The Politics of Accountability in Australian Education

Abstract

Over the past two decades, Australia s State Education Departments and the public school systems for which they are responsible have largely succeeded-seemingly to a greater degree than their counterparts in US and UK- in insulating themselves from harsher forms of centralised educational accountability such as state testing and school performance comparisons. A central goal of this paper will be to try to explain the politics of this phenomenon which seem inextricably tied to the peculiarities of Australian federalism and to the remarkable historical dominance of education bureaucrats (and Ministers) controlling strongly centralised State education departments. The explanations for the inability of the four States analysed in the ensuing case studies to implement or sustain proposed major state-wide school accountability processes is found in: powerful teachers unions; changes of government following elections; and, perhaps predominantly, fear by entrenched senior State education bureaucrats (and Ministers) that accountability processes and outcomes might produce unwanted scrutiny (from Federal Government, the public or others), loss of control and embarrassment to themselves.