Uneven Playing Fields: Australian Education and the Commodification of Opportunity

Within Australia education is framed as a key means for achieving social mobility. The creation of markets for education, through the massification of tertiary education and via the significant growth in government funding for private primary and secondary schools, has resulted in unequal access to quality education across social and spatial borders throughout Australia. The introduction of NAPLAN testing by the Federal Government has accelerated this process of marketisation, drawing attention to these substantial inequalities and creating demand for the privilege and opportunity promised through private education. Through this analysis, I suggest that the concept of opportunity itself becomes a consumable which people purchase for their children, by investing in private education. In Australian education policy and discourse, this privilege is assumed to be a ‘right’ that parents have supposedly earned through their own hard work and entrepreneurialism. This reflects the presumption that opportunity is relatively equal, and success and achievement are the result of merit. Drawing on a critique of merit and the frequently misused concept of the ‘meritocracy’, this chapter analyses the reproduction of arguments claiming Australia to be a place of equal opportunities. I highlight how the supposed ‘level playing field’ is anything but level for Australian students.