Well gidday!
I'm setting up this blog to help me document my study trip. In a fortnight I'll be heading across to Europe to start and finish the third subject of my Masters in Education Policy (International) which is essentially an elongated comparative analysis of the post-compulsory schooling systems in a number of different Western OECD countries with a predominant focus on equity and access issues, that is, how different groups are excluded, or not, from education at the post-compulsory stage (16yo in most countries) as a result of policy decisions, usually figured around socio-historical factors that obviously change greatly between nations. For example, perceptions of success, skills shortages and economic ideology.
There's about 12 of us on the trip, mostly from Catholic schools and it's to be noted that although much of what we study is centred around public education there's only one of us from a 'guvvy' school. Most of us are teachers with positions of responsibility in our schools but there's policy advisors and curriculum representitives as well.
We'll begin in Oslo, Norway. Norways' social democratic welfare model encompasses a well supported school system with high equity and access to those in the lower socio-economic band - so far. The politics of Europe is changing, however, and the increased neo-liberal economic push endemic to globalisation is even challenging Norway's humanistic traditions. From Oslo we'll head to Barcelona where there is apparently a high stratification of post-compulsory systems which implies that it is less equitable. We finish in London where the pressure of the Thatcher years has left a legacy that no post-Thatcher government seems to have really challenged.
In amongst it I'm heading across to Paris for a weekend with Rhiannon who is moving there from Melbourne for a year. She arrives the day before me. Her husband is already there and has set up house already which I'm very excited about. Thanks, Ms Brown, can't wait :)
