NAPLAN and the role of edu-business: New governance,new privatisations and new partnerships in Australian education policy

This paper provides a critical analysis of the edu-businesses currently working in partnership with the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority to deliver the Commonwealth government policy initiative of the National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN). These emerging public–private partnerships (PPPs) exemplify new heterarchical governance structures in Australia, where a network of public and private agents now contribute to education policy processes. In analysing the NAPLAN policy network, this account seeks to proffer a critical analysis on the evolving PPPs in Australia and ascertains in whose interests and with what outcomes these PPPs operate. The NAPLAN policy network is analysed in relation to the contemporary state and its changing modus operandi, in which I draw on the notions of heterarchies, networks and new governance structures in education to understand these developments. Network ethnography is employed to document the network of PPPs that are associated with NAPLAN and other government initiatives in Australia, and in particular, I reflect on the activities of Pearson and the Australian Council for Educational Research to problematise what these policy networks mean.     

Child labour,education policy and governance in Cambodia

This paper considers how the issue of child labour is located in Cambodian education policy debates and how it is affected by the major constraints surrounding the Cambodian education sector. In particular, it asks why Cambodian policy makers have not sought to address the issue explicitly despite its considerable, and adverse, impact on children's school education. In doing so it first identifies the Cambodian education sector's passive approach to child labour, leaving it as a problem to be resolved by wider economic development. Secondly, it finds that the major constraints surrounding the education sector, including the issue of its governance, contribute to sustain a wide gap between stated education policies and actual practice, thus further diminishing working children's chances to benefit from a school education.     

Objectivity as standardization in data-scientific education policy,technology and governance

ABSTRACT

New data-driven technologies appear to promise a new era of accuracy and objectivity in scientifically-informed educational policy and governance. The data-scientific objectivity sought by education policy, however, is the result of practices of standardization and quantification deployed to settle controversies about the definition and measurement of human qualities by rendering them as categories and numbers. Focusing on the emerging policy agenda of ‘social and emotional learning and skills,’ this paper examines the practices of ‘objectivity-making’ underpinning this new field. Objectivity-making depends on three translations of (1) scientific expertise into standardized and enumerable definitions, (2) standardization into measurement technologies, and (3) the data produced through measurement technologies into objective policy-relevant knowledge, which consolidates a market in SEL technologies. The paper sheds light on knowledge-making practices in the era of big data and policy science, and their enduring reliance on the precarious construction of objectivity as a key legitimator of policy-relevant scientific knowledge and ‘evidence-based’ education governance.     

Something old,not much new,and a lot borrowed: philanthropy,business, and the changing roles of government in global education policy networks

This paper focuses on the role of governments in contemporary networked political configurations. Such networks constitute policy communities, usually based upon shared conceptions of social problems and their solutions. By enabling social, political, and economic connections at local, regional, national, and international levels, such networks become key policy players as well as a policy technology in different spaces. More specifically, the paper is organised around three policy frameworks in the field of education. Each framework is based on a ‘network-case’. In the first framework, governments represent the main driver for political change in legislating a landscape that creates the conditions for networks to develop around different aspects within the public sphere (e.g. organisation, co-funding, delivery, etc.). The second policy framework focuses on the activities of an already organised network in order to engage with existing political configurations as a ‘political actor’ in its own right, what could be called ‘governing with/alongside networks’. The third policy framework focuses on instances where the network operates directly as a ‘state-maker’.     

Further education in England: the new localism,systems theory and governance

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.     

Policy learning and governance of education policy in the EU

Open methods for coordinating (OMC) education policies in the EU rely on a number of techniques, one of which is policy learning. This article examines how policy learning and governance transform each other. More specifically, policy‐learning in the education OMC becomes differentiated into four distinct learning styles: mutual, competitive, surface and imperialistic learning. While they overlap with some forms of policy learning discussed in the literature, they are also different by focusing upon interactions and political dynamics between the European Commission and the member states. In seeking to understand how governing through learning occurs, we argue that any ‘impact’ of EU‐level policy‐learning is co‐constructed by both the European Commission and the member states. The analysis of this article is grounded in a discourse analytical and institutionalist perspective. It draws on qualitative data derived from semi‐structured interviews with officials from the Directorate General for Education and Culture in the European Commission and on EU documents generated during policy‐learning activities.     

常州科教城师资共享治理模式研究——基于网络化治理

政府、私营部门、非政府组织和公民作为网络化治理的共同参与主体、承担着各自的职能。信任机制、协调机制、互动机制和适应机制共同构成了网络治理的运行机制。构建常州科教城师资共享网络化治理模式的关键因素在于:凝聚治理主体的共识、转变科教城管理机构的职能、建立师资共享信息化平台、培育多元化师资共享治理主体并构建常州科教城绩效评价体系。     

Primary schools and network governance: A policy analysis of reception baseline assessment

Primary school reception baseline assessment was designed to produce a single ‘baseline’ data figure on the basis of which young children's progress across primary school could be measured and accounted for. This paper suggests that within the context of punitive performativity, head teachers might be considered ‘irresponsible’ if not engaging with the new accountability measure in its voluntary year. Using DfE‐accredited baseline assessment providers blurred the distinctions between not‐for‐profit social enterprises, digital policy innovation labs, edu‐business, and the state. It is argued that through a process of networked governance, these cross‐sectoral organisations successfully enticed some primary schools with the ‘moral economy’ of using baseline assessment. It is argued that baseline's simplistic reductionism allowed for the economisation of early years education assessment and for its commercialisation of comparison. This paper reports on a sample of five head teachers, taken from a much larger study that used a mixed‐methods approach involving a nationwide survey (n=1131) and in‐depth interviews with reception staff and head teachers in five geographically disparate primary schools. Baseline assessment was ‘withdrawn’ by the DfE in April 2016, quite possibly because of campaigns by early years organisations, the government's own report showing that the three separate baseline datasets were incompatible, and national research funded by the teachers’ unions, a small part of which is reported upon here.     

Private foundations,philanthropy, and partnership in education and development: mapping the terrain

There has been increasing interest on the role of private foundations in education finance and delivery. We argue that this is due to a macro-policy context of stagnating levels of official development assistance for education and an uncritical acceptance of a logic of neutrality and the efficiency and effectiveness of of partnerships and philanthropy. This paper reports on the results of a literature review on private foundations in education and development. It found significant contestation against the claims of neutrality, efficiency, effectiveness. It also identifies salient methodological and substantive issues for the development of a research agenda on the issue.     

Disaster philanthropy: Exploring the power and influence of for-profit philanthropy in education development during pandemic times

This article contributes a conceptual analysis of the power and influence of for- profit philanthropy on educational development during pandemic times. Through highlighting for-profit philanthropy, describing its relevance to educational development, and drawing attention to four aspects that are under-examined as for- profit philanthropists enact their philanthropic agendas in response to the COVID- 19 pandemic, disaster philanthropy is presented as a window of opportunity for elite donors to enact changes in public education based on their distinct donor and institutional agendas. Implications for educational development are discussed including shifts in power, definitions and public vs. private returns.     

Policy internationalization,national variety and governance: global models and network power in higher education states

This article analyzes policy convergence and the adoption of globalizing models by higher education states, a process we describe, following Thatcher (2007), as policy internationalization. This refers to processes found in many policy domains and which increasingly are exemplified in tertiary education systems too. The focus is on governmental policymakers, their transnational networks, and the dilemmas they face in responding to the increasing global diffusion of governance models, such as the new public management. The notion of structuration is introduced to convey the inextricability of autonomy and structural constraint for decisionmakers in globally-situated higher education states. Primary aims are to understand the forces that drive policy internationalization, not least those associated with network power, as well as those factors that generate the basis for continuing forms of localism. It is suggested national policy ‘divergences’ may aid the worldwide diffusion of governance models rather than necessarily act as impediments.     

An ambiguous, contested terrain: governance models for a new South African education system

This paper reviews the development of education governance in South Africa during the 1990s. It outlines ambiguities within and between competing policies, tracing the historical trajectory and explaining its outcome. Apartheid governance, the attempts to reform it, policy options originating within the anti-apartheid movement, and the law passed in 1996 by the new Parliament, are discussed. Trends in South Africa during this decade have been consistent with trends in international education: decentralization, ‘rolling back the state’, privatization, increased class and/or regional disparities, and greater parental governance responsibilities.     

Reforming governance through policy instruments: how and to what extent standards,tests and accountability in education spread worldwide

ABSTRACT

In the last decades, most countries have adopted data-intensive policy instruments aimed at modernizing the governance of education systems, and strengthening their competitiveness. Instruments such as national large-scale assessments and test-based accountabilities have disseminated widely, to the point that they are being enacted in countries with very different administrative traditions and levels of economic development. Nonetheless, comparative research on the trajectories that governance instruments follow in different institutional and socio-economic contexts is still scarce. On the basis of a systematic literature review (n?=?158), this paper enquires into the scope and modalities of educational governance change that national large-scale assessments and test-based accountability instruments have triggered in a broad range of institutional settings. The paper shows that, internationally, educational governance reforms advance through path-dependent and contingent processes of policy instrumentation that are markedly conditioned by prevailing politico-administrative regimes. The paper also reflects on the additive and evolving nature of educational governance reforms.     

Silicon startup schools: technocracy,algorithmic imaginaries and venture philanthropy in corporate education reform

Technology companies are investing billions of dollars in educational technology, but also creating their own alternative schools. This article traces the emergence of four prototypical ‘silicon startup schools’ as exemplars of a technocratic mode of corporatized education reform: IBM’s P-TECH, part of its Smarter Cities program; AltSchool, a chain of schools based on ‘makerspaces’ established by a former Google executive; Kahn Lab School, a new ‘experimental’ school launched by the founder of the online Kahn Academy; and XQ Super School Project, a ‘crowdsourcing’ project to redesign American high schools funded philanthropically by the wife of Steve Jobs of Apple. Startup schools are analysed as prototype educational institutions that originate in the culture, discourse and ideals of Silicon Valley venture capital and startup culture, and that are intended to relocate its practices to the whole social, technical, political and economic infrastructure of schooling. These new schools are being designed as scalable technical platforms; funded by commercial ‘venture philanthropy’ sources; and staffed and managed by executives and engineers from some of Silicon Valley’s most successful startups and web companies. Together, they constitute a powerful shared ‘algorithmic imaginary’ that seeks to ‘disrupt’ public schooling through the technocratic expertise of Silicon Valley venture philanthropists.