ABSTRACT

In an article entitled “The Worst of Both Worlds: How US and UK Models are Influencing Australian Education,” Stephen Dinham of the University of Melbourne has documented how the practices of the “ ‘Global Educational Reform Movement’ (GERM), are finding support and traction in Australia.”1 According to Dinham, under the slogan of increasing school autonomy, Australian schools in some states are becoming detached from democratically-elected local authorities. Teacher education increasingly is disconnected from higher education and research capacity, with for-profit providers moving into new openings for service provision. International publishers that are located in England and the US such as Pearson and McGraw-Hill are among those taking advantage of increased standardized testing and new digital technologies to expand their market share. “Because of Australia’s close links with England the USA and their influence,” Dinham observes, “it is not surprising that the myths and beliefs underpinning these developments have been accepted almost without evidence or questioning in Australia.”2 The irony is that Australia has done better than either England or the US on PISA.3 Australia also does better on many international quality of life indicators, including life expectancy. Australia is not in the position of developing countries that were compelled to adopt No Child Left Behind-like measurements on math and literacy in order to receive education funding from the World Bank. Yet there seems to have been an imperial imperative at work that has led even

some states in even more successful countries on PISA like Australia to adopt now discredited policies from England and the US. A century ago, one could have understood such policy borrowing. Australia was part of what was unapologetically called the British Empire. Ever since the London Declaration of 1949, however, Australia has been a free and independent nation. While there still is an emotional attachment to England, England can no more compel Australia to change its education policies than it can any other nation. For some critics, the OECD is responsible for spreading the key ideas of the GERM. This chapter will show that there is some truth to this charge. But matters are not always so simple. In a study on “The Policy Impact of PISA,” Simon Breakspear has shown that “Finland was the most commonly listed influential country/economy” that has been “influential in policy-making processes” in the wake of PISA.4 Finnish education is the opposite of the GERM. The impact of the PISA tests in policy formation thus is contradictory, and can best be studied on a case-by-case basis. In this regard Germany is a country that did not follow the imperial imperative as some states in Australia are doing and simply implement strategies from abroad. Rather, the country’s policy makers adopted a more nuanced interpretive imperative. They thought long and hard about what the results indicated. They adopted some reforms piloted in England and the US, but with a lighter touch. They preserved the country’s federal structure of education and kept schools under the control of their local democratic authorities. They built up the schools’ infrastructure from within rather than launching a frontal assault on them from without. Their reform strategies have made Germany one of the most improved nations on PISA. So there is a global battle underway for the future of educational change. Some nations, such as the Philippines, Kenya, and Liberia, have followed the US and England with explicit reference to charter schools, academies, and free schools.5 Some have outsourced public education to for-profit businesses and their philanthropies to secure a competitive advantage in acquiring funding from international organizations that have been beholden to NPM in education, health, and other service sectors. These nations have capitulated to the imperial imperative.