In this chapter, neoliberalism will be examined in more detail in relation to the ways in which it has reorganised and reconstituted schooling and education. Neoliberalism will be approached from a sociological perspective as the prevailing ‘mentality’ or ‘rationality’ of liberal rule in the West today. From this standpoint, neoliberalism can be understood as a systematic way of thinking about governance that focuses on neoliberalism’s new understanding of the market and its significance for all domains in society, including education. Marketisation will be considered from the sociological perspective as a major ‘technique’ of the neoliberal formula for rule.The chapter will discuss the competitive marketisation of schools; the construction of parents as consumers and teachers as entrepreneurs; and the philosophical underpinning of mass education by the logic of the free market. Of equal importance, it will consider the ‘performative’ character of neoliberalism.

This is the fourth edition of Making Sense of Mass Education. It continues the process of covering more issues than each preceding versions of the book: it updates aspects of the data, it discusses more recent research, it offers more nuanced assessment of specific problems and it does all this within a parallel digital environment ߝ one that provides additional ideas, activities and ways of seeing and understanding. While all these elements are significant, they do not really constitute the most important reason for writing a further edition of the book.

Changes to the field of education have not slowed since the publication of the third edition, which introduced new important discussions of Gonski and school funding equity, the debates over NAPLAN and school ranking tables, arguments over the Australian curriculum, the rise in interest in alternative forms of education and global concerns over the ethics of big data use. Of course, this edition offers an updated contemporary assessment of all these topics; however it also provides an extensive discussion of the important and rapidly changing area of schooling and sexuality, as well as a discussion of the field of children’s rights and the increasing marketisation of schools and its relationship with the professional life of teachers.

This chapter addresses one of the most important areas of philosophy ߝ ethics ߝ and uses it to examine aspects of the role of the law within education. Of all the areas of philosophy, more has probably been written about ethics, and over a longer period, than any other. In addition, all cultures are structured around a fundamental ethical system: the law. However, irrespective of their importance, both subjects are currently notable for their lowly status within the teacher education curriculum.

It is important for students and adults alike to understand the pervasive, corporate, global and continually developing nature of our news media. The news media do not occupy a realm somehow removed from our schooling system; indeed, they impact education in a wide range of ways, both directly and indirectly. However, for much of the time, most of us barely pay attention to the thousands of media messages to which we are exposed every day; and even when we do, we generally assume that those messages are both objective and neutral. This is a mistake. Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, for example, the media had had a significant role in influencing many aspects of schooling and public perception from one side to another, including in relation to pedagogy, ‘choice’ and using comparisons of the responses of different educational jurisdictions to the pandemic to direct the public gaze in different ways.

This chapter argues that while we all have a pretty good idea what is meant by the term ‘social class’, it is far from being a straightforward matter. After all, there is only tenuous agreement about exactly what it is, how prevalent it is, how it organises the life opportunities of our citizens and how best to study it. To make it more difficult still, this is a subject that many feel uncomfortable discussing, let alone applying to themselves or anyone else.

In attempting to better understand the relationship between social class and education in Australia, this chapter will ask questions about just how equal Australian society actually is, how schooling success might be more likely for some than others and why money isn’t everything. In doing so, it will trace important changes in the way the social sciences have tried to explain this phenomenon. Most notably, these changes involve a shift away from a focus on economic and structural aspects of social class to a greater emphasis on issues of cultural practice.

While debates may rage around issues of sexuality, sexual identity and sexuality-based rights, if we are to believe what we hear from some of our political leaders and sections of the media, concerns over sexuality itself should be settled outside of schools. Sexuality, they would argue, is too mature, too controversial and quite simply a biological fact that has no relevance to schooling.However, disturbing stories and statistics point to the significant challenges faced by students, and these surely warrant attention.

With this in mind, this chapter examines some of the questions that often arise when talking about sexualities: Are gender and sexuality the same thing? Is sexuality ‘all about sex’?And what does school have to do with any of this? By unpacking some of the emergent literature in the field, the chapter will suggest that dominant discourses around sexualities ߝ in this case, heteronormativity ߝ are up for challenge.

It will be argued in this chapter that the modern school isn’t just about ‘education’ in some abstract, humanist sort of way. Rather, schools have an essential role to play in how we govern our society. It is tempting to think the process of teaching children has always been pretty much the same, and that mass schooling emerged as a result of greater concern for the wellbeing of the young. The evidence paints a somewhat different picture, whereby mass schooling formed a crucial component of a new form of social regulation, based upon an increasing focus on individuality, where the school subtly conforms to the requirements of the state and the disciplinary management of the population is made possible through continual surveillance, as well as through the close regulation of space, time and conduct.

Chapter 4 returns to the story of Ms. Leanne Woods from the Introduction and provides a clear example of the negative impact of school closure policy, even on those whose schools remain open. In the long term, communities targeted by public school closure lose faith in the political process as durably changing the status quo appears elusive. These negative perceptions have serious consequences because participation provides one of the only mechanisms in a democracy for poor citizens to have power. And yet, the inability of their participation to produce long-term change pushes those affected by the policy to disengage with politics altogether. This chapter conceptualizes this latter phenomenon as indicative of their “collective participatory debt” – a type of mobilization fatigue that transpires when citizens engaged in policy process are met with a lack of democratic transparency and responsiveness despite high levels of repeated participation – and raises serious questions about the utility of participating while poor and Black in American democracy.