Hybridity as a governmental technique for designing and delivering NAPLAN in Australian schools

This paper explores the utility of hybrid governance as an analytical lens for understanding policy design and delivery in Australian schooling reform. Using the National Assessment Program in Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) as a case study, we argue that its design and delivery processes exemplify hybridity in myriad dimensions. In a federal system in which national schooling reform relies upon negotiation and consensus building amongst a multiplicity of government and non-government stakeholders, we argue that NAPLAN's hybridity serves as a governmental technique for managing and sustaining collaborative governance arrangements. Hybridity also supports the standardised implementation of the assessment across diverse schooling systems and sectors. While NAPLAN's hybridity generates strategic benefits for Australian governments, it also produces risks. A challenge for policymakers is to harness its benefits while ensuring transparent decision-making and clear responsibilities and accountabilities. To address risks and leverage opportunities, we argue there are benefits to having a convening agency with authority to manage and sustain hybrid networks at the national scale.

Points for practitioners

• Hybrid governance offers productive insights into how Australian governments work collaboratively to design and deliver national schooling reforms.
• The National Assessment Program in Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) is an exemplary case study for examining hybrid governance in the Australian federation.
• Hybrid governance serves as a technique for managing and sustaining collaborative governance arrangements at the national scale and for ensuring NAPLAN's implementation is standardised across Australia's diverse subnational schooling systems and sectors.
• Hybridity creates risks and opportunities. A challenge for policymakers is to harness its benefits while ensuring transparent decision-making and clear responsibilities and accountabilities.
• There are benefits to having a convening agency with authority to manage and sustain hybrid networks at the national scale.