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Artificial Intelligence has the potential to be an important part of education governance. It is already being built into everything from business intelligence platforms to real-time online testing. In this paper, we aim to understand how AI becomes, and forms, a legitimate part of authority in contemporary education governance in what we call the automated education governance assemblage, that incorporates technology companies and AI-supported products used in education. We focus on EduTech Australia – an education technology trade show in Sydney – as a way to look at: (i) how the different aspects of automated governance are connected at EduTech, including the relations between different participants, companies and products; and (ii) how the automated governance assemblage works to legitimise and constitute EduTech as a policy space and site of new authorities in education governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2009, the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) set a target to lift Australia’s Year 12 or equivalent attainment rate from 83.5 to 90% by 2015. In the context of global financial uncertainty, the target was rationalised as a means for boosting national productivity and developing human capital to help Australia compete in the global knowledge economy. Historically, Year 12 attainment targets have been designed to pressure state and territory education systems to innovate and reform senior secondary curriculums and certificates, as retention and attainment rates depend largely on how flexible, diverse and inclusive the senior years are. In this paper, however, we argue that the COAG Year 12 attainment agenda is flawed and does very little to inspire innovation or reform in Australian senior secondary schools. Our argument comprises three parts. First, we argue that the COAG agenda is based on a weakened measure of attainment which is misleading and directs the burden for innovation away from senior secondary schools. Second, we argue that there are inherent limits in Australian secondary school systems which prevent the depth of innovation required to significantly contribute to raising Year 12 attainment. Third, we argue that the COAG agenda is further weakened by issues of equivalency, quality and comparison. Together, these arguments cast doubt over the value and meaningfulness of the COAG Year 12 attainment agenda and of target setting as a governmental strategy in this context. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

'Engagement' is the second of six top priorities in Australia's most recent Indigenous education strategy to 'close the gap' in schooling outcomes. Drawing on findings from a three-year ethnographic analysis of school engagement issues in the north of Australia, this article situates engagement within the history of Indigenous education policy, followed by considerations of how many of the issues faced by Indigenous families both match and can be distinguished from those experienced among poor and underemployed social groups throughout the western world. We find that Indigenous people are content with the schools' engagement efforts and with their interactions with schools, accepting that how their lives are lived are not within the provenance of the school system to amend. In its homogenisation of Indigenous issues, reification of cultural distinction and foregrounding of disengagement as an issue, Australian education policy is also about non-engagement, in that it excludes key issues from policy consideration while appearing to be inclusive. The education sector does not systematically engage with the grinding issues that Indigenous families face in their everyday worlds; and since Indigenous people do not really expect schools to know how to solve their issues, the call for engagement and its resolution is perfectly irresolvable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ascendency of neoliberal ideas in education and social policy in the 1980s and 1990s was succeeded in the new millennium by a 'new' social democratic commitment with emphases on community empowerment, building social capital and a 'whole of government' approach to partnering with civil society to meet community needs. In Australia, this approach has resulted in the development of partnerships between schools and community organisations formed as part of a targeted, holistic approach to service delivery to meet the settlement and educational needs of refugee youth. Drawing on interviews conducted with community workers and government officers involved in the school-community partnerships, we document how these partnerships are working 'on the ground' in Queensland schools. We analyse our findings against the international literature on changing notions of neoliberal governance, and discuss the implications of the shift to the 'partnering state' for schools and community organisations working with refugee young people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is situated in the context of recent policies for teacher quality in Australia. Discourses on quality have crossed many domains of public policy, including education. A feature of these discourses has been an emphasis on improving teacher quality and raising professional standards. The article uses critical discourse analysis to explore the implications of quality discourses for educational leadership. In so doing, it analyses how recent educational policies construct discourses on quality and professional standards, discourses which position educational leaders in particular - often contradictory - ways. Such positionings offer different ways of understanding leaders and how best they might lead for quality. The article concludes by raising questions about quality and leadership, questions that highlight the need to rethink educational leadership within a quality policy framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the importance of effective secondary education for all children as Australian society embraces globalization. In a global era, where societal development will rely on the knowledge and skills of the workforce, an effective education will become even more important for socio-economic engagement and equality. Students from disadvantaged backgrounds are the most vulnerable to globalization as they are less likely to achieve academically or go on to benefit from the restructured neo-liberal economy. Education policy will need to continue to support the right of each individual to be prepared for life in general, and employment in particular. Opportunities for democratic pedagogy, curriculum and education policy to respond to risk are outlined and critiqued in relation to the ongoing need for justice in education systems. If adequate funding is not provided for secondary education and directed to ensure an effective education is available for all students, obtaining a quality education will increasingly shift from a right to a privilege in Australian society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reviews the changes, which have been introduced to public education in Australia, particularly over the last decade. These changes are analysed against the background of the free, compulsory and secular Education Acts that were implemented in every Australian colony during the last quarter of the nineteenth century. This legislation has formed the cornerstone of public education in Australia since that time. The principles of free, compulsory and secular public education and the underlying social values which underpinned the legislation are re-examined, together with the factors leading to the development of the centralized state education bureaucracies which were set up to administer the Acts. In considering current changes to public education policy in Australia, the paper argues that the principles underlying the establishment of public education have been significantly eroded. In the space of little more than a decade, the social values underpinning the Education Acts have been dramatically changed, leading to a re-invention of what public education means in this country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This analysis of activists' and bureaucrats' politicking for gender policy in Australia demonstrates the utility of discourse analysis. Feminist policy initiatives are special: they challenge hegemony and they circulate counter discourse. Policy elites try to manage and discredit them. Traditional policy frameworks are used to identify policy with policy mechanisms, policy communities, value shifts and the like. But the use of policy discourse analysis for this Australian story elicits key strategies for constructing and managing a counter narrative and maintaining a counter public of outsiders using insiders to institutionalize gender policies even as equity and social justice value priorities recede. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]