The two faces of education

In this chapter, Don recounts an encounter with a senior manager as an example of ‘hardnosed’ education - where collaborative work between two education agencies was criticised by this senior manager. In contrast, Don also recounts a comment from a ten-year-old girl, who was scared of the NAPLAN tests. He uses this to comment on the ‘gulf’ between the rhetoric of education documents which set out aims and goals but do not reflect the ‘lived experience’ of students in schools and the regimes of testing and assessment.