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Session Information
23 SES 06 B, School Leaving
Parallel Paper Session
Contribution
This paper aims to explore the intersection between the downwards, homogenizing policy pressure for more young people up to increasing ages to be studying and the upwards, diversifying movement of various alternative schools catering for these young people.
The downwards pressure has developed due to a policy consensus, especially among ‘western’ industrialised nations, that more highly skilled people are needed in the contemporary knowledge based economy and therefore educational attainment needs to be lifted. Within this discourse, unemployment and vulnerability in the labour market are perceived as caused by a deficit in young people’s own qualifications. As a result, governments around the world have adopted initiatives aimed at increasing educational attainment. This is evident for example in the shift in the discourse in the United Kingdom, from 16+ to 14-19 and the setting of a new target for school (or equivalent) completion in Australia.
With school credentials increasingly necessary, and therefore more young people remaining in (or returning to) schooling who would traditionally have left early, educational practice has responded with a diversity of alternative schooling initiatives. These include vocational initiatives (an early example are the Danish Production Schools), project-based approaches (such as the UK Studio Schools), democratic schools (eg. Eigenwijs in the Netherlands), and flexible programs (such as Flexi schools in Australia). This has led to a diversifying of educational provision for young people, countering the homogenising pressure from policy that almost all young people must be students. In other words, practice tells policy that ‘one size does not fit all’.
The first two parts of the paper will analyse these conflicting policy and practice trends, drawing on examples from both Europe and Australia. The paper then moves on to discuss how these trends meet, leading to an emerging policy agenda (especially in Australia) around alternative education provision for ‘youth at risk’. We analyse how both schooling itself and equity are being contested and re-conceptualised at this intersection of policy and practice.
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
Council of Australian Governments (2009). National partnership agreement on youth attainment and transitions. Canberra: AGPS. DfES (2007). Raising Expectations: staying in education or training post-16. London: HMSO. Drop, B. & Volman, M. (2006). De school is van ons. De visie van eigenwijze jongeren op voortgezet onderwijs. Assen: Van Gorcum. Dubois, V. (2009). Towards a critical policy ethnography: lessons from fieldwork on welfare control in France. Critical Policy Studies, 3, 221-239 Fraser, N. (2009). Scales of Justice: Reimagining political space in a globalizing world. New York: Columbia University Press OECD (2008). Tertiary education for the knowledge society. Paris: OECD. OECD (2009a). Education at a glance. Paris: OECD. OECD (2009b). Jobs for youth – Australia. Paris: OECD. Smyth, J., Down, B. & McInerney, P. (2010). ‘Hanging in with Kids’ in tough times: Engagement in contexts of educational disadvantage in the relational school. New York (NY): Peter Lang. Stack, C. (1997). Beyond what are given as givens: ethnography and critical policy studies. Ethos, 25, 191-207 Te Riele, K. (2011). Raising educational attainment: How young people’s experiences speak back to the ‘Compact with young Australians’. Critical Studies in Education 52 (1) 1–15 Wolf, A. (2002). Does education matter? Myths about education and economic growth. London: Penguin.
Programme by Networks, ECER 2021
00. Central Events (Keynotes, EERA-Panel, EERJ Round Table, Invited Sessions)
Network 1. Continuing Professional Development: Learning for Individuals, Leaders, and Organisations
Network 2. Vocational Education and Training (VETNET)
Network 3. Curriculum Innovation
Network 4. Inclusive Education
Network 5. Children and Youth at Risk and Urban Education
Network 6. Open Learning: Media, Environments and Cultures
Network 7. Social Justice and Intercultural Education
Network 8. Research on Health Education
Network 9. Assessment, Evaluation, Testing and Measurement
Network 10. Teacher Education Research
Network 11. Educational Effectiveness and Quality Assurance
Network 12. LISnet - Library and Information Science Network
Network 13. Philosophy of Education
Network 14. Communities, Families and Schooling in Educational Research
Network 15. Research Partnerships in Education
Network 16. ICT in Education and Training
Network 17. Histories of Education
Network 18. Research in Sport Pedagogy
Network 19. Ethnography
Network 20. Research in Innovative Intercultural Learning Environments
Network 22. Research in Higher Education
Network 23. Policy Studies and Politics of Education
Network 24. Mathematics Education Research
Network 25. Research on Children's Rights in Education
Network 26. Educational Leadership
Network 27. Didactics – Learning and Teaching
Network 28. Sociologies of Education
Network 29. Reserach on Arts Education
Network 30. Research on Environmental und Sustainability Education
Network 31. Research on Language and Education (LEd)
Network 32. Organizational Education
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