This paper traces the influence of failed Christian organisation Logos Foundation on Australian secular schooling debates across the 1970s and 1980s. Concerned with the changing nature of secular schooling in the 1970s and 1980s, religiopolitical organisations lobbied for increased parental choice in the ethos of education for their children.…

Schooling has long been studied for its role in class formation and reproduction, Australian government secondary schools have also traditionally been associated with 'the local' and with 'nation building'. Some schools might now also be engaged with ideas of the 'the global' not only through policy practices and priorities, but also through the…

Portraying a localised educational system as part of broader global flows of policy ideas and practices emanating from multiple sources -- an eduscape-- the paper focuses on family practices shaped by global policy flows and the return impact of families on the translation of these policies into local school formations. Under scrutiny are the…

In almost all school systems, students are assigned to public schools based, at least partly, on their home address. Through this policy, students are typically assigned to the school closest to their home. The main objective may be to avoid long and costly commutes to and from school. However, over the past few decades, many countries have…

In opposition to the discourse of silent compliance and the neo-liberal colonisation of voice, this article shares research with parents in an English primary school. Drawing on the work of Jacques Rancière and John Macmurray, the author argues that there is a need for a more relational but dissensual approach to parent engagement and voice,…

This article analyses some ways in which racialising discourses around refugees interact with the spatial and social dynamics of marketised schooling. It identifies conflicting discourses that contribute to the polarisation of school social composition and resourcing in the Australian state of Victoria. Media narratives around "ethnic"…

In Australia's highly multicultural and multilingual society the number of students studying languages in secondary schools has declined markedly in recent decades, but not for all students. For students from high socio-economic status (SES) families who attend elite private schools and academically selective high schools, studying traditional…

The middle school concept, aimed at creating a more developmentally responsive learning environment for young adolescents, gained a stronghold in the later part of the 20th century. Proponents of this concept have argued continually for the holistic implementation of its six key characteristics if its benefits are to be realized. These…

This article introduces a collection of papers comprising the special issue, "Competing interests: Parents, Schools and Nation States." Drawing on the seven papers in the collection, and situating them in recent developments in the sociological field, the article discusses globally shifting relations between families, schools and the…

This paper argues neoliberal programs of government in education are equipping parents for calculativeness. Regimes of testing and the publication of these results and other organizational data are contributing to a public economy of numbers that increasingly oblige citizens to calculate. Using the notions of calculative and market devices, this…

This article is a response to Kevin Donnelly's article, "The Australian Education Union: A History of Opposing School Choice and School Autonomy Down-Under," and aims to correct specific errors and misrepresentations as found by Susan Hopgood, Federal Secretary of the Australian Education Union. She argues that the article is misleading…

"Middle-class School Choice in Urban Spaces" examines government funded public schools from a range of perspectives and scholarship in order to examine the historical, political and economic conditions of public schooling within a globalized, post-welfare context. In this book, Rowe argues that post-welfare policy conditions are…

The global middle class (GMC) is a theoretical construct that seeks to globalise a set of attributes identified in studies of school choice in the global north, and to a lesser extent in developing nations in Asia. As theorised by Ball a mobile middle class with cosmopolitan sensibilities drives international education options in global cities.…

School prospectuses and promotional videos appeal to parents by presenting idealised images of the education a school provides. These educational idealisations visually realise the form of discipline a school is expected to provide, depending on the social habitus of the parents. This paper presents a content analysis of the images used in 33 sets…

The launch in Australia of a government website that compares all schools on the basis of student performance in standardized tests illustrates the extent to which neoliberal policies have been entrenched. This paper examines the problematic nature of choosing schools within the powerful political context of neoliberalism. It illustrates how key…