Australia: Gillard rolls out right-wing education agenda

[Hannah Bell]

Australia’s Gillard-led Labor government has entered the last weeks of the federal election campaign by firming up its right-wing education credentials, announcing a series of harsh market-based ‘reforms’. ‘Top achieving’ schools will receive $100,000 cash payments, leaving underfunded and disadvantaged schools to languish. ‘Top performing’ teachers will receive a one-off 10 percent bonus. Meanwhile, students who miss school will be banned from playing weekend sport.

Gillard’s performance-based announcements, however, are not just knee-jerk election promises. They are the next and inevitable tranche of the market-style restructuring agenda that she pushed through while education minister prior to the June 24 coup. As the Australian has been quick to point out, this week’s performance bonus announcements are the “natural flow on” from the Gillard-initiated MySchool web site, essentially a school test result ‘league table’.

The same observations apply to Gillard’s announcement that principals under a re-elected Labor government would have ‘hire and fire’ powers over teaching staff. This is “a necessity after holding accountable for their students’ test results on MySchool”, the Australian declares. In other words, although Labor’s new education policies have been trotted out in the manner of ‘policy on the run’, they articulate a long-prepared and carefully calculated agenda. The speed of their release reflects an attempt to claw back big business support for an election campaign broadly perceived as a disaster...

The 10 percent bonuses for ‘top performing’ teachers will be based, Labor claims, on a “nationally-consistent, transparent and equitable performance management system” that will assess student achievement. In fact, as with all performance-based schemes, Labor’s measures are designed to increase competition between teachers, break-up teacher solidarity and stifle opposition to the restructuring agenda. Again, they follow logically from Gillard’s 2008 introduction of the NAPLAN national school testing regime...

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/aug2010/edua-a13.shtml

[maryf]

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