Policy borrowing, policy learning: testing times in Australian schooling

• Published in: Critical studies in education Vol. 51; no. 2; pp. 129 - 147
• Main Author: Lingard, Bob
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Melbourne Taylor & Francis 01-06-2010; Routledge; Taylor & Francis Ltd
• Subjects: 'My School' website; Accountability; Australia; Australia-overseas comparisons; Australia: Social policy; Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority; Economic Development; Education policy; educational accountability; Educational evaluation; Educational Policy; Educational sociology; England; Federal State Relationship; Finland; Foreign Countries; Gillard, Julia; Global Approach; Globalisation; High Stakes Tests; high-stakes testing; Intergovernmental relations; NAPLAN (National Assessment Program - Literacy and Numeracy); National Assessment Program, Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) (Australia); National Competency Tests; National Curriculum; National standards; neo-liberalism; Neoliberalism; Policy Analysis; Policy borrowing; policy learning; Political Attitudes; Rudd government; Schools; Social Justice; Social policy; Student assessment; Testing; Web Sites; England; Australia; United States; Finland; Queensland; United Kingdom (England)
• ISSN: 1750-8487; 1750-8495
• DOI: 10.1080/17508481003731026

This paper provides a contextualised and critical policy analysis of the Rudd government's national schooling agenda in Australia. The specific focus is on the introduction of national literacy and numeracy testing and the recent creation by the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority of the website 'My School', which lists the results of these tests for all Australian schools, including school performance against averages and against the performance of 60 other socio-economically 'like-schools' across the nation. It is argued that we are seeing the emergence of a national system of schooling (including national curriculum) as part of the reconstitution of the nation in the face of globalization and related economisation of education policy. This is the case despite Australia's federal political structure with the States holding the ostensible Constitutional responsibility for schooling. The analysis locates these and associated developments (a national schooling policy ensemble) within considerations of new accountabilities, the restructured state, neo-liberalism, globalized education policy discourses and policy borrowing and learning. The analysis also suggests that, despite the Prime Minister's swingeing critique of neo-liberalism in the context of the global financial crisis and enhanced state intervention in the economy, this national schooling agenda (the government's so-called 'education revolution'), is a hybrid mix of the neo-liberal with social democratic aspirations to do with social justice and schooling.