Financialisation of schooling in Australia through private debt: a case study of Edstart

Abstract

In Australia, a range of financial services, including education bonds, high interest personal loans and credit card debt, have long been used to help families pay for the cost of schooling. However, innovative financial technology (fintech) solutions are emerging which align with the growth of a lower risk ‘buy now, pay later’ phenomenon. Fintechs claim to expand financial inclusion to more people, particularly when their lending activities are compared to traditional banking services. This paper focuses on Edstart, a fintech edu-business that provides low-risk lending for families managing the cost of school fees. In conducting qualitative content analysis of Edstart’s website and blog, I catalogue its market-making activities and how it is leveraging logics of school choice to create a new education service market in Australia that normalises school privatisation and the payment of school fees. I end this paper with a discussion of how school choice—as a key policy reform of governments—is associated with the rollback of the welfare state and increased levels of individual financialisation. I argue that parent consumers have become increasingly invested in choosing the ‘best’ school for their children, and that this often increases their level of private debt.

The devalued, demoralized and disappearing teacher: The nature and effects of datafication and performativity in schools

“…There is a deeply affective nature to these sayings as the professional experience of teaching in schools coalesce around the personal and social practices of teachers in their homes and in their community. This is made more salient given the often negative public and media narratives about teachers (Baroutsis, 2016;Mockler, 2013Mockler, , 2020, including as a result of broader data-driven logics or pressures (Hardy, 2014), conditions of marketization (Connell, 2013) as well as the complex tensions of the expansion of parental choice in schooling (Hogan, 2021). Consequently, there was a deep sense of embodied concern and apprehension in regard to teaching as a career and disillusionment in relation to education more broadly and this was exacerbated by concerns that those making decisions about education were unaware of the actual work of teachers, with deeply problematic effects upon the future workforce and profession more broadly: I think education is heading in the wrong direction because the people in the ivory tower, the education ministers for the portfolio, are delusional; they're not in the right place.…”