Abstract:
This paper provides a critical analysis of the edu-businesses contracted by the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA) to deliver the National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN). In analysing the NAPLAN policy network, and the emergent relations between public and private actors, this account seeks to understand the evolving educational governance structure in Australia and ascertains in whose interests and with what outcomes these contractual relationships operate. While ACARA’s rationale for tendering various aspects of NAPLAN could simply be interpreted as a desire to develop and implement public services in a more cost effective way, there are questions worth raising here about public democracy, private profit and shifting notions of ‘expertise’ in education policy processes. The NAPLAN policy network is analysed in relation to the contemporary state and its changing modus operandi, where I draw on the notions of heterarchies, networks and new governance structures in education to understand these developments. Network ethnography is employed to document the network of public-private partnerships that are associated with NAPLAN, where in particular, I reflect on the activities of Pearson and the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) to problematise how opening public policy processes to private sector participation effectively works to blur ‘who does what’ in matters of education policy. This paper aims to highlight the complexity of new policy networks in Australia and provoke discussion within the broader education community about the ways in which edu-businesses are becoming increasingly embedded as credible and legitimate contributors to education policy processes in Australia.