The Governance of Education in Australia: Centralization and Politics
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/eb009643 |
| Published date | 01 January 1970 |
| Date | 01 January 1970 |
| Pages | 17-40 |
| Author | W.G. WALKER |
| Subject Matter | Education |
THE JOURNAL OF EDUCATIONAL ADMINISTRATION 17
VOLUME VIII, NUMBER 1 MAY, 1970
The Governance of Education in Australia:
Centralization and Politics
W. G. WALKER*
(Paper read to American Educational Research Association, Division G,
Minneapolis. March 1970.)
The centralization of power in the state and federal legislatures
and in their associated professional bureaucracies is a notable
feature of both educational and general political decision making
in Australia. In this paper "governance" refers to the process of
exercising authoritative control, "politics" to public policy
making and its resolution. Formal public participation in Aus-
tralian educational decision making is shown to be minimal,
being limited to representation by elected members in the state
and federal legislatures. There is no local governmental struc-
ture or tax for education. The existing structures and their
origins are explained. Two hypotheses derived from the work of
Iannaccone are tested. The first states that the longer educa-
tional issues remain unsolved in the extra-legal social networks
and lower level legal areas the more likely it is that decisions on
these questions will be made by central government departments
and agencies. The second states that the more that questions of
educational policy are resolved by central departments and
agencies the more likely it is that educational policies will
become undifferentiated from other kinds of politics or from
politics as relating to other policy areas of government. An
examination of political developments in the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries supports both hypotheses.
INTRODUCTION
Iannaccone1
claims
that
in
U.S.A.
one is no
longer
required
to
apologize
for
talking about
the
politics
of
education.
It is
this
writer's
experience
in
Australia
over
the
last decade
or so
that
although
he has
certainly
not
been
apologetic
for
raising
the
issue
PROFESSOR W. G. WALKER, the editor of this Journal, is Professor of
Education and Dean of the Faculty of Education at the University of New-
England. A graduate of the Universities of Sydney and Illinois, Professor
Walker is a Fellow of the Australian College of Education and General Editor
of the University of Queensland Press series in Educational Administration
and Organization. He acknowledges the assistance of DR. G. S. HARMAN of
the Australian National University in the preparation of this paper.
18 Journal of Educational Administration
in public lectures2, 3, 4, he has had more than his fair share of
criticism for doing so. While the climate is changing rapidly, es-
pecially among members of teacher and parent pressure groups,
there is a significant proportion of teachers, for example, who re-
fuse to face up to the reality of Blondel's warning that,
It is simply unrealistic or naive to imagine that social or econ-
omic change could be achieved, in any society, without
political means. Whether we like it or not, men have to be
convinced, politics have to be debated and adopted, laws have
to be passed.5
For years Australian scholars have revelled in examining the
school as a historical animal—but always at a safe chronological
distance. Only now is the school being subjected to close behav-
ioral scrutiny as a social, and to a lesser extent, as an economic
animal. As a political animal, however, it is being ignored almost
as effectively as the now extinct yellow-bellied bandicoot. Some
useful books6 and papers7, 8 have been published, but as far as is
known, only one graduate course specifically in the politics of
education has been introduced in an Australian university—and
that at the University of New England as recently as this year.
Certainly, we have no books to compare with Kimbrough's Pol-
itical Power and Educational Decision Making or with Campbell
and Layton's Policy Making for American Education. Nor can we
boast such fascinating published case studies as those reported in
the English context—for example, Berg's Risinghill: Death of a
Comprehensive School and the Students and Staff of Hornsey
College of Art's The Hornsey Affair.
Verily we are babes in the wood as far as the politics of edu-
cation are concerned—and this is a country where the centraliz-
ation of power in educational decision making is probably more
marked than in any other major English-speaking nation. This
centralization of power in the state and federal legislatures and in
their associated professional bureaucracies is a constant source of
amazement and complaint by visiting educators9, 10, 11—and, it
must be said, a constant source of pride and satisfaction to many
Australians.
This power is inextricably woven into the warp and woof of
general political decision making. The federal government must
decide upon the allocation of funds among such diverse needs as
high school science laboratories, universities, government shipping
lines,
FIII bombers and lighthouse services. The state govern-
ments must decide upon the allocation of funds among such areas
as police, railways, housing, hospitals and schools. Education is
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