Educational policy : politics, markets and the decline of 'publicness'
- UK : Policy Press, july. 2005
Educational policy represents a distinctive example of the changing publicprivate boundary that has characterised Australian public policy over the past 20 years. A values-based analysis is used to describe the trajectory of change, and to illuminate points of tension in governance and accountability relationships. As the values that subtend educational policy have changed, so the policy system (and in particular the governance mechanisms through which funding and regulation are dispensed) has responded in ways that have partly defused values conflict, and partly exacerbated it. It is suggested that forms of 'frame reflection' will be required in order to transcend traditional Australian notions of 'publicness' in education in ways that recognise the growing strength of the private sector in school education, and of competition between institutions in higher education