Review: Education Policy in the Media: Public Discourses on Education (Thomas, 2005)

Critical discourse analysis identifies how schooling and teachers are represented in the media, and how education policy shapes, or is shaped by media discourse.

Although the book, focuses on the Queensland Curriculum Review, known as the Whiltshire Review (1992-1994), Thomas highlights several national issues regarding the influence of media in education discourse and it is easy to see its current relevance.

Thomas’s investigation adopts the Fairclough approach to Critical Discourse Analysis, analysing the linguistic characteristics of media texts as well as discussing the more complex relationship between governments as producers of education policy, media as distributers and the public as consumers.

Education policy is becoming heavily “mediatised”, as government has increasingly utilised the media to shape the education debate in the public, to gain support for their policies for education reform. Blackmore and Thorpe (2003) found that in the 1990s it became popular for “governments to manufacture consent for change by mobilising popular opinion about education in ways which support radical reform toward more conservative structures”, therefore much of the media discourse was highly critical of the current education structures.
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The media, in the process of these debates, fed into popular (mis)understandings about public and private education (Blackmore & Thorpe, 2003, p.582). Some of the popular misconceptions promoted by the media on the Australian education system are:

• Private schools are better quality than public schools, in articles such as Spending billions is the wrong fix for our failing schools (The Australian, 22 Feb 2013) which is arguing against the Gonski funding; and, Private schools provide best academic results (SMH, 5 Dec, 2011) which has been disproved by NAPLAN results and research (Private school students have no academic edge over students in the public system, study finds, ABC, 14 Apr 2015; Fourth study this year confirms private schools no better than public, The Age, 10 Nov 2014).
• The quality of teachers is poor, in articles such as Poor teachers, poor results (The Australian, 31 Jan 2010) and, Low skilled teachers ‘a crime’ says Christopher Pyne (The Australian, 10 Mar 2015). Additionally, teachers have poor literacy, in articles such as Can’t write, Can’t Spell (The Age, 26 Feb 2007). Not helped by the popular joke, "I couldn't get into [physiotherapy] so I went into teaching" reinforced by governments who are aiming to gain support for education reform (in this case, teacher education policy reform; SMH, 25 Mar 2016). Public commentator, Jane Caro, criticises the government's view, “If politicians had set out 30 years ago to systematically destroy the morale of the teaching profession, they couldn’t do a better job” (The Drum, 14 June 2016).

Thomas’s work on media discourse of education policy highlights some worrying trends that are evident in articles a decade later. The book (Thomas, 2005) and articles (Blackmore & Thorpe, 2003, and Thomas, 2011) discuss the negative perception of public education and teachers, often purported by the government to gain public support for their policy reforms, and are thought-provoking reads.

Blackmore J. & S. Thorpe (2003) Media/ting Change: the print media’s role in mediating education policy in a period of radical reform in Victoria, Australia, Journal of Education Policy, 18: 6, 577-595.
Thomas, S. (2011) Teachers and public engagement: an argument for rethinking teacher professionalism to challenge deficit discourses in the public sphere, Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 32:3, 371-382.
Thomas, S. (2005) Education Policy in the Media: public discourses on education, Post Pressed.