Problematising “World Class” public education policy in South Australia: Insights for education policy makers

Abstract

This policy-interested South Australian public education case study problematises how the Chief Executive (CE) and members of the Education Department’s Senior Executive Group (SEG) understood system and school improvement from 2018 to 2022. We applied Carol Bacchi’s, “What’s the Problem Represented to be?”(WPR) policy analysis framework to unearth the policy assumptions underlying the Department’s overarching policy ensemble called “World Class,” initiated across South Australia’s public primary and secondary schools. WPR reveals heightened centralised technologies of command and control directed at teacher and leader work to achieve McKinsey defined World Class status by 2028.

Keywords

• critical policy analysis
• managerially enforced complexity reduction
• public schooling purposes
• new public management
• teacher and leader performativity
• school inclusion/exclusion