Uppeldi og menntun - 01.07.2013, Qupperneq 75

Uppeldi og menntUn/icelandic JoUrnal of edUcation 22(2) 2013 75
Berglind rÓs magnÚsdÓttir
years 1990–2011. The analysis comprises a) a historical trajectory of neoliberalization
in the government regulation of curriculum material by comparing the relevant Act
from 1990 and the updated Act from 2007, and b) a discourse analysis of how the role
of the National Centre for Educational Materials (NCEM) changed through the course
of this neoliberalization, analysing the discourse in NCEM’s official policy documents
produced by the board and the managers of NCEM 2007–2011.
Prior to the changes in the regulations in 2007, NCEM, which is a state-run and
state-funded publishing house, had the role of producing relevant curriculum
materials for the compulsory school sector in Iceland. In 2007 the educational publishing
sector was marketized and each school now receives state funds to buy educational
materials on the open market, but, as before, materials from the NCEM are offered for
free.
The 2007 Act included privatization in the form of deregulation for private organiza-
tions with respect to many aspects of the sector concerning professionalism, democ-
racy and quality evaluation and contracting some services to for-profit and non-profit
agencies. NCEM still had such requirements as they were retained in a special regula-
tion solely for them. The deregulation for private organizations included removing:
a) the requirement to provide educational materials for all aspects of the compulsory
school curriculum, b) the requirement of professionalism of their managers, c) special
requirements of board member candidates which ensured democratic management,
and d) requirements concerning research and evaluation of their own material. There
was transferral of the professional responsibility of ensuring high quality educational
materials to the market without any concomitant quality insurance of the materials
produced there, with the exception of NCEM. Additionally, some sort of deregulation
was also made to the legal provisions concerning the role and the governing body of
NCEM. The board members now number five instead of seven as there is now one
candidate from the Icelandic Teachers’ Union instead of three. There is no candidate
from academic institutions anymore as this person was replaced by a candidate of
consumers, that is, parents. The board now has a weaker position as a governing body
than before, as it has no decision power over recruitment and its role in policy making
is now less clear than before.
The discourse in recent policy documents produced by the board and the managers
of NCEM in 2007–2011 encompassed a neoliberal dispersion of relationships, val-
ues, operations and concepts. Despite the retained regulations for NCEM, the policy
statement of NCEM was dominated by concepts in a marketized and instrumental
discourse with a heavy focus on the competitiveness in the publishing market. The
discourse in the statement indicates that the main role of the board of NCEM is seen
to be protecting the competitiveness of the company, while the political decisions and
responsibilities concerning the other, non-competitive, factors were less visible.
Overall, the discourse of these policy documents embraced the idea that the invis-
ible hand of the market would produce higher quality and more variety in educational
materials. The regime of ‘truth’ within neoliberalism, i.e. the idea that market compe-
tition will ‘ensure supply and variety (choices) in educational materials’, was present-
ed in the leading provision of the 2007 Act as the sole role of the publishing agencies.