Search

The private sector has been assigned a leading role in the construction of a global knowledge economy (GKE), and public–private partnerships (PPPs) have been portrayed as the silver bullet that will solve many problems in public education. However, recent research has raised concern about side effects of this mode of operation. It is becoming increasingly evident that PPPs have a crucial role in the privatization and economization of the education sector on a national level and in the context of the emerging global education industry (GEI). This article collects and analyzes the characteristics of GEI with reference to the research context of expanding public-private networks in the field of German public education. It further explores how private actors came into a prominent position in public education by laying out a set of economically shaped knowledge politics and network strategies that prompted a dynamization of the field of education including education policy. Remarkably enough, core aspects of GEI highly resonate on a national scale. Taking a view on the consonances enables us to estimate the impact of those networks and open up for considering the consequences for public education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on the notions of neoliberal governmentality, regime of subjectification, as well as on the ordoliberal conception of social policy, self and class, I analyse how neoliberalism is entrenched in the formation of the affirmative action policy in higher education in Chile. Based on a fieldwork focused on the two main affirmative action programmes in Chile -Induction Access Programmes and PACE-, I constructed a counter-archival assemblage to identify the main policy agents creating opportunities to extend and implement affirmative action programmes and mobilising specific conditions to enact entrepreneurial technologies in the design of affirmative actions. Two related entrepreneurial technologies of the self, namely, managerial leadership and ontological coaching, were identified. They were part of a regime of neoliberal subjectification unfolded in the mandatory modules to harness the working-class students' affective entrepreneurial vitalities as both the true ontology of their selves and the desirable features that make them the legitimate and responsible subjects of right to higher education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

The Pupil Premium policy was introduced in 2010 by the UK coalition government to tackle the attainment gap disproportionately affecting children from low-income families. Semi-structured interviews and policy documents are examined for the way the policy has been enacted in a single comprehensive secondary school in England. In 2014, this school had a lower population of Pupil Premium pupils (18%) compared to (29%) nationally and (25%) countywide. Despite this, the study provides evidence that the Pupil Premium has become invested within and gives rise to, a number of neoliberal techniques, technologies and practices. The study bridges insights from Mitchell Dean’s ‘analytics of government’ and Ball et al.’s work on policy enactment to provide an in-depth, grounded analysis of the way the policy plays out within this school’s context. It argues that the combination of national accountability measures used to show impact for Pupil Premium, and the school’s ongoing struggle to raise overall attainment, leads school leaders and staff members to rethink the concept of disadvantage for their school population. This results in disadvantage being reconceptualised to fit a matrix of moral/pastoral obligations and efficiency/economic competitiveness, in which the tensions between these two orientations are uncomfortable and unresolved. [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]

This paper presents the case of a relatively low-profile policy initiative that has been successively reframed as part of larger policy ensembles within UK schools over a six-year period, and translated during this time at national and school levels. The policy examined is that of study support or out-of-hours learning. The trajectory of this policy is traced as it is first launched within an educational policy ensemble around the raising achievement agenda and then re-framed as part of the then New Labour government’s major educational and social policy agenda of Every Child Matters. Drawing on interview data from head teachers and teachers, the ways in which study support policy was translated in two contrasting schools over this period is explored, highlighting different tensions with national policy and local agendas. The ‘fate’ of study support as an initiative is questioned following a change of government in the UK and in the context of global education policy developments. This analysis of the re-framing of a low-profile policy adds to our understanding of the cycles of policy ensembles and their translation by different agents in different sites over time. [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]

Discourses within the UK Labour government's welfare policy agenda have consistently featured a reformulation of programmatic governance away from both centralised hierarchies and neo-liberal markets to a social policy strategy that highlights a commitment to inclusive partnership working. Significantly, this process of meaningful social engagement and empowerment is intended to be facilitated and sustained through the building and deployment of social capital. This article reports data from a three-year ethnographic study into the experiences of parents and professionals involved with the implementation of a Sure Start multi-agency health and education early years programme driven by these policy imperatives. Significantly, whereas previously published research from this study revealed the building of social capital, the findings presented in this article suggest with the policy shift to Children's Centres the social capital engendered to be in danger of erosion. In the concluding discussion, the article highlights the shifting dimensions of power at national, local and team levels informing this process of erosion, to suggest that social capital may be destroyed much more readily than it can be built. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, governing through partnerships has become more and more common and is today reflected in a range of policy areas. In the following article, governing through partnerships is analysed in Swedish education policy around the turn of the millennium, where the notion of partnership has had a large impact. Using as its point of departure a theoretical perspective inspired by Michel Foucault, the article analyses the calls for partnership in Swedish education policy as part of a set of governmental rationalities forming individuals into partnering, that is active and responsible, citizens. In the article, some of the long-term consequences of the uses of the concept of partnership in Swedish education policy are discussed, focusing particularly on issues of inclusion/exclusion and democratic regeneration. With the idea of governing through partnerships, it is argued that the political landscape is redrawn. The role of the State, for instance, is increasingly to leave room for various voluntary and independent actors and associations, to co-ordinate and interact, as a partner, among others, rather than directing society 'from above'. [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 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]

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]

In order to address some of the key underlying issues currently distorting dominant approaches to schooling it is necessary to acknowledge and engage with our broad intellectual and cultural responsibilities currently shunned by contemporary policy. Philosophy has a key role to play here, in terms of both deconstruction and recommendation. Drawing on the Scottish philosopher John Macmurray, this article argues for the need to situate our work within an historical context that requires judgment about matters of significance and purpose, not mere efficiency and effectiveness. It further argues for the provision of a convincing account of the relational nature of the self that will, in turn, provide the basis of a framework for organisational and communal analysis. The particular framework offered names the dangers of a new totalitarianism exemplified by high performance models of schooling currently preoccupying contemporary practice, advocacy and aspiration. In seeking to reclaim the centrality of human being and becoming in any future education policy it also proposes a person-centred alternative that transforms and transcends the hegemony of insistent instrumentalism in favour of an inclusive, creative community as a more fitting aspiration for education in a democratic society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Developing people's emotional well-being and emotional engagement are official aims in social policy. A growing number of initiatives respond to diverse, often contradictory public, political and professional concerns about individuals' emotional needs. These concerns are a powerful discourse in 'personalised learning'. The article contributes to debates in critical policy research. It evaluates the subtle ways in which policy initiatives to develop emotional well-being and encourage emotional engagement with public services resonate with images of the 'diminished self' emerging in broader cultural discourses. Critical evaluation is necessary in order for researchers and educators committed to social justice to challenge the influential idea that emotional well-being should be a prominent educational goal and to resist the diminished images of human potential that underlie it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using the case of the Flemish policy on educational quality and based on a series of case studies, the author argues that the impact of central policy measures on educational practices in schools is never simply straightforward. Policy measures are always interpreted by and translated to the particular context of a school. In these processes of interpretation the teachers' and principal's agenda of professional interests plays a crucial role. Taking up the micropolitical perspective on schools as a descriptive and analytical theoretical lens, the author argues that these interests reflect different types of working conditions that are considered valuable or necessary by the teachers and principal to do a good job. If these conditions are absent, threatened or lost, people will engage in micropolitical actions in order to establish, safeguard or restore the desirable working conditions. Five different categories of professional interests were identified in the analysis of the case study data. Describing these categories, the author shows how the macropolitical agenda gets caught up in the micropolitics of the local schools during the policy implementation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An earlier article published in this journal sought to recover the views of professionals concerned with the delivery and implementation of a ‘Third Way’ multiagency programme tackling the social exclusion of young children and their families known as Sure Start. The tentative findings suggested a ‘bottom‐up’ partnership perspective was held by professionals as they engaged in a process of ‘civic entrepreneurship’ to build social capital within the local community. This article tells a further part of that story as through qualitative data it recovers the views of local parents involved with the programme. The findings are important as they suggest a meaningful change in the power relationship between parents and professionals. The parents report how the project built holistically on existing strengths within the community, how professionals valued, listened to, and acted on their views, how the project changed them personally, and how collectively they became increasingly involved with the programme and empowered in the social capital building process. The concluding discussion draws on the work of Granovetter (1973) on social capital and Zimmerman (1995) on empowerment to theoretically locate and discuss the findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The education policies of governments have become increasingly directed towards economic ends, including the development of workforce skills. UK governments have been particularly committed to such policies and have adopted some quite distinctive tools, relying heavily on targets and emphasizing certificated rather than uncertificated learning. The underlying assumptions of such policies have been subject to sustained critique, but there has been relatively little empirical evidence available regarding their impact on individual adult learners. This paper uses a large national longitudinal data set to examine whether governments in the UK have met their objectives and how far these are consistent with the learners’ own. It provides, in particular, detailed information on the factors affecting acquisition of additional formal qualifications in adult life and whether there has been any shift in favour of the less skilled in recent years. It also examines the extent to which qualifications, and especially those prioritized by government, lead to increased earnings for their holders. The results strongly suggest that current policies are failing even on their own terms. In conclusion the paper provides some possible explanations for the findings and sets them in an international context. [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]

Increasingly there is interest in development studies and specifically in the field of education in taking up Amartya Sen’s capability approach as a framework for theorizing, implementing and evaluating education policy as a matter of social justice. This paper sets out to contribute to the emerging debate and to show how the capability approach offers an assertive alternative discourse to dominant human capital ideas in education. It considers core ideas of capability and functioning, and the emphasis in Sen’s approach on each person’s freedom and opportunities to develop valued beings and doings. The article then shows more concretely how the ideas might be operationalized by producing a provisional, situated list of education capabilities, with specific attention to gender equity in contemporary South African schools. It closes by presenting and emphasizing the importance of public debate and discussion around the policy potential of the theoretical and empirical ideas raised. [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]

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]

Social policy-making in the UK under the Labour government has galvanized around the issue of social exclusion, identifying young children (0-4 years) and their families living in areas of high social disadvantage to be particularly at risk. This paper attempts to recover the experiences and views of professionals concerned with the delivery and implementation of a multi-agency programme tackling the social exclusion of these young children and their families known as Sure Start. The data are based on the analysis of documentation, attendance and observation at meetings, and 32 semi-structured interviews with members of the inter-disciplinary team responsible for the Sure Start programme's delivery. The interviews were recorded, transcribed and analysed using open coding from grounded theorizing. The paper, in reflecting on the problems and dilemmas of multi-agency approaches and reported in other research, considers how the preliminary findings from this study suggest the team have managed to accommodate and overcome these potential difficulties, to facilitate an integrated, holistic and user-centred approach to the programme. The paper concludes by considering the possibility that the team's approach may be conceptually located within an organizational social capital framework as posited by Nahapiet and Ghoshal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper outlines what is involved in Sure Start, one of New Labour's key social policy interventions. It is argued that there are policy continuities with older redemptive policies which focus on young children. It is also argued that Sure Start could provide a bridgehead for a more socially democratic orientation into early childhood policy. [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]

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 explores how recent Labour governments have tried systematically to package educational and other social policies for media presentation and public consumption. This concern has resulted in the criticism that Labour is concerned with policy presentation above content: strong on policy spin but weak on policy delivery. The first section explores Labour's attempts to set a favourable agenda in news media for its educational policies by implementing a rigorous news management strategy: the subsequent section analyses Labour's unprecedented use of advertising to promote key areas of government policy. There is a particular focus on government advertising in the run up to the 2001 general election. The paper concludes that governments' increasing reliance on advertising may cross the line which should separate the provision of public information from any attempt to persuade the public to support particular policy choices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Education in Europe has been one more aspect of social policy, traditionally held to exist within the sovereignty' of member states, which has been encroached upon by supranational institutions. This paper explores the legitimacy of the partial control over education matters that has been gained by the European Union since the 1970s, examining in particular the role of the European Court of Justice and also the European Commission, in reshaping and altering definitions of legal competence in the fields of education and training. Special emphasis is placed on the method by which an original competence in training has been reconstituted to incorporate some aspects of education policy. Implications for democratic legitimacy and accountability at the European level are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the history and politics of rural school reform in Colombia, focusing on the Escuela Nueva programme. In particular, it assesses the motivations of the Colombian State in promoting a comprehensive reform of its rural schools. We argue that Colombia's unique political context was, in large part, responsible for its novel approach to school reform. As the political context shifted, however, so to did the State's posture to rural schooling. We track the Escuela Nueva programme through three phases (grassroots, formalized and decoupled) to demonstrate how social actors, their interests at a specific point in time, and the distribution of power among them, are crucial elements for understanding the motivation and outcomes of social policy making. In other words, this research portrays education reform as a dynamic process that is continuously shaped and reshaped as political actors and institutions compete for influence and scarce resources in a variable social arena. [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]

This article discusses about problems of education policy in Hong Kong. In year 1991, the Education and Manpower Branch and the Education department jointly issued a document entitled "The School Management Initiative," which is a framework for future reforms in education. These reforms brought about confusion and a sense of unsettledness among school principals and teachers, as the intensification of surveillance over the education process led to increased dehumanization and alienation. One of the major problem with educational system of Hong Kong was medium of teaching. This problem still persist. Neglect of the reality in classrooms and the experience and views of practitioners, is unfortunately, also evident in the development of continuous teacher education which Ho Ming Ng discusses in his paper.

The article lists the editorial board of the journal "Journal of Education Policy" including Pavel Zgaga, Evie Zambeta, and Pat Ainley.