• What is globalisation?

• What has globalisation got to do with education?– School retention– International education– International assessments

All in a context of neo-liberalism and neo-conservatism

This week….Competition, marketisation and school choice

School as a ‘big business’ due to neo-liberal reforms

Education as ‘commodified’ – a product to be bought and sold

Consequences for:Schools

PrincipalsParents

Students

Implications for social justice

School Choice: Made Simple?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9G9MtANh4RM

School Choice – It’s simple really….The argument is that school choice provides an opportunity for parents to choose

schools that best suits their children’s needs

Proponents suggest that without school choice• No incentive to improve processes• Lazy teachers• Poor academic outcomes

Proponents further argue with school choice• Competition promotes innovation• Motivated teachers• Improved academic outcomes

BUT THINGS ARE RARELY THIS SIMPLE……IS ‘SUPERMARKET’ OPEN TO ALL?

Campbell’s School Choice

• Historical overview of education in Australia

• Historical context of current educational policy and practice, especially neo-liberal reforms

School for all?

The history of education in AustraliaTHEN

Education as an elite system

Education as a public system

Education as an elite system???NOW

Historical Context – School ChoicePublic schools as form of ‘social control’

Wealthy attended private school

Free, Compulsory and SecularGovernment Concerns

• Sparse population• Economics and efficiency• Range of religions• Social division

1880• Free, compulsory and secular• Growth in government sector• No public funding for private schools

The Private Turn…..

The late 1960’s saw the reintroduction of State funding to non-Government schools

WHY?• The Cold War• Baby boomers• Migration and multiculturalism• Rise of neo-liberal ideology

Neo-liberalism, Ideology & Hegemony

Neo-liberalism: Values of efficiency and economy are used as the benchmark with which to assess the worth of social initiatives or programs. The view that the economy should serve society is reversed – now, society should serve the economy. This whole model of school reform assumes that they way to improve education is to control it more rigidly (accountability) and to hand it over to the market

IdeologySet of beliefs, values, ideas, social practices, rituals, way of viewing the world, accepted as ‘natural’ and ‘common-sense’, lived out by people in everyday life

HegemonyIdeology achieves dominance through hegemony. Hegemony is the domination of one group by another without coercion or force. Thus the ideologies of a dominant group are accepted as ‘natural’ and ‘common-sense’ by all in society

SO – CLAIMS ACCEPTED BY SUBORDINATE GROUPS THAT CERTAIN ACTIONS AND POLICIES ARE IN THEIR BEST INTERESTS

Neo-liberal Influence on

Schooling

• What is private is good, what is public is bad• Public schools are a ‘black hole’ into which

money is poured• Economic rationality the only way to proceed• Efficiency and ‘cost-benefit’ analysis

dominate• Students become ‘human capital’ – ‘clients’• Need to produce most ‘economically viable’

contributors to the economy• ‘Consumer choice’ becomes the key view• The shifting of ‘blame’ and ‘responsibility’

from state to private sector

‘Social good’ becomes marginalised and replaced by rhetoric of individual rights, or ideologies of ‘choice’ and ‘efficiency’

Creating a School market

If education is big business, a service for select clients, what happens to free public education

and the education of all?

The Growth of School Marketisation

‘Enterprising Schools’

• Competition between ALL schools

• Focus on ‘efficiency’• Deregulation of schooling

zones• School self promotion and

marketing• Failures ‘axed’• Focus on results in

standardised testing

WHAT HAPPENS TO SCHOOL LEADERS?

Principals and School Leaders as Managers

• Efficiency, profit and strategy become their new language (policy as discourse)

• Managers• Salespeople

WHAT CAN (but not you!) HAPPEN TO TEACHERS?

Teachers as Robots?

• Respond to performance goals

• ‘dumbed down and spruced up’ (Meadmore & McWilliams, 2001)

• Pressure (teach to the test etc.)

WHAT HAPPENS TO PARENTS AND CARERS?

Parents and Carers as Consumers

• Market savvy• Individualism• Competitiveness• Self presentation and self

promotion

And changing economic climate for parents means…

They are concerned about securing the best future possible for their children so….• Class and ethnicity of school important factors• Greater chance of influencing school practices• Perception that private schools are better disciplined• Excellent facilities and teachers• Excellent extra-curricular activities• Scores well on standardised tests and examinations

WHAT CAN (but NOT yours! HAPPEN TO STUDENTS?

Students as winners or losers?

• Performance goals• Competitive• Self-promoters• Standardised• Efficient and productive

SCHOOL CHOICE?HOW IS IT THAT…

• Children can be pitted against each other and ranked according to their level of advantage or disadvantage?

• How is it that some students, due to their social and cultural privilege get to go to schools with lots of everything?

• How is it we allow a system where public schools are demonised in the media as residual systems of education?

• How is it that private schools are rewarded and public schools are seemingly punished?

ReferencesBourdieu, P. (1986). The forms of capital. In J. G. Richardson (Ed.), The handbook for theory and research for the sociology of education (pp. 241-258). New York: Greenwood Publishing Company.Bousfield, K., & Ragusa, A. T. (2013). NAPLAN and the commodification of parenting. Paper presented at the TASA 2013: Reflections, intersections and aspirations: 50 years of Australian sociology, Melbourne, Australia. Bousfield, K., & Ragusa, A. T. (2014). A sociological analysis of Australia’s NAPLAN and My School Senate Inquiry submissions: the adultification of childhood? Critical Studies in Education, 1-16. doi: 10.1080/17508487.2013.877051Campbell, C., Proctor, H., & Sherington, G. (2009). School choice : how parents negotiate the new school market in Australia. Crows Nest, N.S.W.: Allen & Unwin.Lareau, A. (2011). Unequal childhoods: Class, race, and family life, second edition with an update a decade later (2nd ed., with an update a decade later. ed.). Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.Mills, C. (2013). Implications of the my school website for disadvantaged communities: A Bourdieuian analysis. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 1-13. doi: 10.1080/00131857.2013.793927