Changing Australian Education

How policy is taking us backwards and what can be done about it

Alan Reid

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN:
  9781760875206
• eBook ISBN:
  9781000256451
• Topic: Pedagogía
• Subtopic: Educación general

Australian education policy for the past 40 years has been heading in the wrong direction and is entirely unsuitable for preparing young people for the 21st century. Exaggeration? Sadly not.

For a teacher, there is nothing more exhilarating than encouraging young people to realise the power of learning. But in our schools today, teachers spend so much time preparing their students for high-stakes tests, gathering data and filling in forms, that many of them feel like the life has been squeezed out of their role. Schooling has been turned into a market, and school leaders are forced to spend precious time and resources competing with other schools. Their professional experience is disregarded as policy makers turn to the corporate world and self-appointed commentators to determine curriculum and school funding.

The outcome? Our schooling system is becoming more segregated; children from poorer backgrounds are falling behind; public schools are starved of funds; and good teachers are leaving.

One of the most highly regarded educational leaders in Australia, Alan Reid, argues it's time to reconsider the purposes of education, the capacities we need for the future, and the strategies that will get us there. He outlines a new narrative for Australian schooling that is futures-focused and prizes flexibility, adaptability, collaboration and agility, with students, teachers and school communities at centre-stage.

'A provocative and persuasive argument for the necessity of a new narrative for Australian schooling so as to meet better the demonstrable demands of the twenty-first century...' - Emeritus Professor Bob Lingard, The University of Queensland

'At the heart of the book is a penetrating critique of neoliberalism and the damaging effects it is having on education and society. It should be essential reading for policy makers, educators, parents, and anyone interested in the current state of Australian education.' - Professor Barry Down, Murdoch University

Part I
The current state of Australian education policy, and why it must change

Overview

Part 1 examines the origin, history and effects of the dominant standardising discourse in education. It identifies its weaknesses and describes the damage it is doing, as the basis for thinking about how it might be challenged.

Chapter 1 explores the development of the philosophy and key features that lie at the heart of the standardising discourse—that of neoliberalism. It then moves to describe the various ways in which neoliberalism has shaped education policy, showing how it is this ideology that has resulted in the standardising discourse that has been, and continues to be, so dominant in Australian education.

Chapter 2 analyses the damaging effects that neoliberal education policy has had on Australian education. It focuses on seven adverse consequences and argues the need for a new educational policy narrative.

Chapter 1
Neoliberalism comes to Australian education

The Introduction to this book argued that a new educational narrative is needed if Australian education is to undo the damage that has been done to it by the standardising discourse that has so dominated education policy over the past thirty years. However, changing an entrenched policy direction is complex, not least because the ideology that shapes it is so embedded in the language, concepts, beliefs and assumptions of policy-makers. It is not just a matter of changing aspects of it or drafting an alternative narrative. Unless the ways in which the standardising discourse maintains its dominance are understood and addressed, alternative strategies are only likely to be colonised by it. Thus, the first task is to understand the origins of the standardising discourse and the various forms it has taken over the years. In the Introduction it was argued that the standardising discourse in education was spawned by the philosophy of neoliberalism, and so that is where the analysis will begin.

The rise of neoliberalism

For the past forty years, a dominant narrative has shaped Australian society. Described as neoliberalism, it comprises a set of ideas and practices that are supported by a foundational philosophy that embraces our cultural, as well as our economic and political, lives. David Harvey explains it as a theory of ‘. .. political and economic practices that proposes that human well-being can best be advanced by liberating individual entrepreneurial freedoms and skills within an institutional framework characterized by strong private property rights, free markets and free trade’ (Harvey, 2005, p. 2). At its heart is the individual, who advances her/his self-interest by competing with others to get ahead. Neoliberalism posits that the best way to organise ourselves is to create the conditions for competition to flourish; and the most efficient way to do that is through the free market. All aspects of society should be run like a business, with the profit motive dominant, and winners and losers created. In this process, the individual becomes a customer or consumer, rather than a citizen (Cahill & Toner, 2018).

Neoliberalism maintains that the path to wealth creation requires governments to get out of the way of the ‘wealth creators’ by removing regulations that constrain business, and by lessening their tax burden. Rather than governments orchestrating the distribution of wealth, this should be managed by the market, with the rewards to business ‘trickling down’ to benefit all. In this way, inequality is seen as a social good. Neoliberal governments thus unshackle businesses from government controls and ‘red tape’, and deregulate economic levers such as banking, currency exchange and capital movement (Monbiot, 2017; Denniss, 2018). At the same time, public services are expected to adopt the structures and processes of business, or are outsourced or privatised. By defining individual freedom as the ability to make choices in a market, neoliberalism commodifies activities such as education, childcare and health by turning their delivery into market exchanges. As Monbiot puts it, neoliberalism defines human society by the market, and as a market, which is

run in every respect as if it were a business, its social relations reimagined as commercial transactions; people redesignated as human capital. The aim and purpose of society is to maximise profits. (Monbiot, 2017, p. 30)

So entrenched is neoliberal philosophy that it appears to be a law of nature; so powerful are its ideas that they have shaped our language, and the way we see the world, ourselves and the alternatives that are open to us in the future. So where did it come from?

The origins of neoliberalism

The term neoliberal first appeared in Europe in the late 1930s and the basis of the philosophy was described by the Austrian economist Friedrich Hayek in The Road to Serfdom, which was published in 1944. In that book Hayek argued against central government planning, which he claimed crushes individualism and inevitably leads to totalitarian control. At the time his targets were the social democratic projects of Britain’s welfare state and Roosevelt’s New Deal in America, and his ideas were immediately attractive to those, particularly the wealthy, who felt constrained by high taxation and government controls.

Over the next thirty years, a transatlantic network of journalists, businesspeople and academics worked to spread Hayek’s ideas through think tanks such as the Mont Pelerin Society which Hayek co-founded in 1947, universities and the mainstream press (Dunlop, 2018). One particularly influential group of economists at the University of Chicago continued to refine and harden neoliberal theory. Milton Friedman was a key member of this group, and his 1962 book Capitalism and Freedom provided a powerful summary of the developing neoliberal narrative. Friedman urged that government should only involve itself in matters related to the survival of its people and the country, and stand aside from all other matters. For Friedman, it is the combination of unfettered free markets and the entrepreneurial spirit that produces successful societies.

By the 1960s the neoliberal narrative had many adherents, but it remained at the edges of economic policy. Since World War 2, the prevailing economic theory of economist John Maynard Keynes had been in the ascendancy. Keynesian economic policy comprised such measures as high tax rates for those with the highest incomes, full employment and the provision of public services and welfare safety nets to support those without adequate means. While postwar economies boomed, Keynesian economics was unassailable. But with the impact of globalisation and the economic crises of the 1970s, it began to founder. Neoliberalism was waiting in the wings and it was not long before its prescriptions entered the mainstream political debate.

Margaret Thatcher, who became Prime Minister of Great Britain in 1979, and Ronald Reagan, who became President of the United States in 1980, were both devotees and immediately after they were elected started to implement the full suite of neoliberal policy offerings. This included deregulation, privatisation, tax cuts for the wealthy and attacks on trade unions. At the same time, international organisations such as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organization imposed neoliberal policies on many other countries (Monbiot, 2017).

Neoliberalism was taken up by the progressive as well as the conservative side of politics. Thus, the Clinton and Obama Democratic administrations in the US and the Blair Labour government in the UK pursued a neoliberal policy agenda, albeit in a diluted form. In this version, the language of markets, competition and deregulation that infused economic policy was leavened by the establishment of safety nets for those who were most adversely affected by laissez-faire economics. In Britain, this watered- down version was referred to as the ‘Third Way’ (Giddens, 1998), since it purported to offer an alternative to Keynesian economics and neoliberalism—although, with the benefit of hindsight, it is clear that the main tenets of neoliberalism were still at its core.

Neoliberalism and Australia

Australia was not immune from the new dogma. Up until the early 1980s the Australian economy had been regulated through policies such as trade protection, restricted migration and centralised wage fixing through conciliation and arbitration. However, after the election in 1983 of the Hawke Labor Government, these policies began to be dismantled on the grounds that their removal would create the conditions for Australia to trade and compete in the international market. Thus, the Hawke government floated the exchange rate, reformed the labour market, reduced tariff barriers and privatised or commercialised government authorities to enable them to respond more quickly and efficiently to market signals (Shanahan, 2009). Many of these changes bore some similarity to what was happening under neoliberalism in the US and the UK. But there were some significant differences.

The Hawke government attempted to soften the adverse consequences of unleashing market forces on the Australian economy in ways that differed significantly from the hard-line policies adopted by Reagan and Thatcher. Thus, in changing the centralised wage fixation system, it negotiated a Prices and Incomes Accord that broadened the wage debate from one solely focused on take-home pay, to one that proposed a social wage including more funding for education, health, childcare and welfare for those the market had disadvantaged. That is, Labor retained the social welfare part of the Keynesian project (Pocock, 2009).

Swan (2017) argues that such measures mean that it is inaccurate to portray the Hawke/Keating governments as implementing neoliberal policies, preferring instead to describe it as ‘Australian Laborism’, which predated Blair’s Third Way ideology. This is a view that assumes there is only one version of neoliberalism. The form neoliberalism takes does not play out in the same way in different cultures and contexts: it depends on emphasis, previous history and intention. However, there are some fundamental tenets of neoliberal thought that define it anywhere, and these lay at the heart of Labor policy. Undoubtedly, the aim was to shift to a more market-oriented economy with less reliance on government regulation; more competition; and a marketised and trimmed down public sector (Pusey, 1991). Although Thatcher’s and Reagan’s neoliberalism was much starker and harsher than the Australian Labor government’s version in the 1980s and 1990s, the latter nonetheless bore all the hallmarks of neoliberal ideology. More than this, it laid the groundwork for the harder version that followed.

The election of the conservative Howard Liberal/National Party Coalition government in 1996 saw a ramping up of neo-liberalism. Over the next twelve years there was an even greater emphasis on the individual and the free market, an increase in privatisation, tax relief for the wealthy, marginalisation of trade unions, reduction in spending on public infrastructure, and downsizing of the public sector. These policies were accompanied by a growing community distrust of government and a greater focus on the individual. Social wage programs were replaced by an emphasis on take-home pay, and small tax cuts were delivered regularly. Now the focus was on individual opportunity and productivity, rather than redistribution of wealth through government programs (Megalogenis, 2012).

During the Coalition’s period in government, traditional notions of fairness, egalitarianism and equal opportunity were slowly replaced. Gone was the Keynesian approach to social welfare posited on the belief that it was the duty of any civilised society to support those who are least advantaged. Under the Coalition government’s version of neoliberalism, those requiring welfare assistance began to be talked about as failures being supported by those who had the will, ability and motivation to succeed: the leaners relying on the lifters, as the then-Treasurer described it in 2014 (Hockey, 2014).

When the Howard government lost the 2007 federal election, it seemed that the incoming Rudd Labor government would adopt the softer version of neoliberal policy. However, the impact of the Global Financial Crisis (GFC), which began to be felt from August 2008, changed all that. The 2008 crash of the derivatives market and the subprime mortgage lending that had been constructed by a number of American banks and investment companies revealed the manifold weaknesses and internal contradictions of neoliberalism. Driven by greed and profit, and in the absence of regulation, the US housing market bubble burst with a vengeance, leaving thousands of people unable to service loans and without homes and jobs. And the impact was not just felt in the United States. The derivatives market had been globalised and many of the big banks and investment firms in the US had been drawn into the foolhardy schemes. This meant that when the American banks froze credit to deal with the crisis, so too did global credit markets freeze, and stock markets crash.

Ironically, the response to the chaos caused by neoliberal ideology was to resort to government intervention. The United States government pumped US$13 trillion into taxpayer-funded bailouts and guarantees in an effort to unfreeze American and global credit markets. They ran up government debts that were close to 100 per cent of gross domestic product, and they printed money. So much for a free market unfettered by government interference! Under a neoliberal philosophy it seems that business takes the profit while government bears the risk.

While government intervention stabilised the system after a few years, it had generated massive unemployment, and triggered a prolonged recession. More than this, as Mason (2015) observes, governments in America, Britain, Europe and Japan offset their spending through austerity programmes whereby

they transferred the pain away from people who’d invested money stupidly, punishing instead welfare recipients, public sector workers, pensioners and, above all, future generations. In the worst hit countries, the pension system has been destroyed, the retirement age is being hiked . .. and education is being privatized so that graduates will face a lifetime of high debt. Services are being dismantled and infrastructure projects put on hold. (Mason, 2015, p. 4)

In this way, the businesses that created the GFC were assisted by governments, while the most disadvantaged in the community were further penalised.

Australia escaped the worst of these effects for two important reasons. First, the form neoliberalism had taken in Australia from the time of the Hawke government was not as pure as it had been in countries such as the United States. Thus, Australia had maintained stricter regulatory controls in the banking system, which meant that the derivatives market was not as laissez faire as it had been in the US. The second reason was the Keynesian-like economic stimulus designed by the Rudd government, as part of which taxpayer funds were spent on some nation-building projects, including the Building the Education Revolution (involving the design and construction of school infrastructure, such as halls and gymnasiums for schools) and the Home Insulation Program (involving the installation of pink batts).

At the time it seemed that the GFC was the canary down the mine for neoliberalism. Its central element was a belief in the capacity of the free market to order society and to bring wealth and prosperity to all; and this had been exposed as a sham. One of the first to draw attention to this was the Australian Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, who in February 2009 wrote an essay for The Monthly titled ‘The Global Financial Crisis’, arguing that the GFC heralded a paradigmatic shift in the philosophy and ideas that had informed policy-making for the previous thirty years. Indeed, for Rudd it spelt the beginning of the end for neoliberalism, which he defined as ‘free market fundamentalism, extreme capitalism and excessive greed’ (Rudd, 2009), which had become the orthodoxy of our time. For Rudd, the GFC meant that neoliberalism could no longer justify the extent of inequality or excuse the greed that it generated.

Rudd set out a new social democratic agenda in which there was a balance between the market and the state, and a commitment to social justice, the latter being a word and concept that had been expunged from Howard’s policy-making agenda. It seemed that change was afoot, although it must be said that parts of the subsequent Rudd/Gillard philosophy remained firmly rooted in neoliberal philosophy. However, when the Liberal/ National Party Coalition regained government in 2013 under the leadership of Tony Abbott, it was as though the GFC had not happened. Neoliberal policies and the language of neoliberalism were back with a vengeance and have shaped government policy ever since—albeit containing the same set of contradictions that have accompanied it since the 1980s, such as supporting the private sector with subsidies when politically advantageous (Denniss, 2018). Indeed, although faith in neoliberalism has been severely dented, and many economists and commentators have pronounced its impending demise, neoliberalism retains its hegemony in policy-making and political discourse. So what has been its impact, and why is it so hard to dislodge?

The effects of neoliberalism

The first thing to say is that the promise of wealth trickling down to benefit all has proven to be an illusion. Monbiot points out that, far from making society more wealthy, neoliberalism has created inequality even while it has put the brakes on economic growth:

Economic growth has been markedly slower in the neoliberal era (since 1980 in Britain and the US) than it was in the preceding decades; but not for the very rich. Inequality in the distribution of both income and wealth, after 60 years o...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Introduction: A tale of two policy discourses
• Part I The current state of Australian education policy, and why it must change
• Part 2 What are the problems?
• Part 3 Changing the educational narrative
• Part 4 New policy directions for Australian education
• Glossary
• Acknowledgements
• References
• Index