Flexible Learning Options in the Neoliberal Educational Landscape

This chapter aims to locate FLOs within Australia's prevailing neoliberal political economy and shed light on their role as sites of resistance to contemporary market fundamentalism. It brings together critical scholarship on recent moves towards the centralisation, standardisation and marketisation of education in Australia. The chapter explores the resulting concentration of disadvantage in low SES area schools and pressures to 'exit' low performing students, increasingly into the flexible learning sector. Discussion also draws on research concerning the proliferation of high-stakes, competitive testing in Australia and the outsized influence of national and international assessment regimes on local educational policymaking and praxis. The standardised, quantitative assessment currently privileged by policymakers is contrasted with FLOs' holistic approach to the appraisal of educational outcomes. The chapter concludes with the growing call among critical scholars to resist the notion of education as human capital production and the reductive modes of thinking that go along with it.