Reclaiming educational equality : towards a manifesto

If educational equality means anything, then every child has an entitlement to that education provided to the most advantaged members of any nation. Unfortunately, that is not the case in Australia or the UK. In fact, most children in Australia attend public schools that are now increasingly residualised, and they are taught by teachers who struggle with intensification, precariatisation and a loss of professional autonomy. Our young people now attend schools that exist within policy frames that strengthen the processes of social stratification. In the UK, governments have lost sight of what might entail a 'fair and equal education' that privileges the interests and well-being of young people in a diverse contemporary nation (BERA, 2015). Under the claims of evidence-based policy" a technocratic and undemocratic turn to 'what works' (Biesta, 2007)" educators work in a policy regime that actually turns from evidence.