Sustaining Partnerships in Teacher Education Through Centralization and Marketization?

Joint federal – state investment programs have been developed with the aim of improving educational outcomes and placing Australia more competitively in the global education market through standardising teacher quality at the federal level. This standardising of teacher quality includes a focus on pre-service teacher education which is the principal concern of this paper. By providing the background to the national investment initiatives of ACARA, AITSL and ESA and analysing the documentation emerging from these bodies, I aim to demonstrate how the federal government’s policy of centralisation and marketization of education is undermining the states’ capacity to respond positively to local, regional and state educational needs. On this basis the possibility of sustaining a viable and effective federal – state partnership in Australian education can be questioned.