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In this paper child protection policies from two Australian states (New South Wales and Queensland) are analyzed as exemplars of policy response to risk-consciousness. In particular, child protection policies from the Departments of Education in NSW and QLD are viewed alongside state Codes of Conduct for government employees. Clearly there is a need for child protection policies and we argue that the policy documents that we analyze have emerged as a reasonable response to the revelation of real and perceived threats to the safety and well-being of children and young people in our social institutions, particularly our educational systems. In this paper our intention is threefold. First, we examine the manner in which each of these child protection policies articulate and define the need for child protection in educational settings. Second, we consider the manner in which they proscribe professional behaviour and dictate the boundaries of acceptable and unacceptable behaviour towards children and young people. Third, we argue, following Dean (1999), that these policies are informed by risk consciousness and risk anxiety. As such, we consider how these policies simultaneously aim to address ‘child panic’ and restore trust in schools as dynamic places of social learning and development. The context of our analysis is specifically focused on the localized responses of two Australian states, however, comments regarding policy in general have wider application. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Increasingly mediatised policy processes influence practice in schools as education becomes a site of parental anxiety and choice exacerbated by standardised national assessment and ranking of schools in the media. This paper analyses the responses to media scrutiny of six principals whose schools’ national test results were reported in the Australian press following the release of the federal Labour Government’s MySchool website in 2010. Drawing on Bourdieu’s theory of social fields, the concept of cross-field effects, and associated research on mediatisation, the evidence suggests that the relationships between the press, education policy and schools are highly contested, and that principals have some agency in talking back regarding their school’s reported ‘performance’. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]