Navigating the neoliberal tensions during the COVID-19 pandemic- IB practices within Singapore, Hong Kong & Taiwan

Abstract

International Baccalaureate (IB) schools in Asian societies such as Singapore, Taiwan, and Hong Kong have experienced a quick rise since the turn of the millennium, propelled by the globalisation and marketisation of education, proliferation of cosmopolitan imaginations associated with international education, but saliently framed in the vocabulary of neoliberalism. With the increasing adoption of international curricula into local and national education systems in the Asia–Pacific region, IB has become a reference point and local brand for international quality education and policymaking. This paper is part of a comparative and qualitative study of varying IB practices and implementational conditions in the Asian contexts of Singapore, Hong Kong, and Taiwan that has witness phenomenal growth. This growth has also led to claims that elite schools in Asian Pacific regions adopt IB to increase their international competitiveness and stand out from other local competitors associated with the neoliberal market agenda. The empirical illustration from the study within the three contexts reflected an evident tension in the neo-liberal market agenda, particularly during the Covid-19 pandemic. While navigating a competitive globalised market, the schools had shown a more measured approach in guiding their practices, particularly during the pandemic but were still balancing the educative and the market rationale. Our analysis indicated that although leaders and teachers were trying to shift away from a neoliberal mandate to rethink their aims of the curricula approach and the individual’s place within their education systems, this has been a challenge due to the existing frames and pressures of the local education market. Schools were intent on moving towards a more balanced approach towards excellence as schools paid more attention to the educational goals, but the competitive market pressures slowed this. Schools demonstrated encouraged collaborative approaches to developing curricula, accessed common platform for shared training, and teachers leveraged each other for support, but this was done informally and through personal networking opportunities. Despite the pandemic appearing to unsettle the neoliberal hegemony, ushering in a kinder, more collective, socially just politics within schooling and education across the IB schools in adherence to its core philosophy, the tensions of the neo-liberal market impact on policies and practices are still at the forefront and very much visible in the three varying contexts.