Queensland University of Technology
CRICOS No. 00213J
School markets and regional development: game-keeping the middle class professional.
Catherine Doherty
Senior Research Fellow
Centre for Learning Innovation,
Faculty of Education, QUT.
CRICOS No. 00213Ja university for the worldrealR
School markets and aspatial, metrocentric neoliberalism
My School website: (www.myschool.edu.au)
‘Firstly, it provides parents and students with information on each school – its view of itself and its mission, its staffing, its resources and its students’ characteristics and their performances. … These comparisons provide information to support improvements in schools. Among schools with similar students, those achieving higher student performances can stimulate others to lift expectations of what they and their students can achieve.’
Logic of quality enhancement over time, but no logic of place in its enactment.
2 modes of school differentiation by place - embedded curriculum, or spatial market.
CRICOS No. 00213Ja university for the worldrealR
Regional development and the middle class
• Ongoing issues recruiting and retaining the middle-class professional despite lucrative incentives – ‘family issues’:
‘The higher quality education resources in the larger population centres are another major reason why families often prefer to live in these centres. This is a particularly important consideration once children reach secondary school age.’ (Haslam McKenzie, 2010, p. 366)
• MC as the counter-narrative – surplus of opportunities.
CRICOS No. 00213Ja university for the worldrealR
School markets and the middle class professional
Particular MC fraction particularly invested in educational strategy for inter-generational reproduction of relative advantage:
‘finding the “best” schools, the “best” universities, the most suitable peer groups within which to lodge their children’ (Campbell, Proctor and Sherington (2009) p. 23).
CRICOS No. 00213Ja university for the worldrealR
Space, place and mobilities
• Space of flows (Castells, 1996)• Place as locale of physical contiguity, in a relational network of places• Interdependencies of im/mobilities (Urry, 2000)• Gardening vs game-keeping the necessary talent• Choice and competition between places (Harvey, 1993) • Winners and losers• ‘Progressive’ sense of place, and the ‘power-geometry’ of differential
mobilities (Massey, 1993)
Rural/remote/regional communities not just about stable populations
CRICOS No. 00213Ja university for the worldrealR
Game-keeping the middle class professional
• Readings of the school market will colour the meanings made of a place.
• Judgements of quality, and the exercise of choice• Public provision may not be enough to attract the MC
family• Short-lived success• Impact of both absence and presence
CRICOS No. 00213Ja university for the worldrealR
A transect of educational markets
CRICOS No. 00213Ja university for the worldrealR
Some conclusions
• Minimal markets vs deep markets – the local Catholic school• Choice sputters out over the transect• Relative advantage available in local markets, but not always
absolute advantage• Boarding school mobility impacts on local outcomes• My School makes some things ‘transparent’ and others invisible• Enables the ‘place’ to be sized up from a distance – winners and
losers
So what?• The limits of simplistic policy for communities differently ‘placed’.
CRICOS No. 00213Ja university for the worldrealR
Further research
• Interview phase – cross section of human service professionals in these communities
• Survey phase – same professionals across Queensland
CRICOS No. 00213Ja university for the worldrealR
references
Campbell, C., Proctor, H., & Sherington, G. (2009). School choice: How parents negotiate the new school market in Australia. Sydney: Allen & Unwin.
Castells, M. (1996). The rise of the network society (Vol. 1). Oxford: Blackwell.
Harvey, D. (1993). From space to place and back again: reflections on the condition of postmodernity. In J. Bird, B. Curtis, T. Putman, G. Robertson & L. Ticknew (Eds.), Mapping the futures: local cultures, global change (pp. 3-29). London: Routledge.
Haslam McKenzie, F. (2010). Fly-in fly-out: the challenges of transient populations in rural landscapes. In G. Luck, D. Race & R. Black (Eds.), Demographic change in Australia's rural landscapes (pp. 353-374). Dordrecht: Springer.
Massey, D. (1993). Power-geometry and a progressive sense of place. In J. Bird, B. Curtis, T. Putnam, G. Robertson & L. Ticknew (Eds.), Mapping the futures: local cultures, global change (pp. 59-69). London & New York: Routledge.
Urry, J. (2000b). Sociology beyond societies: Mobilities for the twenty-first century. London: Routledge.