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Excellence all the way down: mapping discourses of equity and excellence in education policy enactment

Year: 2021

Author: Norman, Pat

Type of paper: Individual Paper

Abstract:
For some time, Australia has had the goal of ‘equity and excellence’ underpinning its education policy frameworks. This goal is enshrined in the Alice Springs (Mparntwe) Declaration (Council of Australian Governments Education Council, 2019), and has been given prominence through the twin Gonski reviews dealing with equity and excellence in Australian schools. This paper reports on the results of a policy mapping process undertaken as part of an institutional ethnographic case study, which sought to trace the governing texts and discourses affecting teachers’ work in a New South Wales school. The map started with the NSW Performance and Development Plan, a governing text that emerged as significant during interviews with the five teacher participants. Tracing upward to policy texts that comprise the ‘ruling relations’ of schools in New South Wales – such as the NSW School Excellence Framework, AITSL’s Framework and Charter for teacher professional development, and the Melbourne Declaration – a number of significant discursive structures emerged. Most notably, despite the twin goals of ‘equity and excellence’ around which this policy framework is articulated, equity receives little concrete emphasis in policy texts that are closer to teachers’ work. While there are other policy avenues through which an equitable schooling system might be achieved, the fact that excellence is the focus that ‘trickled down’ suggests that there remain possibilities for emphasising equity in teacher practice. It also suggests that teachers are not supported to see the enactment of equity as a fundamental purpose in their professional development. This paper argues that the ruling relations in Australian schools reflect a neoliberal orientation towards education – one that privileges individual achievement over the creation of a fair and equitable schooling system.

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