Emeritus Professor Stephen Crump

This paper will explore private sector participation in public sector education in the Australian context, focusing on case studies of Queensland and New South Wales, with reference to developments in other states and territories and internationally. In Australia, most states and territories have PPP policies and key projects include the Southbank redevelopment in Brisbane and the 'New schools' Project in Sydney. The case studies are both supported by Labor state governments and typify the state of affairs nationally, For Queensland, the Southbank TAPE Institute and Brisbane State High School have been brought into a new education precinct in order to 'free up' the system by outsourcing non-core services and 'free up' valuable inner-city land. In NSW, nine new public schools are being built by a private consortium, for a cost of $100 million as part of a program totaling $5 billion in areas under-serviced by government schools. Yet despite a concerted effort to sell the value of PPPs, Australians appear to be ambivalent about 'privatization' of public services. This paper will look at whether PPPs are robbing the public sector to pay the private sector, and where this strategy is taking Australia and the future of our education systems. © 2005 Taylor & Francis Group Ltd.

This article outlines the incorporation of vocational education and training (VET) courses into a senior secondary certificate of education, the New South Wales Higher School Certificate, in the largest state of Australia. VET courses were introduced in 2000 to broaden the offerings available in post-compulsory schooling and to cater better for the vocational needs of students not primarily focused on university study. This article reviews the progressive implementation of dual recognition of VET courses in the HSC, and the growth in participation through statistical and interview data. It argues that a major reform to curriculum and reporting of the HSC has led to a more integrated approach. To ensure parity of esteem, the opportunity to have the outcomes from VET courses count towards university entrance has been an important policy objective, but it remains unclear whether (a) structures, processes and embedded cultural practices allow students to take full advantage of this option, and (b) whether a VET option is as unproblematic as intended. © 2005 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.

This article reports on a study of teachers in New South Wales (Australia) and their practices surrounding outcomes assessment and reporting, which took place in 2003 and 2004 as a follow-up to a major study in 1995. The study explored whether the main focus of a teacher's work involves planning, teaching, assessing, rewarding and sharing in their classroom and with colleagues, and whether this focus suffered many distractions in the flurry of reforms of the past decade. One example of ¿changing times¿ in the classroom has been the devolution of school management, which caused a number of diversions of energy and time away from teaching and learning. Yet even in the area of curriculum schools were struggling with a range of issues, many brought on by the advent of outcomes-based curricula. In seeking to change what happens in schools, teachers argued that they needed clear and well-argued reasons to change. This article thus provides an update on the relevant research, beginning with national and international experiences, before a discussion of workload, the place of parents and school organizational effects. One finding is that alongside a ¿crowded curriculum¿, teaching has become a ¿crowded profession¿. The article concludes with reflections on how changing times in the classroom mean social reform as well as educational reform, in which teaching and learning shape effects and consequences from educational events so that knowledge grows through experiences, measuring possibilities not outcomes. © 2005, Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.

The concept of the 'knowledge economy' is increasingly used to underpin education policy in developed countries. In Australia, it has been applied to post-compulsory education policy, with efforts to increase retention in senior secondary education and reform of vocational education in the senior years. The article draws on two research projects with senior secondary schools. Many students (and their teachers and parents) perceived qualifications not so much as providing the knowledge considered necessary by government policy for the contemporary economy, but rather as a 'screen' used by employers to sort and select. Knowledge of opportunity structures and access to resources, while not only defined by social class, operated to create differential access to available choices in the educational market place. Despite ongoing inequality, the article argues that the hope many students expressed in relation to education can be fulfilled in practice. © 2003, Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.

Vocational Education and Training (VET) plays an important role in the reshaping of upper secondary school curriculum. Retention to the end of secondary education in Australia went from 35% in 1980 to 72% in 2000. This increase caused major problems for the senior school curriculum which historically prepared students for university entrance but now has to serve multiple purposes. While the purposes of VET suit different groups, our interest is those students alienated from, reluctant to complete, or attempting re-entry into senior secondary education. Our objective is to understand policy reforms in this area, in order to assist stopping the spiral of disadvantage in which these young people are caught. We shall argue that VET has the potential to re-engage young people with education. With the labour market becoming more knowledge-based, such re-engagement becomes increasingly important. We ask to what extent is the post-compulsory curriculum serving student and family ambitions for employment in a way that is equitable and inclusive?

Life is now a matter of selling oneself to slave-work, building roads or labouring in quarries or mines or on the railways, purposeless, meaningless, real slave-work, each integer doing his [and/ or her] mere labour, and all for no purpose, except to have money, and to get away from the old system. (¿) It is as if the whole social form were breaking down, and the human element swarmed within the disintegration, like maggots in cheese. The roads, the railways are built, the mines and quarries are excavated, but the whole organism of life, the social organism, is slowly crumbling and caving in, in a kind of process of dry rot, most terrifying to see. (D. H. Lawrence, Twilight in Italy, 1997, Penguin Edition: 223/4). © 1999 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.