Choice and Voice: parents perspectives on public education

By Dr Jill Blackmore,
Faculty of Education, Deakin university.

The tennis club, the community, and parental involvement

The tennis club, as other social clubs and voluntary bodies such as parent associations in schools, is often a focal point for how we understand community and citizenship. In an inner city and increasingly ‘yuppified’ suburb of Melbourne in the state of Victoria, schools were often the subject of discussion amongst of a group of parents each Saturday morning as they sat watching their children play tennis. Nearly all the primary aged children playing in this local club attended local government primary schools; a couple attended the local parish Catholic primary school. During the primary years, the tennis club discussions amongst parents focused on their children learning to read and the child’s social relationships with teachers and peers against the backdrop of increasing expectations of voluntary work in the school working bees and fairs that raised funds upon which government and schools increasingly relied.

Parental involvement in a wide variety of programs was seen to be a good thing, discursively linked to student learning and good parenting, as well as increasingly being institutionalised through mandated policies eg.home reading schemes and early literacy programs that trained parents to teach reading. The prescriptive overtones of these programs and policies were underlined by the assumption that all parents possessed the material capacity and educational habitus to be active ‘literacy workers’ in schools and in the home (Blackmore and Hutchison 2001). For the middle class mothers at the tennis club, the extension of mothering to become ‘quasi teachers’ in supporting student learning was made possible because they had the material and cultural resources, as well as the educational disposition and family income that allowed allowing part time and/or flexible work hours upon which parental involvement was premised. While teachers felt that the prescriptive overtones of such policies increasingly regulated their practices, these policies also regulated those parents who were less ‘active’, their absence in schools signifying them as deficient eg single mothers, working class, Indigenous or NESB families. This rising expectation of parental involvement in learning coincides with the re-privatisation of the costs and labour of care at a time when mothers (most often the voluntary labour and literacy workers in schools and home) are entering the growing casual and part time work force. Schools in lower socio-economic areas where parents had less work flexibility and fewer resources, struggle to implement mandated policies that divert limited locally raised funds away from other school needs.

A third focus of conversation was that of the parent as consumer. With the approach of the final primary year, discussions began to focus on the ‘choice’ of secondary schooling. While the children in this local tennis club enjoyed what most parents agreed was high quality education in their local government schools, elements of competitiveness and defensiveness permeated the previously amicable conversations when the subject moved to secondary schooling. Discussions were dominated by the ‘active choosers’, most often those with dual incomes, working from the taken for granted assumption that if you could afford it, you sent your children to one of the ‘elite’ private secondary schools. Reputations of various schools were reviewed, with local government schools faring badly, or not mentioned as options at all. There were comments about the benefits of private (elite not Catholic systemic) schools ranging from:- private schools had better teachers, better resources, nicer students, fewer discipline problems, broader curriculum, extracurricular activities in sport, camps etc and were drug and violence free. As Cuban (2000) has indicated in his study of parental choice, parent choices are more about taste rather than evidence, where tastes are about how to best raise children (faith and moral based) and images about what constitutes a good school eg well dressed, disciplined with good academic results working in a well manicured hi tech environment. The silent ‘other’ that was the implicit base of comparison were the public schools. Fears of exclusion from the elite sector meant many parents sought to guarantee placement by enrolling their children at birth or on waiting lists, many transferring at Year 5 when warned that students could ‘miss out’.

Parents silenced in these discussions tended to have opted for government schools or Catholic systemic schools (receiving 80% of their recurrent funds from the federal government and state departmental curriculum support). That I chose, as an academic and educational researcher, to send my child to a government secondary school was greeted with either silence (read as ‘I did not care for my child’), or curiosity as to why a professional educator would make that choice (read as ‘I should know better’). For parents with students in the public sector, my advocacy of public schools in these discussions and in a range of forums eg Parents Federation, as a member of Parents Choosing Public Education, and as President of Council of one of the local primary schools, and an academic, provided them with an articulated ‘defense of the public’ that could be mobilised to justify their ‘choice’ based on ‘research’ rather than anecdote, although this argument was difficult to maintain when confronted annually with the much publicised ranking of the ‘top ten’ students each year listing the schools in the press. Test score ‘evidence’ damaged their capacity as parents choosing public education to make claims about the wider social and citizenship benefits of public schools that could not be so readily measured as VCE scores.

So what is so risky about public education? There is now significant well-publicised research indicating the importance of the early years in terms of a child’s future educational opportunities and success. Yet these parents had entrusted government schools to do that preparatory work. The issue was not about quality or teacher qualifications. The significant social and educational investment of the ‘tennis club’ parents in the local government primary schools would pay off in terms of later educational achievement. The local government primary schools experienced high levels of parental involvement and accrued considerable benefits. These schools’ openness to parental participation together with their diverse social mix (socio-economic, cultural, and linguistic) meant the schools were central to a socially cohesive and pro-active community that valued difference and debate, and exemplified the educational and civic value of having a wide social mix of students for all students.

The middle class desire for private schooling was underpinned by a discourse amongst these parents of increased risk and uncertainty. This discourse emerged out of the historical selection role of secondary education particularly significant in Australia with its large non-government sector of the low fee Catholic system (20%) and a group of elite high fee schools (10%). Other factors contributed to this discourse of risk during the 1990s - employment insecurity, scarcity of tertiary places and reduced public sector funding. Government disinvestment in ‘the public’ reversed the 20th century educational settlement in which the welfare state created highly centralised systems to provide equitable provision for all children in both sparsely populated rural and densely populated highly disparate socio economic urban areas. Equity also underpinned the Whitlam federal Labor government’s move in 1974 dissolve distinction between government funding of secular and religious schools. The intention was to reduce increasing inequalities between the impoverished Catholic parochial schools and the government sector by funding all schools based on a funding formula ranking schools according to need (Connors 2000). Public education in Australia, particularly during the 1980s, had strong records of innovation and success, recognised internationally for their organisational, curriculum and assessment reform. Victoria, for example, was distinctive for its institutionalisation of parent involvement in schools through School Councils, school based decision making and as participants and partners in central policy making.

But the neo liberal policies of marketisation and managerialism that informed the restructuring of education in various states during the 1990s were informed by moves towards devolution with self-management and deregulation through dezoning. Under the Victorian Schools of the Future (1993), discourses of parental choice and self managing schools were accompanied by reduction in per capita funds to public schools, ‘voluntary’ redundancies of the public teaching workforce increasing class sizes, increased accountability through standardised assessment, curriculum and assessment reform focusing on outcomes but not inputs (eg resources), and mandated policies focusing on the basics. In Australia generally, reduced public expenditure and the shift of costs onto individuals and families, had had obvious effects on the services and image of government schools. At the same time, federally funds supported the expansion of private schools with the abolition of the New Schools Policy and new Enrolment Benchmark Adjustment Act. Middle class flight to elite private and Catholic schools increased after 1996 so that now 70% of Commonwealth school expenditure funds 30% of students in non-government schools. Even when per capita expenditure was not reduced, location, size, proximity to alternative private schools and demographics in a dezoned public system made many public schools vulnerable to closure.

Put this together with Federal government disinvestment in the university sector at a time when educational credentials are increasingly are treated instrumentally as a ranking mechanism both for further study, training and employment. Competition for reduced university places in 2002 produces a high level of parental anxiety across an even larger socio economic span, constructing new sources of demand for private schooling. The strategies of risk management employed by the increased sense of precariousness for the middle class focus on the family, rather than other forms of collective action. Private schooling, particularly in the elite schools, is perceived as being the way to purchase the educational capital required to gain access to the more lucrative jobs and form the social networks.

Paradoxically, despite the discourse of parental choice and empowerment mobilised by the Victorian Kennett government as a key rationale for reform, the new legislation on School Councils introduced during the 1990s excluded representation of parent organizations, eg Parent’s Federation and Victorian Council of State Schools Organisation (VCSSO). In so doing, the legislation positioned parents on school councils as individuals and not as representatives of a constituency of parents within the school and wider community. Indeed these organizations vocally opposed these reforms as leading to increased inequality amongst students, schools and communities. ACSSO (1997) argued

This was the ‘educational expression of the broader economic rationalist agenda which advocates deregulation, decentralisation and the privatisation or tendering out of public activities, in order to achieve small government, reduced public expenditure, a market-oriented environment, and the undermining of "provider capture" - the theory that education bureaucracies (like the LEAs in the UK), teacher unions, and presumably representative parent organisations, run the so called "education industry" to suit their own interests, not those of the "real clients"’.

This discursive shift mobilised through policy from parental voice to parental choice was ironically individualising and ultimately disempowering for parents as a constituency.

Meanwhile the tennis club parents with children in the elite schools complained about school policies mandating Saturday sport at school, thus excluding their children from the more challenging local pennant competition. Parental choice based on a contractual relationship meant that disagreements about school policy provided only the option of loyalty (ie accept the rules), or exit and not voice (ie change policies). The social segmentation at the local level based on public / private schooling extended into their social life and leisure activities as the elite private school students no longer played in the local football, soccer, netball and tennis teams, positioning them as ‘different from’, but in ways that ‘othered’ those who remained.

Selectivity and success

What does this story of the tennis club tell us about the limits of organising schooling on the basis of parental choice? While educational inequality is not new, recent federal policies privilege the principle of individual choice over equity, exacerbating existing geographical, socio-economic, religious and gender (given the popularity of single sex schools) segmentation. The most recent expansion has been of small fundamentalist religious schools. Yet many western liberal democracies legislate against funding religious education because it works against social cohesion. Most invest in strong public education systems for reasons of economic productivity in knowledge based societies and citizenship formation. So why has the neo-liberal market discourse of parental choice been so seductive in the Anglophone nation states during the 1990s? Such states have adopted an ideological position advocating the market as the more efficient deliverer of services than government. The growth of the private sector has been as much as the product of government policies that have increased parental anxiety, and not some groundswell or growth in demand by parents for increased choice. Indeed, the most active Australian parent organizations (eg ACSSO) oppose such policies. The focus of parent bodies has been on increased access to high quality and equally well funded public schools, increased choice within the public sector. But in a policy and educational context premised upon competition and scarcity, non-government schools have been able to capture the cultural capital of highly aspiring families, exacerbating the resource differences between wealthy and poorer school communities.

Parental choice as an organising principle of schooling sets in train a number of systemic and local dispositions in market oriented systems around selectivity rather than access, exclusion rather than inclusion, competition rather than cooperation, academic rather than vocational. Non-government schools, whether through the imposition of fees, the dominant academic curriculum, selective entrance exams, scholarships, religious philosophy, or disciplinary and uniform codes, can select and / or exclude particular students that do not ‘fit’ their particular image/mission/program.

In particular, the process of creaming by elite high fee non government schools of academic achievers (through scholarships) from a wider geographical areas and the middle class socio economic strata as the sector expands with increased government funding, produces more ‘homogenised’ school populations (in an socio- economic and academic sense) concentrated in high socio-economic locations, and leaves more culturally and educationally diverse school populations without the same distribution of low and high achievers located in lower socio economic suburbs. Government funding of choice for the 10% in the elite non-government sector impacts on the quality of service for the 70% of parents left in the public sector. The perceived success of the private elite sector in capturing ‘ academic achievement’ is the consequence of overt and covert processes of selectivity and exclusion with regard to student intake. The concentration of cultural capital and social mix that is highly focused on academic outcomes makes the job of educating much easier but not necessarily better as the range of student needs (educational, pastoral, economic, language) are usually less than in most public schools. Public schools, because of their responsibilities to take all and to meet the needs of their more diverse populations, costs more not less. Add to this the constant equation of school success within the media and public discourses with a narrow range of academic results (often statistically manipulated), and not the social and vocational outcomes that are more difficult to measure, private schools get further market leverage over government schools.

The larger Catholic sector, while comparable to the public sector in terms of academic outcomes and social mix provides a particular market image of social justice and coherent religious values. The Catholic sector’s expansion, while at the expense of the public sector, also remains ‘selective’ because it does not have the same legal responsibilities or accountabilities to take in all students or to account for its failures. The secular public sector, having to address the multiplicity of value systems of a wide social mix of students and parents, adheres to more broadly educational and secular humanistic philosophies that are necessarily and legally highly inclusive. But the ‘public’ schools very inclusivity disallows any claim to a particular ‘values market’ or ‘academic market’. On two critical measures of success, the public sector can therefore be cast too readily as being ‘values free’ when contrasted to schools with a distinctive religious image and ‘academically underachieving’ when judged on the benchmark of the 30% who get into university rather than the 70% of students who successfully enter employment, training, TAFE as well as universities.

Social democratic discourse- parents as partners and active participants

Another discourse other than parental choice still circulates in public schools and parent organizations around notions of parental participation, democratic citizenship and educational community. This social democratic discourse was subverted and co-opted during the 1990s by the ‘parental choice’ discourse that re-positioned parents as consumers, as voluntary labour in canteens, as lay experts on school councils, and as managers, but not as policy activists. Any policy influence to be wielded was an individual consumer based on the rights of the individual child. School councils were there to implement government policies, raise funds, and take responsibility for financial management, but not have a voice in mandated government policies on curriculum and assessment. Privileging discourses of ’choice’ over ‘voice’ ignores the range of practices that parents do individually and collectively that benefit all children:- as informed partners, cultural activists, of parents educative and political role.

The discourse of parental choice is a rights based discourse, highly individualised, and assuming an economic model of human capital that privileges the self maximising self interested individual chooser. It treats education as a positional good with little regard for its role in citizenship formation. It pretends that all individuals have the same choices, ignoring the economic, social and cultural conditions that constrain the exercise of ‘free’ choice for most. It assumes that the aggregate of individual choosers will constitute a ‘community’ whereas community is about relationships of trust and shared responsibilities not just exercising individual rights. It forgets our interdependence and how our decisions and freedoms impact on others. Post welfarist discourses position middle class parents who choose to send their children to public schools as ‘welfare’ dependent, the discourses of self help selectively ignore the growing dependence of private schools upon government funds, schools that do not have the same responsibilities for all students nor the same level of accountability for outcomes as government schools eg retention for receiving funding. When one school excludes students at risk another has to take them up. Whereas arguments for equality were premised on needs based claims, they are now premised on rights based claims with individual students in wealthy schools receiving equal funding regardless of the wealth of the school or need of individual students. Parental choice is inadequate as a primary organiser of schooling in a democratic society. To institutionalise through the structures of schooling these ‘categories of social difference’– gender, race, religion, class and ability- is dangerous for social cohesion. Surely a knowledge based democratic society means recognition of fluid notions of difference, breadth of experience, and social heterogeneity.

So do we give up on the notion of the public altogether? Do we, as Brian Caldwell (Caldwell and Hayward) suggests, make all schools that receive government funding ‘public schools’ and therefore remove the public/private distinction, and in so doing leave public schools open to be privatised and increased compulsory fees and private schools access to increased public funds. This removes the responsibility of government for the provision of education, a point strongly argued against by the Victorian Council of State School Organisations in 2001, with inequitable social and economic consequences. All is not well in the public sector – not just because of funding, but because of the wider set of complex social, economic problems schools are expected to address. Without romanticising public education, and while recognising the significant differences between schools within the public sector that have historically been based on socio economic and geographical factors, we need to continue to argue a case for ‘the public’. Even those whose children are in private schools recognise the need for a strong public sector in a knowledge based economy where both national and individual interests converge on developing a highly educated public for both economic, cultural and political reasons.

What do parents want?

Despite arguments to the contrary, the notion of the public is not dead within local communities or amongst professional educators. Parent organizations represent a constituency of parents, and as active lobbyists have well developed policy positions.
They have worked in coalitions in various states in defense of public education, such as
in Victoria the Purple Sage Movement (1997-9), Public Education Inquiry and the Turning Point for Public Education (2001-2). The Friend, the newsletter for the friends of the Education Foundation that funds innovations in public schools from grants and industry sponsors, states:

A strong public education system ensures that the State’s duty of care for all children can be met in accordance with the UN convention on the Rights of the Child. This not only aims to foster achievement, but also to ensure that every child has the best opportunity for secure participation in life long learning, employment and social endeavours…Public schools are the heart of their community and the incubators of civic values… they are communities themselves-communities of children who learn to tolerate, respect and care for other children who are different and have different needs….Children who attend the same public school mix in other ways in their community; they play sport in local teams, they attend local churches they have common interests in the same neighbourhood and town…whether we talk of a ‘knowledge nation; to ‘backing innovation’, the fact is that intellect is now the key driver of economic growth (Extract, summer 2002, p, 1. from ‘Why we value public education- a declaration for our time, www.educationfoundation.org.au).

There is significant agreement in such newsletters and policy texts, arguably the expression of a ‘collective parent voice’, of such organisations around what parents want from schools. These claims include:

(i) local high quality schools available to all

(ii) information about the academic and social progress of their children that identifies strengths, weakness and strategies for improvement

(iii) intellectually challenging, inclusive and comprehensive curriculum available to all

(iv) a range of programs within school to meet the individual needs and aspirations of their children

(v) appropriate assessment that treats all children fairly and recognises a range of student abilities

(vi) tolerant and just treatment of their children, free from discrimination, religious, gender persecution etc

(vii) inclusive, caring, safe and co-operative social milieu so that children are happy to go to school

(viii) a sense of belonging to educational community welcoming children and parents

(ix) equal valuing of academic and vocational education

(x) capacity to work in partnership with school to work to support their child and other children’s learning by being involved in a range of ways in school community, contributing according to resources, abilities, and time

These sentiments indicate that parents and members of the wider community and industry are aware of the importance of both individual and collective aspirations and imaginations. This is a social democratic discourse based on principles of a covenant rather than a contract that provides greatest opportunities for mutually educative partnerships between parents and schools that can benefit all children.

So what forms of school organization and educational governance would meet these expectations? School governance, as a state responsibility, needs to involve parents both as individuals and as members of a constituency (a public) in ways that represent individual and collective parental according to societal expectations and interests.

First, in terms of educational governance, there is a need for a balance rather than a bias towards the centre that does not position parents as only clients or managers of government policy. As stated by Victorian State School Organisations, this requires the:

rejection of the managerialist model of school councils and a re-emphasis on them as representative bodies with a responsibility to establish two-way communication with the school and wider community and to act in the interests of all.

Second, recognition of benefits of parental involvement when treated as a partnership. The incidental and rarely mentioned benefit in recent policies is that parental involvement in schools whether in literacy work or elsewhere improves parent relations with teachers. Parents see how complex and difficult teaching is in getting and keeping students engaged, parents can be valued as cultural workers, and teachers can better understand the different forms of cultural and linguistic capital parents can bring to school. This requires programs that actively encourage all parents eg parent skills in language, history of local communities. While the relationship between teachers a professionals and parents as lay has historically privileged those with expertise, this lay expertise relationship has been made more complex as parents have been empowered by parental choice and voice, so that their responses vary from trust through to pragmatic acceptance or rejection of professional expertise. On the positive side, participation based on mutual respect of each others particular interests and expertise can provide both teachers and parents with a sense of agency so that they work with each other rather than for each other. On the negative side, the desire for participation is sometimes primarily for one’s own children and not all children, and the sense of agency and ‘right’ to take such action is often re-enforced by individual parent’s class position. There is a need for processes and programs to encourage the former for both parents and teachers.

Third, an increased focus on more comprehensive indicators of educational progress for students and not just outcomes in academic areas as a measure of school or individual success that can lead to superficial judgements. Perhaps, as Cuban (2000) suggest, schools should be judged on parent and student satisfaction, fulfilment of goals the schools sets itself, and democratic behaviours, values and attitudes of students. This requires new modes of information and a range of assessments that offer diagnostic advice to parents as well as a willingness of governments to commit resources and programs to remediate or enhance according to specific student needs.

Fourth, any school receiving government funding should have as a condition of government support the same responsibilities and accountabilities. Non government schools should not be excluded from the responsibilities for detailed reporting, governance, non discrimination, or open intake policies and community access that is expected of public schools. Schools who receive government funding should be expected to adhere to equal opportunity policies and to account for non refusal of access on religious grounds. They should supply detailed accounts for how all government funds are expended in all systems eg student learning or capital works. They should be held accountable for their diversity and inclusivity (or lack of). Such accountabilities means balancing between the value systems espoused by a school community with the democratic principles of human rights and the public good. For example, gender equity, which is in the national and civic interest, may not be adhered to by a local school community. Values such as community autonomy, responsibility, self-government and diversity rather than parental choice should be the cornerstones of non government schools as well as government schools (ACDE 2001).

Fifth, any government supports (eg costs of teacher education and professional development in curriculum) should be on the condition of the sharing of their resources with government schools ie a two way process.

Sixth, within public systems there is a need, through the creation of infrastructure that focuses on community and not individual schools, increased cooperation and less competition between schools. This does not deny diversity in the provision within the public sector, as this facilitates students gaining an appropriate education, but does mean increased sharing of resources and responsibilities.

Seventh, the residualisation of poorer public schools in low socio economic areas is detrimental to social cohesion, citizenship formation and also economic development. It is in the public interest to mobilise alternative discourses about the type of public system we see as critical to a socially just knowledge society ie as critical to our survival as we cannot afford to have 20% of our populace in poverty, underskilled and undervalued. Reinvent the sense of ‘the public’ in which schools should become centres for community renewal and interagency cooperation, sites of preschool, community education and lifelong learning.

Eighth, funding for non-government schools should be limited to the extent that they addressed diversity and inclusivity in relation to their communities in terms of their neighbourhood as well as student cohort. Funding should be proportional to the percentage of students in particular categories. Any funding model that take into account the social mix of a student populations, parental contributions and institutional assets, as this social mix is critical to individual and school success. This requires a new funding model that addresses the concentrations of socio-economic disadvantage, a model based on the school community and its specific needs and not based simply on enrolments and marginal input for various equity groups that provides little flexibility or continuity. A more equitable funding regime (both at a state and federal level) would provide, for example, an established base funding for staff and greater funding to schools communities with greater needs that does not lay any individual school open to fear of closure.

Finally, there is need for greater pressure on government to undertake its responsibilities for the common good and not just to mobilise self interest in a democracy. The issue of ‘the common good’ is a difficult one in a complex modern society with its tensions between social integration and stratifications, and between individual and collective interests. But only ‘strong public institutions’ and the ‘intervention of stable governments’ based on the ‘acceptance of a common good’ can produce ‘democratic political institutions and fair elections, an appropriate legal framework and system of justice, a fair tax system, honest leadership and a spirit of trust’ These are not the ‘products of the marketplace’ (Levin 2001 p. 31).

Education, in any context, will always be first and foremost a moral, political, social and emotional practice. If schools are organised on the basis of inclusive educational philosophies that encourage authentic parental involvement in partnership with teachers, that recognise the different expertise and cultural capital parents and teachers bring to student learning, that have a wide range of indicators to signify school and individual success, that balance teacher professional with parental activism, then this is more likely to have wider social, political and economic benefits for communities and the wider society as well as promoting the learning of all students. Well resourced public education systems provide the best guarantee for the rights of all and not a few individuals to a high quality education. What needs to be encouraged is the debate as to what sort of public we can live in and work with (eg PENG 2000, ACDE 2002). These claim that public schooling is ‘right for our times’ and the next generation because ‘only a public system underpinned by government can muster the resources necessary to carry out a full educational program in every location and for every child in the state, at the highest possible level’. ’No school can do it alone’ (PENG 2000, p. 22).

Published in A Conversation About Public Education,
Editors - Thomson, P and Reid, A.

References:

Connors, L. (2001) Cuban, L. and Shipps, D. (eds) Reconstructing the Common Good in Education: coping with intractable American Dilemmas. Stanford University Press, Stanford CA.

Levin, H. Australian Council of Deans of Education (2002) New Learning. A charter for education Canberra

Vincent, C. (2000) Including Parents. Education, citizenship and parental agency. Open University Press, Buckingham.

Ministerial Working Party, Victoria,(2001) Public Education: the next generation. Report. Melbourne. VGPS

Australian Council of State School Organsiations (1997) Position paper on charter Schools. Melbourne