Marie Brennan, Borderlands Cooperative board member, hosts this program. She is joined by Professor Rob Hattam from Adelaide University, who talks about the ways that government policy has been impeding the ability of schools and teachers to carry out good education for several decades.

Rob Hattam argues that we've been infected by a 'GERM', a Global Education Reform Movement. The logics of this include: (i) marketisation and devolution of responsibility to the school level, (ii) standardisation in which schools have to compete to do the same thing (which involves high stakes performance testing), and (iii) a pseudo-science of teaching taking hold that doesn't pass scrutiny.

In this context, Rob proposes that education policy is being corrupted by 'knowledge grifters'.