The aim of this case study project was to understand the factors that determine the effectiveness at Groupe Scolaire APEFE Mweya, a parent private school in Rubavu District, Rwanda. It was motivated by a persistent decline in school quality for many public elementary schools in Rwanda while on the other hand some private schools have recorded very good results in national examinations. The review of the literature revealed the important attributes of school effectiveness research in developing countries. An enquiry was conducted using personal interviews of a small sample of fourteen participants together with observation and analysis of school documents. The findings suggest that Mweya School owes its success to adopting the moral inclusion of Hutu and Tutsi ethnic groups as a sign of overcoming historical racial discrimination, and secondly to its committed teachers (work ethos) and learners; organisation and accountability of teaching and learning; private supplementary tutoring; the recognition of work done and the motivation of the teachers and learners. The findings also found that the leadership style of the principal was not delivering according to expectations and suggestions were provided to maintain the momentum of good results.

Why do middle class kids go to middle class schools? It all began with the story of a father’s dream. It was sometime in April in 2008 and I was in the midst of my undergraduate fieldwork. I had been exploring the resurgence in the ‘Gorkhaland’ movement across the hills of Darjeeling in North Eastern India. I had been interviewing various people who had been engaging in hunger strikes in pursuit of the cause. In the process of these interviews and in my general experiences during this time, I was struck by the constant rhetoric that they fought not for themselves or their own futures but for the futures of their children and generations to come. I was staying in the small town of Sukhia about 20 km outside of Darjeeling town. On that particular April day I had found myself temporarily housebound in the home of my host family, in the wake of a sudden tumultuous downpour. The weather it seemed was conspiring against my research, forcing me to postpone another interview. I sat in the kitchen waiting for the weather to pass, sharing an afternoon cup of tea with a side of sliced bread and jam, with Prabin, a member of my host family. Prabin worked in the office of the District Magistrate and thus was a man with a keen eye on local politics. As such, he had volunteered himself to be my unofficial research assistant. It had been a quiet Saturday about the house, as Prabin’s wife Binita and their 3-year-old son, Pranayan, were out shopping in the market. Prabin’s mother and father were visiting other family nearby, and Prabin’s younger brother, Pramod, had travelled into town to collect some supplies for his school. There was no sign of the rain letting up soon so Prabin and I continued to chat. Prabin’s son had recently started school and we were discussing his son’s apparent indifference towards schooling. ‘Everyday he cries! He doesn’t like school very much’. Prabin was convinced that his son would stop crying once he had learned the value of school. I had been working as an English teacher in a small private school and had seen first-hand how parents like Prabin acknowledged the importance of schooling choice, even as their children began their schooling journeys at around 2 years old. Prabin was keen to reinforce the idea that his son’s present school, a small building only 5 minutes’ walk up the road, was just the beginning. Prabin told me that he wanted his son to get a ‘good education’ in contrast to his own schooling experience, which he described as ‘simple’. Prabin told me that he dreamed of his son going to England and making enough money to support the whole family. Prabin knew that if his son was going to fulfil his dream then he would need to succeed at school, but not just any school. ‘I want my son to go to St. Joseph’s School; this is the best school in Darjeeling’. I was aware that there were many schools in Darjeeling, both in the town itself and in the surrounding areas, all of which professed to offer a high level of English medium education, so I was keen to know what made St Joseph’s such a certain choice. ‘Have you been there?’ he challenged me, as if to say that anyone who would lay eyes upon this place would know what he was talking about. ‘We will go there someday; it is a very nice place’. He was keen to emphasize how ‘nice’ this school was even if he had only seen the building from the road. ‘Others schools can teach English but [St. Joseph’s] is more than that. They play all the sport[s], they have good Rector, they have nice student[s], good discipline, this is the right place for my son’. Prabin emphasized that he dreamed of a good life for his son and in order to get there he first had to go to the right school. This was the first time I had even heard of St. Joseph’s School, but it provided a provocative insight into perceptions of the roles of schooling in India today. Prabin’s dream outlined a particular future for his son, which depended upon a foundation within a specific kind of schooling. I was immediately drawn to how he had mapped out a prospective educational trajectory, which leaned on certain intangible aspects of schooling that were perceived to subsequently guide his son towards a certain livelihood. St. Joseph’s had been singled out, as it offered something that others were perceived not to have. Perhaps most importantly of all, Prabin had never been to the school which he dreamed of. His ideas of St Joseph’s were ultimately imagined through an amalgam of stories that he had heard from work colleagues, interspersed with his own fleeting encounters in passing the school building. The imagined view of the school was integral in shaping Prabin’s actions. He was planning for his son’s future around a dream. Prabin’s perspective reflected a wider trend within literature pertaining to the Indian middle class, indicating a certain preference for a particular kind of schooling as being a necessary prerequisite for a specific, ultimately idealised, future livelihood. Donner (2006) identified a similar kind of career mapping amongst middle class Bengali families in Calcutta. The families, particularly the parents themselves, sought to admit their children to particular pre-schools, which were seen as the foundations of a scholastic career. Admission to future primary and secondary education hinged on the previous stage and as such, investment in each stage of the schooling process was vital in establishing the necessary trajectory for their child to progress on to specific occupations that would offer the necessary array of capital - financial, social and cultural – that would lead to a middle class life. What I became interested in was the concept that shapes this process. Why do middle class Indians choose certain schools and not others? What is the apparently intangible quality that leads parents like Prabin to desire St. Joseph’s over all the others? What is it about schools like St. Joseph’s that make them stand out from the range of available schools? It was with these questions that I headed off to St. Joseph’s for some answers.

Research Doctorate - Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / In this dissertation, Van Davy makes a case for a cohesive system of schools which can serve the public — both the national interest and individual interests — while directly addressing the current national schooling system’s failure: * to replace, for the entire student cohort...high levels of student boredom with high interest and engaging curriculum and pedagogy; * to replace, for low SES and indigenous students...low levels of learning outcomes, low enrolment levels in senior schooling, and only brief experience of curriculum choice with a curriculum paradigm providing intrinsic value, understanding of pathways from disempowerment to empowerment, curriculum choice from the earliest years, and schooling outcomes which, over time, equal those of the national cohort of students * to replace a citizenry divided in its support for public, church-based, and exclusionary schools with a community united in its support for a socially agreed set of social purposes for schooling and a new curriculum paradigm, one half of which is generated by this set of social purposes * to address a major political issue: social cohesion The proposed new and cohesive system of schools is envisaged to meet the needs - both Common Good and Individual Good - of the citizenry. It will grow from an earlier and pre-requisite national social agreement around a set of political goals which together sketch a preferred future society - these political goals in the hands of education specialists will generate an "essential" curriculum as one of two elements in a new two-tiered curriculum to be followed from the earliest until the latest years of schooling. The second element, occupying the other half of the curriculum from the earliest to the latest years of schooling, will be an elective curriculum designed to encourage all students to pursue their own interests in as much depth as desired. Studies of sectarian studies will be included in the elective curriculum. Davy’s analysis ranges across a number of disciplines, fusing together a number of viewpoints: historical, political theory, educational performance, and educational theory. It searches Australia’s schooling outcomes, identifies low SES and Aboriginal outcomes as major areas of failure, and challenges a number of widely accepted schooling practices. In the process, Davy discovers OECD and ACER data, but little official interest or analysis, concerning widespread boredom amongst Australia’s students. He argues that, in respect of both low SES students and student boredom, system responsibilities such as the nature of Australia’s curriculum, could be just as implicated as concerns for “teacher quality.” Davy’s interest extends beyond the purely educational. He examines the purposes that public and non-public school authorities articulate, as well as reasons parents give for enrolling their children in schools. From this research Davy identifies several issues and suggests that very considerable “choice” in schooling could be found in a different curriculum paradigm, and that both public and non-public schools are deficient when measured against widely-accepted concerns for religious freedom, social cohesion, and fundamental democratic principles. For Davy, a major political issue confronting Australia is the national imperative of “social cohesion.” He searches Australia’s schooling history for evidence of any social agreement around the social purposes of schooling, including more recent attempts to formulate “essential" and “new basics” and “national” curriculum. He concludes that while many educators, and the OECD, refer to the need for a pre-requisite set of social purposes that outline a preferred future society, the politics of schooling has not permitted this to eventuate and, given the absence of this management fundamental, “it is not surprising that schooling systems are shaped by internal logics (ideologies, religions, personalities, internal politics, quest for advantage and/or privilege) rather than wider concerns for the shape of the globe’s and nation’s future, and the advancement of the twins: Common Good and Individual Good.” With these problems laid bare — low SES and indigenous outcomes, student boredom, and social cohesion — Davy addresses all three simultaneously. He draws confidence from contemporary political theorists proposing political processes which engage the public in a “deliberative democracy.” He constructs a surrogate “foundation of agreed principles” which, he deduces, the processes of deliberative democracy might lead the Australian people to construct, then outlines a step-by-step means by which these principles can generate an essential curriculum for all Australian children, while encouraging a full range of choice within an elective stream. The political processes of open collaboration throughout civil society which produces the social agreement may produce a new political context. This new, less adversarial and more trusting political context is seen to be fertile ground for the replacement of Australia’s fractured schooling system with a cohesive schooling system for the Australian public — an Australian schooling system — to be managed nationally.

Research Doctorate - Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / In this dissertation, Van Davy makes a case for a cohesive system of schools which can serve the public — both the national interest and individual interests — while directly addressing the current national schooling system’s failure: * to replace, for the entire student cohort...high levels of student boredom with high interest and engaging curriculum and pedagogy; * to replace, for low SES and indigenous students...low levels of learning outcomes, low enrolment levels in senior schooling, and only brief experience of curriculum choice with a curriculum paradigm providing intrinsic value, understanding of pathways from disempowerment to empowerment, curriculum choice from the earliest years, and schooling outcomes which, over time, equal those of the national cohort of students * to replace a citizenry divided in its support for public, church-based, and exclusionary schools with a community united in its support for a socially agreed set of social purposes for schooling and a new curriculum paradigm, one half of which is generated by this set of social purposes * to address a major political issue: social cohesion The proposed new and cohesive system of schools is envisaged to meet the needs - both Common Good and Individual Good - of the citizenry. It will grow from an earlier and pre-requisite national social agreement around a set of political goals which together sketch a preferred future society - these political goals in the hands of education specialists will generate an "essential" curriculum as one of two elements in a new two-tiered curriculum to be followed from the earliest until the latest years of schooling. The second element, occupying the other half of the curriculum from the earliest to the latest years of schooling, will be an elective curriculum designed to encourage all students to pursue their own interests in as much depth as desired. Studies of sectarian studies will be included in the elective curriculum. Davy’s analysis ranges across a number of disciplines, fusing together a number of viewpoints: historical, political theory, educational performance, and educational theory. It searches Australia’s schooling outcomes, identifies low SES and Aboriginal outcomes as major areas of failure, and challenges a number of widely accepted schooling practices. In the process, Davy discovers OECD and ACER data, but little official interest or analysis, concerning widespread boredom amongst Australia’s students. He argues that, in respect of both low SES students and student boredom, system responsibilities such as the nature of Australia’s curriculum, could be just as implicated as concerns for “teacher quality.” Davy’s interest extends beyond the purely educational. He examines the purposes that public and non-public school authorities articulate, as well as reasons parents give for enrolling their children in schools. From this research Davy identifies several issues and suggests that very considerable “choice” in schooling could be found in a different curriculum paradigm, and that both public and non-public schools are deficient when measured against widely-accepted concerns for religious freedom, social cohesion, and fundamental democratic principles. For Davy, a major political issue confronting Australia is the national imperative of “social cohesion.” He searches Australia’s schooling history for evidence of any social agreement around the social purposes of schooling, including more recent attempts to formulate “essential" and “new basics” and “national” curriculum. He concludes that while many educators, and the OECD, refer to the need for a pre-requisite set of social purposes that outline a preferred future society, the politics of schooling has not permitted this to eventuate and, given the absence of this management fundamental, “it is not surprising that schooling systems are shaped by internal logics (ideologies, religions, personalities, internal politics, quest for advantage and/or privilege) rather than wider concerns for the shape of the globe’s and nation’s future, and the advancement of the twins: Common Good and Individual Good.” With these problems laid bare — low SES and indigenous outcomes, student boredom, and social cohesion — Davy addresses all three simultaneously. He draws confidence from contemporary political theorists proposing political processes which engage the public in a “deliberative democracy.” He constructs a surrogate “foundation of agreed principles” which, he deduces, the processes of deliberative democracy might lead the Australian people to construct, then outlines a step-by-step means by which these principles can generate an essential curriculum for all Australian children, while encouraging a full range of choice within an elective stream. The political processes of open collaboration throughout civil society which produces the social agreement may produce a new political context. This new, less adversarial and more trusting political context is seen to be fertile ground for the replacement of Australia’s fractured schooling system with a cohesive schooling system for the Australian public — an Australian schooling system — to be managed nationally.

[Truncated abstract] The aim of this study was to analyse the changing dynamics within and between government and non-government education sectors in relation to the Curriculum Framework (CF) policy in Western Australia (WA) from 1995 to 2004. The Curriculum Council was established by an act of State Parliament in 1997 to oversee the development and enactment of the CF, which was released in 1998. A stated aim of the CF policy was to unify the education sectors through a shared curriculum. The WA State government mandated that all schools, both government and non-government, demonstrate compliance by 2004. This was the first time that curriculum was mandated for non-government schools, therefore the dynamics within and between the education sectors were in an accelerated state of transformation in the period of study. The timeframe for the research represented the period from policy inception (1995) to the deadline for policy enactment for Kindergarten to Year 10 (2004). However, given the continually evolving and increasingly politicised nature of curriculum policy processes in WA, this thesis also provides an extended analysis of policy changes to the time of thesis submission in 2007 when the abolition of the Curriculum Council was formally announced - a decade after it was established. ... The research reported in this thesis draws on both critical theory and post-structuralist approaches to policy analysis within a broader framework of policy network theory. Policy network theory is used to bring the macro focus of critical theory and the micro focus of post-structuralism together in order to highlight power issues at all levels of the policy trajectory. Power dynamics within a policy network are fluid and multidimensional, and power struggles are characteristic at all levels. This study revealed significant power differentials between government and non-government education sectors caused by structural and cultural differences. Differences in autonomy between the education sectors meant that those policy actors within the non-government sector were more empowered to navigate the competing and conflicting forms of accountabilities that emerged from the changes to WA curriculum policy. Despite both generalised discourses of blurring public/private boundaries within the context of neoliberal globalisation and specific CF goals of bringing the sectors together, the boundaries continue to exist. Further, there is much strategising about how to remain distinct within the context of increased market choice. This study makes a unique and significant contribution to the understanding of policy processes surrounding the development and enactment of the CF in WA and the implications for the changing dynamics within and between the education sectors. Emergent themes and findings may potentially be used as a basis for contrast and comparison in other contexts. The research contributes to policy theory by arguing for closer attention to be paid to power dynamics between localised agency in particular policy spaces and the state-imposed constraints.