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In 1997, the Government of Sri Lanka launched a comprehensive set of education reforms designed to promote equitable access to basic education and improvements in learning outcomes. The package of reforms arose as a political response to widespread youth unrest in the late 1980s and attracted considerable 'political will', a vague but much vaunted term in the international policy discourse. Yet, despite seemingly high levels of national political will, reform has not been plain sailing. Using evidence from interviews with policy elites and an analysis of policy texts and evaluations, this paper analyses the role of political will at national and local levels in policy formulation and implementation in a policy environment characterised by 'patronage politics'. It explores the interaction between the political, administrative, technical, human resource and financial drivers and inhibitors of five reform components and argues that local-level political will, as well as national-level political will, has played a central role in determining whether formulated policies are translated into action on the ground. 'Political will' is a double-edged sword. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Throughout Kenya's history, tensions between two goals have characterised the educational policy debate: first, the expansion of access; second, the containment of costs. During the colonial period, cost-containment predominated, leading to severe restrictions on access and massive unmet social demand. Then, during post-Independence years, broadened access became the predominant policy objective, leading to massive cost increases and to negative quality effects. In the final section, this paper considers current issues concerning access, cost and quality, stressing the need to bear in mind the complex relationships among them in planning future policy. It is clear that any initiative to achieve universal primary education is unlikely to succeed unless the tension between access and cost, and its implications for quality, is recognised and taken into account. If the programme does not incorporate viable plans to meet the additional costs and prevent quality being compromised, its prospects will almost certainly be in jeopardy from the outset. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last two decades, moves toward 'inclusion' have prompted change in the formation of education policies, schooling structures and pedagogical practice. Yet, exclusion through the categorisation and segregation of students with diverse abilities has grown, particularly for students with challenging behaviour. This paper considers what has happened to inclusive education by focusing on three educational jurisdictions known to be experiencing different rates of growth in the identification of special educational needs: New South Wales (Australia), Alberta (Canada) and Finland (Europe). In our analysis, we consider the effects of competing policy forces that appear to thwart the development of inclusive schools in two of our case study regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One area where the financial crisis has shown the limitation of neo-liberal thinking is the area of educational reform. By studying the different ranges of national responses and by understanding the differing contexts for educational change in historical periods, we can begin to think differently about educational restructuring. In this paper I report on some of the findings from a four-year study of educational reforms in seven European countries undertaken for the European Commission. The countries covered are: England and Wales, Ireland, Portugal, Spain, Finland, Sweden and Greece and the research was conducted from 2004 to 2008. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Debates on the global economic recession have failed to draw adequate attention to the meaning of the crisis for the poor and their education, especially in later developing societies. In this paper, I focus on the education of children of the poor in India - a country that has experienced economic slowdown rather than recession. Available research suggests that the economic slowdown is likely to have resulted in large numbers of informal sector workers slipping into poverty, adversely affecting the education of their children. However, I argue that poverty and the education of the poor has to be looked at in a context much broader than the global recession or the national economic slowdown. I refer in particular to the neoliberal discourse advocating low-cost private schools as solutions to the education of poor children, a discourse that preceded the meltdown. I argue that while publicly funded schooling in India is certainly in need of an overhaul, the private school agenda is driven by markets and profits and a reduced role of the state in education. There are serious implications that follow that must be urgently addressed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Concern about poor school attendance and participation, particularly of Indigenous children, is a key issue in Australian education; however, strategies to address this issue have been piecemeal and have met with limited success. While much has been written about the issue of school attendance, little attention has been given to absenteeism in early childhood education or its effects at this level. Drawing on data from a longitudinal ethnographic study of Indigenous children in early childhood education in an Australian city, this paper examines the impact of intermittent attendance on the academic, social and personal wellbeing of young Aboriginal children. Explanations for non-attendance, particularly in the non-compulsory pre-school, are considered, and the efficacy of current policy trends to coerce parents to deliver children to school by withholding welfare income is challenged. It is argued that because absenteeism in the Indigenous context is part of the broader complex of social exclusion and disadvantage, policy-makers and service providers, such as the school, are presented particular challenges involving the balancing of competing principles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The proliferation of policy think tanks and more broadly the rise of 'policy networks' can be viewed as indicative of important global transformations in the nature of the state. That is, the emergence of new state modalities, with a shift away from government towards forms of polycentric governance, where policy is produced through multiple agencies and multiple sites of discourse generation. This paper addresses some particular aspects of this shift by focusing on a set of relationships and sites which have had some kind of influence upon the social and educational policies of UK New Labour governments. It has two main concerns. First, focusing on the generation and circulation of some of the key policy 'ideas' of New Labour, it maps out a related and overlapping set of policy networks which join-up government, think tanks and some individual interlockers, who 'straddle sectors and policy fields and settings'. Second, it highlights some of the main discursive elements that flow through these networks, in particular those of innovation and enterprise. They give particular emphasis on the role of 'social enterprise' and social entrepreneurs in the modernisation of public service provision and in providing solutions to intractable social problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The literature on school commercialism, despite a number of successes in battling advertising and marketing in schools, has often seemed to only scratch the surface of corporatization of K-12 education. While condemning corporations who seek to sell brand-name products to kids in schools is a relatively straightforward matter, critiquing corporate efforts to promote ideologies, identities, values and agendas to children and youth is far more complicated and yet, essential. In this paper, we take the example of Junior Achievement Worldwide, one of the world's oldest, largest, and fastest growing organizations promoting corporate interests in schools in the USA and beyond to illustrate the need to address school commercialism in a broad historical, curricular, and global context. We review the long history of Junior Achievement in the USA, its vast set of curriculum offerings in enterprise, financial literacy, economics, work readiness and life skills, and its dramatic expansion, since the late 1980s, to now reach more than eight million students every year in over 100 countries around the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Spain as in other European countries, policies on school choice have been implemented in tandem with the channelling of public resources into private education. Given the application of public money to private schooling, the primary objective of this paper is to analyse the extent to which Spanish families enjoy equality in their ability to exercise school choice. To do so, the analysis focuses on the factors that affect school choice in Spain using data from the 2003 and 2006 PISA evaluations. Specifically, the influence of personal, family, geographic, motivational and educational policy factors are all considered in the context of deciding whether to attend a public or private school. The results reveal a broad similarity across the factors driving the selection of private schools which either receive some public funding (known as 'concerted') or independent, showing a greater proportion of families from better socioeconomic, educational and cultural backgrounds in these types of schools. In addition, the geographic distribution of schools has an effect on school selection. Given that concerted schools form part of the public educational offering (because of the state funding they receive), the state has the ability to take a wide range of actions to promote greater equality of choice in the case of public and concerted schools. In this respect, a series of measures are set out regarding student selection, the distribution of information and the geographic distribution of schools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper explores the changing forms of governance currently being applied to the English further education sector - changes that emphasise the importance of locality. The paper sets the sector within its socio-economic and policy context, examining current policy changes that intend to alter the way in which the sector is managed. It relates these changes to their contextual location and to a set of conceptual notions that derive from a particular understanding of systems theory and what has been described as the new localism. It concludes that whilst these changing forms of governance are in continuity with earlier policies that had a regional dimension, they remain set on the terrain of performativity and new public sector management. Nevertheless, there remains a residual potential to develop more democratic forms of engagement in these changes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explicates the elements of several policy instruments used in Connecticut, the political conditions under which they were chosen, and their intended targets and expected effects on teacher quality and student learning. The purpose of the paper is to explain how the Connecticut General Assembly (CGA) and the Connecticut State Department of Education (CSDE) were able to implement and sustain a set of integrated policies related to teaching and learning over a 20-year period from 1985 to 2005. We argue that this occurred for three primary reasons. First, the state legislature combined changes in teacher certification requirements in the 1980s with significant increases in teacher salaries in order to build strong political support among teachers and teacher union leaders for the new requirements. Second, in the 1980s and 1990s, CGA and CSDE repeatedly combined policy instruments in ways that involved multiple stakeholders and strong elements of capacity-building, thereby increasing their likelihood of success. Third, several policies enacted in Connecticut in the 1990s were directly connected to and strongly reinforced each other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To maintain their global positioning, some of the world's most prominent institutions are pursuing strategic transnational alliances. In this paper I examine one such transnational alliance - that between the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the government of Singapore. Using governmentality as a framework of analysis, the paper locates the Singapore-MIT Alliance within the broader policy architecture that underpins Singapore's knowledge economy aspirations. The Alliance demonstrates some of the practical complexities involved in 'leap-frogging' into the 'value-added' realms of knowledge and service-related production. It highlights the resistances, tensions and contradictions arising from leveraging off foreign expertise to build an education hub. The paper concludes with a discussion of the changing regimes of value arising from aspiring knowledge economies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The attention to the visualization of education policy is an area of study yet to be developed and explored. This paper extends the scholarship of 'media-ted education policy production' by developing a visual methodology to analyse a visual education policy document that takes the form of a documentary titled Learning Journeys (2000), which documented an uptake of and for the 'Thinking Schools, Learning Nation' policy in Singapore schools after this policy came into effect in 1997. My analysis specifically draws attention to the concept of 'visual design', which I argue works ideologically to constrain the semiotic meaning potential of visual texts to a preferred reading path, and that 'design' textually contributes to an ideological closure as opposed to an open, multiple or contradictory reading of the text. Any critical reading of visual policy texts, I argue, must understand that 'design' in visual policy texts is situated and intertwined in the complex interplay of institutional constraints, ideological underpinnings, political assumptions and priorities. My textual analysis of the design of Learning Journeys will show that the televisual images in the documentary are managed to prioritize the construction of preferred schooling identities and to build consensus of what schooling ought to be and why new imperatives of education change are necessary in changing global economic conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two key themes of recent UK education policy texts have been a focus on 'quality' in public sector performance, and on 'equality' in the form of New Labour's stated commitment to equality of opportunity as a key policy objective. This twin approach can be seen at its most obvious in the concept of 'excellence for all'. This paper contends that in recent policy texts the vocabularies of quality management discourse and egalitarian discourse have become conflated, serving to mask key issues relating to educational inequality, seen at its most stark in the attainment gap. The paper argues that this has led to a failure to distinguish between the goals of quality management and the ends of egalitarianism. Discursive conflation of this sort risks obscuring the significance of socio-economic context and the limited impact of within-school action. The paper also suggests that the focus on equality in terms of school provision paradoxically risks entrenching social inequalities despite the appearance of egalitarian commitment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Educational policy-making in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) is still building upon the ambivalences and uncertainties of post-communist transformation. The international support, expertise and discourses - coupled with communist legacies, stalled democratic developments and national discourses - produce unique effects on education in each of these countries. This paper is an attempt to conceptualise educational policy-making (with its disparities between 'democratised' discourses and 'Sovietised' practices) as a form of emerging governmentality or governmentality-in-the-making on the level of the state, using Ukraine as a case study. Analysing policy-making through the perspective of emerging governmentality brings into focus the genealogy of post-independent reforms, which is (as a part of the technologies of government) threaded into a broader governmental project of restructuring the state and legitimising its rationality. The final empirical part of the paper presents a discourse analysis of selected curriculum choice and assessment policy documents (1999-2003) and embedded in them the complex interplay of internal and external discourses, which work together to construct and justify the emerging governmental rationality of post-communist Ukraine. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bourdieu did not write anything explicitly about education policy. Despite this neglect, we agree with van Zanten that his theoretical concepts and methodological approaches can contribute to researching and understanding education policy in the context of globalisation and the economising of it. In applying Bourdieu's theory and methodology to research in education policy, we focus on developing his work to understand what we call 'cross-field effects' and for exploring the emergence of a 'global education policy field'. These concepts are derived from some of our recent research concerning globalisation and mediatisation of education policy. The paper considers three separate issues. The first deals with Bourdieu's primary 'thinking tools', namely practice, habitus, capitals and fields and their application to policy studies. The second and third sections consider two additions to Bourdieu's thinking tools, as a way to reconceptualise the functioning of policy if considered as a social field. More specifically, the second section develops an argument around cross-field effects, as a way to group together, research and describe policy effects. The third section develops an argument about an emergent global education policy field, and considers ways that such a field affects national education policy fields. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Parent engagement in schooling has long been held as a vital component of the successful navigation of the schooling process and, consequently, governments often invite such engagement via policy implementation. However, at times, contestation arises about parent engagement, with some parents seemingly 'crossing the line' when attempting to be involved in their children's schooling. This paper investigates the possibility of parent engagement in schooling in Queensland, Australia, conceptualising it as a game of social and systemic practice. The author examines this notion using a recent example of contestation between parents at a regional government school and the education authority. Policy directives about parent engagement are explored, with the rhetoric of such policy applied to the example in question. The work of Bourdieu and Foucault is used to argue that the invitation to parents to engage is framed and thus often misrecognised, resulting in unintended conflictual relationships between parents and governing authorities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is growing concern that almost 20 years after the 1988 Education Act, top-down, large-scale reform has stalled. The policy mix of choice, competition, markets, regulation, accountability and leadership seems not to have closed the gap between advantaged and disadvantaged areas and individuals, while most variations in school performance can be explained in terms of intake differences. This paper reviews policy and progress since 1988 and assesses the extent to which central government has achieved its educational aims. Unacknowledged tensions and contradictions are identified in structures and practices that are supposed to constitute a reliable framework for sustainable improvement. The conclusion is drawn that since 1988 the national government apparatus has itself become an important obstacle to further progress. An independent review of policy-making and implementation is recommended so that schools and colleges are enabled to contribute more effectively to improvements in the quality of education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the contradictory location of the professional and managerial new middle class within the rising tension between old systems of the industrial capitalist model of education, epitomized by a reliance on high-stakes, standardized testing and the newer forms of production associated with the 'fast' capitalism of the global economy. The author argues that the professional and managerial new middle class is faced with a dilemma since they benefit from systems of high-stakes, standardized testing, yet require schools to also teach the types of skills and flexibility associated with knowledge economy. The analysis suggests that this dilemma represents the contradictory class location of the new middle class relative to both discursive and productive resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Australian State of Queensland's 'Smart State' policy is the Government's response to global conditions that require a new type of worker and citizen for a new knowledge economy. As a result the Government has produced a plethora of documents and papers in every aspect of its operation to progress Queensland as a 'Smart State'. The role of education in the success of the 'Smart State' is clearly outlined in the Queensland Government's vision statements and policies (Queensland Department of Education, Training and the Arts 1999). The purpose of this article is to utilise Norman Fairclough's theories regarding the relationship between discourse and social change, to examine the interdiscursive, linguistic and semiotic strategies used in 'Smart State' policy to show how this discourse is emerging into a hegemonic position within the discourses of Queensland education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the convergence of urban and education policy in inner Sydney, and posits a politics of place as a useful frame to both understand policy and undertake policy analyses. It reiterates calls for place to be taken seriously in education policy studies, but also proposes that it is equally important to strive for preciseness when using concepts such as space and place. The theoretical component of this paper concerns the intersection of relational notions of place and space with discursive concepts of the identity. The paper then applies these ideas to analyse urban and education policy in inner Sydney, and teases out possible understandings of how schooling may be implicated in a politics of the inner city. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the extent to which the UK government's full service extended schools programme has the capacity to ameliorate educational inequality in urban contexts. It starts by examining a variety of explanatory narratives for educational inequality in urban contexts in the UK and suggests that the dynamics of social exclusion created by urban decline has generated particular types of polarised urban communities whose analysis has often been decoupled from research on educational reform programmes in urban schools. The paper argues for the need to re-couple educational process with the dynamics of urban context and suggests that the most recent educational policy development of full service extended schools (FSES) may present distinctive opportunities to complete such a synthesis. The paper then locates FSES within a broader set of government approaches that attempt to deal with social exclusion and educational disadvantage. It then draws on research conducted by the authors and others that has examined notions of FSES in the UK and beyond. It will argue that at present the evidence for the capacity of such an initiative to synthesise effectively educational process with the dynamics of urban context and hence resolve successfully the problems of educational inequality in such contexts is at best inconclusive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Partnership is a concept that is increasingly being used in the UK political arena. This article seeks to contribute to the existing understanding of the theory and practice of educational partnerships. It argues that although partnerships are usually defined as necessary, pragmatic and benevolent ways of organizing social welfare, in practice they are complex, contradictory and even paradoxical social phenomena. Drawing on research on working partnerships, this paper argues that there is a mismatch between the political rhetoric on partnerships and empirical partnerships. It suggests that these disjunctions are the manifestation of the effective rhetorical power of partnerships. The notion of partnership constructs a vision of public policy that stresses efficiency, devolution and participation and in which everyone seems to benefit. However, when the actual practice of partnerships is explored, a different picture appears. Rather than inclusive, symmetrical and democratic social practices, current partnerships are revealed to be facilitating and legitimating central policy decision‐making as well as the private sector involvement in the delivery of public policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A great deal of research has addressed the tension between economic globalization and local cultural identity, and the tension between convergence in global policy objectives and divergence in local practices, but research has not explored the impact of the complex interactions between these tensions on an individual university, especially in relation to university autonomy. This paper attempts to bridge this gap. Based on a case study of Tsinghua University in China, this paper explores the university's role in three interrelated processes: the incorporation of international experience into higher education, in order to respond to economic globalization; the reinforcement of political education, as a means of preserving the state-prescribed cultural identity; and the quest for autonomy, to facilitate the university's move towards world-class status. Tensions raised by the interaction of these processes will also be discussed. This paper concludes by applying the concept of ‘glocalization’—i.e., ‘thinking and acting both globally and locally’—as a means of understanding the complex interrelations of global, national, and local factors that inform the translation of global imperatives into local realities in the context of Tsinghua. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Published indicators of school ‘performance’, such as those shown annually in league tables in England, have been controversial since their inception. Raw-score figures for school outcomes are heavily dependent on the prior attainment and family background of the students. Policy-makers in Wales have reacted to this fundamental flaw by withdrawing the publication of school results. In England, on the other hand, they have reacted by asking for more information to be added to tables, in the form of student context such as the percentage with a special educational need, and ‘value-added’ figures. In 2004, the Department for Education and Skills (DfES) value-added figures for England were based on student progress from Key Stage 2 at the end of primary education to GCSE at the end of compulsory secondary education. For 2005, at time of writing, the DfES plan to use context information in their model as well. This paper re-analyses the 2004 value-added figures and shows that they contain the same flaw as the original raw-score tables. The purported value-added scores turn out to be a proxy for the overall level of attainment in the school, and almost entirely independent of any differential progress made by the students. The paper concludes by considering the implications of these findings, if accepted, for policies based on identifying schools that are clearly more or less effective, and for the field of school effectiveness and improvement research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Youth ‘at risk’ is the currently favoured label used in Australian policy for youth whose educational outcomes are considered too low, with an emphasis on the risk of not completing senior secondary education. Although some research has identified factors contributing to this risk as stemming from complex interactions between individual and family circumstances as well as characteristics of schools and society, policy identification of youth ‘at risk’ has tended to simplistically focus on personal attributes of young people. Moreover, this identification has set up a false distinction between a supposed problematic minority versus a ‘normal’ majority. Thus, the dominant conceptualization of youth ‘at risk’ draws attention to what is wrong with these youth, rather than to what may be wrong with schooling. This paper examines both empirical observations and discursive conceptualizations to critique the ‘youth at risk’ label, and proposes use of the concept of ‘marginalized students’ instead, which identifies individuals not through their personal characteristics but through their relationship with schooling. This approach allows recognition that marginalization is at least in part a product of schools and society, and requires action in those arenas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using the system in the UK as a case study, this paper begins by examining the relationship between the rise of the ‘new managerialism’ in the public services and the ideological framework that was provided for this by the convergence of key ideas emerging from the new right and new left. It looks then at the growth of the new educational bureaucracies to service this management culture and relates these to changes in the role of concepts of strategic management in the shift from the Cold War era to the present very different international configuration that has followed on from the demise of the Soviet Union and its satellite states. It provides a critique of the pervasive, supervisory, performance management culture that has emerged in the public services by using organization theory to question the applicability of these processes to education. Most critiques of the new managerialism in education have engaged with it on sociological or political grounds without attempting to examine how these particular approaches are accounted for within organization theory. It focuses on the work of one influential theorist in the field, arguing that his work offers rich critical insights which are particularly applicable to the organizational forms of educational management. Finally it evaluates the influence of this management environment on the quality of education arguing that its obsessive focus on quantitative outcomes and the ‘measurable’ has been a key factor in the narrowing of horizons and the impoverishment of educational policy discourse under the present Government and its immediate predecessors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Western governments appear increasingly dissatisfied with the rising costs and apparent static performance of their education systems. This dissatisfaction has been manifested in a critical re-examination of the near-monopoly of publicly provided schooling. Elsewhere in the public sector, privatization and competitive tendering have been frequently used to reduce costs and raise productivity. However, in education the inability to fully specify contracts with private providers has led to renewed interest in increasing the role of not-for-profit providers. In this paper we utilize economic analysis to critically examine the strengths and weaknesses of not-for-profit providers of schooling. We explore the nature of the specific context in which they may prove to be effective providers, using successful faith schools as a case study. We conclude that there are prima facie grounds for governments to prefer contracting not-for-profit rather than for-profit organizations for the provision of state funded education. Overall, whilst extending not-for-profit schooling has the potential to harness sources of social capital to the benefit of school improvement, these benefits must be weighed against the risks inherent in increasing ‘strong-ties’ social capital. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper utilizes Bourdieu’s conceptual frame to examine the mediatized effects of policy processes concerned with the growth and support of knowledge industries in Australia. These policies span education, science, research and other knowledge industries (such as venture capital firms and intellectual property law). The paper argues that some policy processes are best represented as temporary social fields. The nature of these fields can be described by the kinds of cross‐field effects that they produce. A case study of an Australian knowledge economy policy, The chance to change , and associated policy processes demonstrates the broad analytic capacities of Bourdieu’s conceptual frame for policy analysis, when combined with the concepts of cross‐field effects and temporary social field developed here. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article introduces a series of articles on Pierre Bourdieu's sociology of education, published in the November 2005 issue of the periodical "British Journal of Sociology of Education." The paper by Sandra Taylor and Parlo Singh documents struggles over the definition and practice of social justice in education inside the bureaucratic field, a struggle over statist capital. Karl Maton notes that the concept of field has been relatively neglected in the application of Bourdieu's work in education, with more emphasis given to the concepts of habitus and capitals. Some of Bourdieu's late writings about globalization also have relevance to considerations of the policy cycle in education in a context of globalization, an argument sustained by Bob Lingard, Shaun Rawolle and Sandra Taylor in their paper.

This paper reports on an interview‐based study which explored the implementation of a major policy initiative in Queensland, Australia, with particular attention to social justice issues. Interviews were conducted with key policy actors in three sections of the bureaucracy: strategic directions, performance and measurement; curriculum and assessment; workforce and professional development. We were interested in the ways in which the tensions between redistributive and recognitive approaches to social justice were being managed in the bureaucracy. We drew on Bourdieu’s concepts of field, logic of practice, political discourse, habitus, capital, and symbolic power struggles to theorize the politics of discourse associated with such policy implementation processes within bureaucracies. The interview data revealed differences in approach to equity issues and in the language used in the three sections of the bureaucracy. We argue that these differences, associated with the different priorities of the three sections and their differing roles in the implementation processes, reflect the different logics of practice operating within the different sections. The final section of the paper discusses the implications of the analysis for theorizing equity and difference in education policy in new times and considers the value of Bourdieu’s concepts for theorizing policy implementation processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper presents an empirical analysis of education policy in England that is informed by recent developments in US critical theory. In particular, I draw on ‘whiteness studies’ and the application of critical race theory (CRT). These perspectives offer a new and radical way of conceptualizing the role of racism in education. Although the US literature has paid little or no regard to issues outside North America, I argue that a similar understanding of racism (as a multifaceted, deeply embedded, often taken-for-granted aspect of power relations) lies at the heart of recent attempts to understand institutional racism in the UK. Having set out the conceptual terrain in the first half of the paper, I then apply this approach to recent changes in the English education system to reveal the central role accorded the defence (and extension) of race inequity. Finally, the paper touches on the question of racism and intentionality: although race inequity may not be a planned and deliberate goal of education policy neither is it accidental. The patterning of racial advantage and inequity is structured in domination and its continuation represents a form of tacit intentionality on the part of white powerholders and policy-makers. It is in this sense that education policy is an act of white supremacy. Following others in the CRT tradition, therefore, the paper’s analysis concludes that the most dangerous form of ‘white supremacy’ is not the obvious and extreme fascistic posturing of small neo-nazi groups, but rather the taken-for-granted routine privileging of white interests that goes unremarked in the political mainstream. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A programme of City Academies was announced by the Secretary of State for Education for England in 2000. These schools would be independent of local government control, have voluntary and private sector sponsors, and would break the cycle of failing inner-city schools. The first three Academies opened in 2002, and this paper considers how they have fared so far in terms of changes to their student intake and improvements in examination outcomes. Using figures from 1997 to 2003–2004 from the annual school census and from the DfES Standards site, the paper shows that there is no evidence that these schools are, in general, performing any better for equivalent students than the schools they replaced. Although the programme is at a very early stage, this finding is important because it contradicts the claims of the DfES and of the Academies themselves and the determination of the government (at time of writing) to expand the programme to 200 schools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper examines the argument that the contradictions of performativity provide the context in which new forms of professionalism can develop. English further education is used to explore these questions. The paper addresses four issues. It seeks to locate the discussion within the period immediately following the incorporation of colleges of further education in 1993, when colleges of further education were removed from local authority control and placed under aegis of the Further Education Funding Council. This is followed by an examination of changes to the management regime following incorporation. It considers suggestions that bullying forms of management have been superseded and that there has been some feminization of senior management. This discussion is set alongside one addressing the socio-economic context as well as hegemonic understandings of the economy. The final part of the paper examines claims made for the development of an ‘activist’ or transformative professionalism. However the key difficulty with these potentially progressive arguments is that analyses operate at the level of ideology accepting the way in which the knowledge economy is constructed thereby failing to seriously consider and work through the patterns of antagonistic relations that exist within capitalism. In a similar manner they play down education as site of struggle. Whilst the paper is orientated towards English further education the argument has a wider purchase, applying to education in particular and the welfare state in general. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper will explore private sector participation in public sector education in the Australian context, focusing on case studies of Queensland and New South Wales, with reference to developments in other states and territories and internationally. In Australia, most states and territories have PPP policies and key projects include the Southbank redevelopment in Brisbane and the ‘New schools’ Project in Sydney. The case studies are both supported by Labor state governments and typify the state of affairs nationally, For Queensland, the Southbank TAFE Institute and Brisbane State High School have been brought into a new education precinct in order to ‘free up’ the system by outsourcing non-core services and ‘free up’ valuable inner-city land. In NSW, nine new public schools are being built by a private consortium, for a cost of $100 million as part of a program totaling $5 billion in areas under-serviced by government schools. Yet despite a concerted effort to sell the value of PPPs, Australians appear to be ambivalent about ‘privatization’ of public services. This paper will look at whether PPPs are robbing the public sector to pay the private sector, and where this strategy is taking Australia and the future of our education systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research examines educational stratification cross-nationally through the context of German division and unity. Drawing upon representative German Social Survey (ALLBUS) data from 1991 to 1998 on cohorts schooled in the 1980s and 1990s, the analysis explores educational inequality at the secondary school level with respect to social origins and gender in four settings: the late state socialist German Democratic Republic, the immediate pre-unification Federal Republic of Germany, and the two halves of a now-united Germany. The pre-unification settings differ structurally—in the extent and timing of educational differentiation—and ideologically. Post-unification eastern Germany is a case of sudden, top-down structural reform, with a high degree both of cultural continuity and continuity of teaching personnel. The study finds that women’ s disadvantage in educational attainment has disappeared at the secondary level; indeed, men now face a disadvantage at this level. However, no major changes have occurred with respect to social origins. The children of workers and less educated parents were extremely disadvantaged in both East and West Germany prior to unification, surprisingly, perhaps, even more so in East Germany. Despite dramatic reform and expansion of the university-preparatory curriculum in eastern states since unification, inequality in educational attainment remains stable. Interestingly, the children of small-scale proprietors were particularly advantaged under German state socialism, and in eastern states in the 1990s they maintain a substantial but more moderate advantage over working-class peers. The paper concludes with a discussion of possible underlying reasons for the lack of variation in the parameters of educational inequality in the face of such varied and changing institutions and ideologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Three distinct discourses frame this paper: 'new public managerialism', new modes of governmentality, and new masculinities and femininities. This paper considers the changing forms of governance in projects of educational professionalism emerging in the nested contexts of teaching, teacher training, and academic research within departments of education. It takes the production of the subject position of the manager/wo-manager as central to managerialist regimes theorized as provoking and potentiating modes of recruitment, refusal, and mis/recognition. It illustrates this through a heuristic relational schemata constituted by the dominance of the managerialist--audit gaze. Taking a theoretically similar but methodologically different (i.e. non-empirical) approach (or liberty?), one understands subject positions like Prichard and Deem, as produced 'through a series of discursive or communicative practices' realized in different 'conditions of possibility'. The notion of 'communicative practice' was also put under scrutiny, given the monovocal as opposed to the dialogic nature of audit: 'Audit is essentially a relationship of power between scrutinizer and observed: the latter are rendered objects of information, never subjects in communication'. 1 One is, thus, interested in the ubiquity of the 'managerialist subject position' as a limit condition for the professional self and how gender gets reworked within this. One is aware that the paper slides across the domains of teaching, teacher training, and academic and professional work identities. It is not presented as an orthodox 'labour process' account, neither is it a conventional sociological reading of 'professionalism'. The authors wish to deliberately keep open the possibilities provided by this lack of specificity through exercising the sociological imagination. The following is best considered an experiment in social critique deriving from a post-structuralist methodological stance. The aim is to capture through metaphorical means the temperature and tempo of some experiential dimensions of the gendered regulation of educational subjectivities, thought as a central psychosocial feature of the 'domaining effect' of audit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The role of Chancellors of the Exchequer in the making of policy is education has attracted the attention of few researchers, and little has been published that seeks systematically and comprehensively to examine this issue. This is remarkable given that, for most of the last 25 years, this office has been filled by four unusually powerful and long-serving figures. In this paper, the authors, drawing on their interview-based studies of the Secretaries of State and of the Permanent Secretaries who have held office at the Department of Education since 1979, consider the influence of Prime Ministers and Chancellors on educational policy over these years. In this context, the bulk of this paper focuses on the role of Nigel Lawson in the making of the 1988 Education Reform Act. In doing so, it draws on face-to-face interviews with Lawson along with other key participants such as Kenneth Baker and David Hancock. It concludes that, although Lawson may not have been, as he had hoped to be, the architect of the Act, he did exercise an important influence in shaping many of its central characteristics. As such, his claim that he was the catalyst of reform may well be justified. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the role of meso-level actors and their ongoing mediating roles in educational policy processes situated, as they are, between policy-makers and central government, on the one hand (the macro level), and teachers and schools, on the other hand (the micro level). Although the example given here is in the role of a group of meso-level actors engaged in the shaping of economics education it seeks to serve two wider purposes. First, by focusing on a particular subject it uses it as a lens through which to view the construction of the curriculum to discern the ways in which school and subject curricula are defined and the ways in which different definitions and prescriptions construct and distribute knowledge. Secondly, it explores the roles and motives of those who intervene by promoting or opposing change to illustrate the relationships and linkages between them. More broadly, it offers some insight into the relatively neglected area of the workings of micro-political processes at the meso level, that is into the workings and processes of policy-making, mediation and implementation, and how actors contributed to the conditions for dispute through the deployment of ideological and material resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to contribute to existing understandings of the impacts of education policy reform by drawing together analyses of state-level policy reforms; institutional responses to these; and day- to-day school- and classroom-level practises that constitute particular sorts of learners. The paper draws on data generated through a school ethnography, with detailed interview and observational data set alongside school- and state-level documentary evidence. The paper suggests that, in a marketized context marked by hegemonic individualism, practises of educational triage become both acceptable and necessary. A preliminary refinement of the notion of educational triage is offered, with such practises identified at bureaucratic, institutional, and classroom levels. In addition, the paper draws on the notion of subjectivation to demonstrate how intersecting discourses of ability and conduct are deployed in the constitution of ideal, acceptable and unacceptable learners—learner identities that are deployed and inscribed through practises of institutional and classroom triage. The paper concludes that deep connections exist between the macro- and meso-level impacts of marketization and the ongoing constitution of students as learners at the micro-level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A number of writers have drawn attention to the increasing importance of language in social life in 'new times' and Fairclough has referred to 'discourse driven' social change. These conditions have led to an increase in the use of various forms of discourse analysis in policy analysis. This paper explores the possibilities of using Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) in critical policy research in education, drawing on a larger research project which is investigating the equity implications of Education Queensland's reform agenda. It is argued that, in the context of new times, CDA is of particular value in documenting multiple and competing discourses in policy texts, in highlighting marginalized and hybrid discourses, and in documenting discursive shifts in policy implementation processes. The last part of the paper discusses how such research might be used by policy activists inside and outside education department bureaucracies to further social democratic goals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that changes at all levels of education and training (i.e., learning) policy exemplify a new capitalist state formation. This has been aptly named by US political scientist Philip Bobbitt (2002) 'the new market-state', particularly with reference to its administration or 'governance'. It can be seen especially in the governance of education and training where a new centralized system of contracting or devolving provision to 'non-governmental agencies' has all but replaced the previous 'national system locally administered' (Ainley, 2001). The latter typified the administration of the classic post-war welfare state, which Bobbitt calls the 'nation-state'. Like the former welfare state, the new 'market-state' is also a capitalist state and, therefore, also the means to rule for a persisting capitalist ruling class (Roberts, 2001, pp. 169-192). The new state formation is, however, as different as the former welfare state was in turn from pre-war capitalist state forms in England. This is particularly clear when the new 'settlement' of education and training, imposed by the 1988 Education and 1992 Further and Higher Education Acts, is contrasted with the former welfare state 'settlement' established by the 1944 Education Act. In conclusion, implications for opposition to the 'new market-state' are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is concerned to demonstrate the usefulness of the theory of Bourdieu, including the concepts of field, logics of practice and habitus, to understanding relationships between media and policy, what Fairclough has called the 'mediatization' of policy. Specifically, the paper draws upon Bourdieu's accessible account of the journalistic field as outlined in On television and journalism . The usefulness of this work is illustrated through a case study of a recent Australian science policy, The chance to change . As this policy went through various iterations and media representations, its naming and structure became more aphoristic. This is the mediatization of contemporary policy, which often results in policy as sound bite. The case study also shows the cross-field effects of this policy in education, illustrating how today educational policy can be spawned from developments in other public policy fields. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The term 'spin' is conventionally used to refer to the process and products of purposively managing information in order to present institutions, individuals, policies, practices and/or ideas in a favourable light and thereby mobilize support for them. Attempts to manage news and political communications are not new. However, the New Labour Government in the UK is frequently presented--by the media and political opponents--as being obsessively concerned with spin to the detriment of both transparency and substantive policy-making. In the collection and analysis of the data from the ESRC-funded study of the English Education Action Zones (EAZs) policy upon which this paper draws, spin arose as a prominent theme. For example, spin was often raised explicitly by those interviewed as an activity that they needed to be reflexive about and engage in. It was described as shaping the fortunes of the policy or in some cases as constituting the policy. Frequently overt attempts were made by those being researched to try to 'persuade' the researchers of a particular spin which should be put on the research questions and/or reports. The overarching purpose of this paper is to illustrate the complex relationship between spin and policy, using the English EAZs policy as an example. The first section of the paper defines spin and places the concept in historical context. It then goes on to explore the role of spin in the construction and evolution of the policy, drawing particular attention to the dynamic, endemic, and disciplinary nature of the policy of spin. Whilst spin is conventionally understood as something separate from policy, as something that is 'done to' policy in order to make it attractive to particular constituencies, the central argument of this paper is that spin needs to be understood as operating on two levels, often simultaneously. At one level it operates as a strategy of impression management, where a range of tactics are used to attempt to control the impression that 'the public' gets of New Labour policies. However, those policies and the spin that represents them to 'the public' cannot be understood as distinct and separate entities because the policies cannot be neatly abstracted from the spin. Thus, at another level, one also needs to focus on the constitutive role that spin plays. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Australian media's interest in education, as in many Anglophone countries, is frequently dominated by concerns about boys in schools. In 2002, in a country region of the Australian State of Queensland, this concern was evident in a debate on the merits of single sex schooling that took place in a small local newspaper. The debate was fuelled by the inclusion in this newspaper of an advertising brochure for an elite private girls' school. The advertisement utilized the current concerns about boys in schools to advocate the benefits of girls' only schools. Drawing on research that suggests that boys are a problem in school, and utilising a peculiar mix of liberal feminism alongside a neo-liberal class politics, it implicitly denigrated the education provided by government co-educational schools. The local government high and primary school principals, incensed at this advertisement, contacted the paper to refute many of its claims and assumptions and to assert the benefits, to both boys and girls, of their particular schools. A letters to the editor debate then followed an article representing these government school principals' views. These letters were from two private school principals. This country newspaper thus became a medium through which various school principals engaged with the current boys' debate, and research associated with it, in order to market their schools. This paper examines this particular newspaper debate and argues that, in the absence of nuanced, research based, and thoughtful policy responses to gender issues, many school policies on gender are being shaped through and by the media in ways that elide the complexities of the issues involved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Government and the media are intimately connected in many ways though each distrusts the other. This paper, based on the author's experience in government, describes the ways that governments try to deal with the media and discusses three of the main complaints about media coverage--its tendency to simplify, to assign blame, and to be primarily focused on the short term. It concludes with some suggestions for possible improvements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper raises theoretical insights against central premises underlying the policy of parental choice and educational market from the standpoint of the institutional theory of organization. It discusses how the institutional theory may explain the barriers to diversity, responsiveness, and improvement, all of which are assumed to be driven by the implementation of parental choice reform at the school level, and it looks at what this perspective says about rational decision-making. In general, institutional elements such as conformity to institutional rules, isomorphism, decoupling, and loose coupling argued to prevail in schools seem to be obstacles for many educational processes and outcomes 'promised' by advocates of parental choice and market in education. Implications for the study of parental choice and educational marketing are suggested. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In September 1997, shortly after China resumed sovereignty over Hong Kong, the Education Department announced a policy which was widely seen as a restoration of 'mother-tongue education', but which, in reality, was an elitist language selection policy. This policy, which provided for the selection of the best primary school graduates for monolingual education in English, was designed to be a cost-effective way of training in English skills for those who had the economic and cultural capital to benefit from it. Meanwhile, the majority of students were barred from sufficient exposure to English, the language of power and wealth. In this paper, I shall show that this policy draws on a strong utilitarian discourse about the centrality of English for the economic survival of Hong Kong, which was engineered by business interests on the eve of the changeover in 1997, and which helped perpetuate a form of linguistic imperialism. Meanwhile, academics whose research was used to legitimize the policy, failed to problematize dominant language ideologies that have been used to justify pedagogically unsound practices and an inequitable language streaming policy. Through documenting the voices of individual educators, I am able to delineate counter-discourses which, albeit weak and isolated, nevertheless manifested much broader educational concerns than the narrow utilitarianism and the unquestioned privileging of the learning of English skills that underlay the current policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the major innovations in the recent wave of education reform in Hong Kong is the target-oriented curriculum. An interesting feature of this new curriculum initiative was its amoebic characteristics - changing shape and focus in its course of development. It was reshaped from an assessment system for accountability purposes to a centrally developed curriculum initiative for improving teaching and learning, and finally to a school-based curriculum development. In this paper, this course of development and the reasons behind it will be described and analysed. The study suggests that the two-tier educational policy and implementation system in Hong Kong is a major cause leading to such a phenomenon. If this system were not improved, the possibility of achieving real changes at the school and classroom level would be low. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]