What happened to the vision?
A reminder of a forgotten discourse.
Listen to the podcast segment of Ideology in Education (at 13:06) based on this blog post for the Teacher’s Education Review below 👇.
A collective vision.
In December of 2019 Australia Education Ministers from each state and territory signed off on a shared vision for Australian education, the Alice Springs (Mparntwe) Education Declaration. This document aims to guide educational policy, discourse and practice in Australia to achieve two specific goals:
That the Australia education system would promote excellence and equity.
That all young Australians become confident and creative individuals, successful lifelong learners, and active and informed members of the community.
It is an inspiring piece of writing, affirming the role of education in transforming individuals and their communities, detailing a number of shared commitments required by governments to see these goals realised.
Have you heard of it?
A forgotten discourse.
Considering the lack of reference to this supposedly foundational policy document in educational discourse, I wouldn’t be surprised if this is news to you.
I honestly don’t think I would be aware of it had I not been keeping such a close eye on educational policy over the last few years.
In the years following the release of this declaration, Australian educational discourse has been flooded with notions of pivoting, learning-loss, success and failure, crisis and disruption that returning to Australia’s supposed visions for education has become largely sidelined by these salient issues. I can’t find a single reference to the Alice Springs Declaration in Jason Clare’s media releases since being elected federal Australian Education Minister. Australia’s previous Education Minister, Alan Tudge, did make reference to the agreement in a media release in early 2021, which arguably became the justification in his mission to overhaul the Australian curriculum to impose a particular vision of Australian history and nationalism to be taught in schools.
Apart from a piece published by Pasi Sahlberg late last year, reference to the Mparntwe agreement has fallen silent in educational discourse for almost two years.
That must mean we know what we’re doing right?
Well yes, sort of.
Educational assumptions.
Not explicitly referring to this declaration, including its visions for Australian education, suggests that there is a mutual agreement in what we understand education to be for. It is also assumes a universal interpretation in relation to key terms, such as equity, excellence, and so on. In other words, there is an assumed consensus in relation to our visions for Australian education. Assumed consensus can also often imply a shared “common sense” about what education is and what it is for, a concept that I have explored previously in The Interruption.
This might be the case. But more times than not, it seems that a lot of us have quite different ideas about what it means to educate.
Figuring that we have only just scratched the surface here, I aim to explore these tensions a little more thoroughly in my next few posts. Stay tuned for more from The Interruption as we consider the ideological nature, as well as the importance of the Alice Springs (Mparntwe) Education Declaration.
Till next time.
This is the very stuff that educators as active democratic workers and citizens should be talking about and keeping our policy makers accountable in fulfilling their word through funding, work conditions, student voice and distribution of resources otherwise what is the point of the Mparntwe Declaration.