The disadvantaged schools programme: caught between literacy and local management of schools

Abstract

The Disadvantaged Schools Programme (DSP) is the longest‐running Commonwealth equity programme in Australian schooling. It provides extra funds to those schools serving the poorest students. Initially, the paper traces developments in the programme since its inception in 1974 against a backdrop of changing political contexts, from the Keynesian progressivism of Whitlam through the post‐Keynesian corporate managerialism and ‘national’ approaches in schooling of the Hawke and Keating Labour governments. The main focus of the paper is on the likely impact of changes to Commonwealth schools programmes introduced by the Howard Coalition government, whereby the DSP has been regrouped as a literacy programme and accountability requirements on the states have been considerably weakened, with the states given the option to ‘broadband’ the programme with English as a Second Language (General Support) and Early Literacy. Simultaneous with these changes have been the moves by all the state systems of schooling towards school‐based management. The paper evaluates the likely impact of both the Commonwealth and state level changes on the DSP and documents the potential dangers to the programme, particularly the loss of programme memory, the abdication of system responsibility for the education of all students, the reification of literacy as the only educational problem, and the return of the individual deficit explanation for the links between socio‐economic background and school performance.