THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE COMMONWEALTH GRANTS COMMISSION FOR EDUCATION POLICY‐MAKING IN WESTERN AUSTRALIA
| Pages | 83-94 |
| Published date | 01 February 1974 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/eb009714 |
| Date | 01 February 1974 |
| Author | P.J. JONES |
| Subject Matter | Education |
THE JOURNAL OF EDUCATIONAL ADMINISTRATION
VOLUME XII, NUMBER 2 OCTOBER, 1974
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE COMMONWEALTH GRANTS
COMMISSION FOR EDUCATION POLICY-MAKING
IN WESTERN AUSTRALIA
P.
J. JONES
This case study investigates the contention that the Commonwealth
Grants Commission, through the methods and procedures it employed to
determine the special grants it recommended for payment to Western
Australia, was influential in education policy formulation in that State.
Although certain benefits were gained for education in relation to the level
of finance expended on it, the State surrendered a considerable degree of
its control over the direction which educational expenditure could have
taken because it depended on the special grants to balance its budget
during its period of claimancy.
INTRODUCTION
From the time of its establishment in 1933, the Commonwealth Grants
Commission was empowered under Section 96 of the Commonwealth
Constitution1 to determine and to recommend the payment of special grants
to the claimant States of South Australia, Tasmania and Western Australia.
The special grants were made in an attempt to raise the financial resources of
the claimant States to the level at which their governments could provide
services, such as health, law, order, and social services to a standard
comparable with those of the non-claimant States. In an effort to determine
the special grant which each claimant State should receive, the Commission
examined the finances of the claimant States in comparison with those of the
other States and particular attention was given to the severity of taxation, the
scale of social services provided (which included education), the maintenance
of capital equipment and the budget position.
The special grants were made in a lump sum to a claimant State which
could then decide the way in which they were to be spent, and to that extent,
the grants were not earmarked for specific use in the same way, for example,
as the matching grants for the financing of tertiary education. But, an analysis
of the way in which the Commission determined the special grants, its
method of investigation, the interaction which occurred at its hearings
between the representatives of the Commonwealth and State Treasuries, and
MRS.
PATRICIA JONES is Acting Senior Lecturer in Educational Administration at the
Western Australian Institute of Technology. She holds the B.A. degree and Dip.Ed. of
the University of Western Australia, the Dip.Ed.Admin. from the W.A.I.T. and the
degree of M.Ed.Admin.(Hons.) of the University of New England. She took up her
present position after extensive teaching and administrative experience with the
Education Department of W.A.
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