The constitution of school autonomy in Australian public education: areas of paradox for social justice

What needs to happen for school autonomy to be mobilised to create more equitable public schools and systems of education?

“…Our project is exploring the social justice implications of school autonomy reform in public education systems across four Australian states (see Keddie et al, 2020a , 2020b ). We are focussing on understanding how economic, cultural and political justice might be more possible within varying contexts and policies of school autonomy reform ( https://www.schoolautonomyandsocialjustice.org ).…”

“…Disadvantaged schools are often further disadvantaged by autonomy policies (Keddie et al, 2020a , 2020b ). Principals in these schools tend to be earlier in their careers (Béteille et al, 2012 ) and less confident in their autonomy to push back against narrowing policy discourses.…”

“…The increased external public auditing of education has reduced school improvement to narrow performative outputs and promoted competition between schools. These conditions have increased (classed and racialised) stratification and residualisation within the system advantaging already advantaged schools and disadvantaging already disadvantaged schools (Keddie et al, 2020a(Keddie et al, , 2020bLamb et al, 2015). As many scholars have argued, these conditions and forces have undermined a collective approach to education as a public good.…”

“…Consistent with decades of research (see Blackmore et al, 1996 ; Smyth, 2011 ) there was consensus across the group that school autonomy reform creates further inequities at school and system levels when driven by the logics of marketisation, competition, economic efficiency and public accountability (e.g., these logics force public schools to run themselves like businesses, prioritise narrow outputs and compete for students which leads to stratification and residualisation within education systems and inequitable resource allocation for students) (Constantinides, 2021 ; Fitzgerald et al, 2018 ; Karseth & Møller, 2020 ; Keddie et al, 2020a , 2020b ; Lundahl, 2019 ; Wilkins et al, under review). Consistent with ongoing concerns in this space, there was a questioning of the idea of the public in public (Gerrard, 2018 ) and private education (Boyask, 2020 , 2021 ) in terms of who and how education operates for the public good and relatedly; about how private sector interests and logics have permeated public school governance to prioritise market imperatives at the expense of educative imperatives (Hursh, 2017 ; Lipman, 2017 ; Lubienski, 2009 ; O'Neill, 2021 ; Skerritt, 2019 ; Skerritt & Salokangas, 2020 ; Thrupp, 2020 ; Yoon et al, 2020 ); about how the increased expectations and responsibilities associated with school autonomy reform were continuing to take an enormous physical and mental toll on teachers and school leaders in relation to untenable work intensification (Fitzgerald et al, 2018 ; Heffernan & Pierpoint, 2020 ; Keddie et al, 2020a , 2020b ; Skerritt, 2020 ; Wilkins et al, under review; Wylie, 2020 ); and about how these reforms as they are driven by a narrow performative culture, continue to degrade pedagogy and curriculum towards a teach-to-the-test mentality (Hursh et al, 2019 ; McGrath-Champ et al, 2018 ). There were also concerns raised about the new articulations of the governing parent-citizen within the context of education devolution as reconfiguring what a ‘good’ parent-citizen looks like along strongly classed and professionalised lines (Gerrard & Savage, 2021 ) and finally, concerns were raised about how union power might be mobilised to resist the processes of devolutionary reform (Gavin et al, 2022 ).…”

Twice exceptionality in neoliberal education cultures: Implications for special educational needs co‐ordinators

“…Such decentralisation is constituted as affording schools greater autonomy and when combined with legislation and statutory guidance relating to inclusion (Wilkins and Olmedo, 2018) and pressures linked to performance league tables (Ball, 2003); then, buying in inclusion‐related services and products is one solution to the problem faced by schools of fulfilling potentially conflicting policy demands (Done, 2019). As Ball (2003, p. 221) maintains, the school culture that subsequently emerges is one where ‘impression management’ prevails; the imperative is to be seen to be meeting legal requirements around inclusion, which is not the same as practising inclusively and ensuring social justice (Keddie et al., 2022). The ‘twice exceptional’ is likely to be doubly disadvantaged by such trends.…”