University governing bodies, especially academic boards, play a crucial role in policy formation. However, due to the predominance of managerial values over academic values in the policy-making process, a persistent divide exists between policy formulation and implementation. This divide results from the marginalisation of academics and the…

This paper examines school management and policies in Germany and Australia during the COVID-19 pandemic. The study, which is comparative and qualitative, explores the interrelationship between different levels of governance and the responses of teacher unions. The inquiry is informed by the perspectives of historical institutionalism and path…

This paper discusses the findings of a study on the production and enactment of physical education (PE) curriculum policy reforms in an Australian context. Over a decade, significant senior school reforms in Western Australia (WA) interacted with the introduction of an Australian Curriculum that rendered curriculum development dynamic and complex.…

This paper explores the repositioning of state curriculum agencies in response to the establishment of the Australian Curriculum and the key national policy organisation responsible for its development: the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA). I begin with an analysis of the federal Labor government's role in the…

In 2009, the Australian states and territories signed an agreement to provide 15 hours per week of universal access to quality early education to all children in Australia in the year before they enter school. Taking on board the international evidence about the importance of early education, the Commonwealth government made a considerable…

It is suggested that the search to make sense of dominant political ideologies and of their impact on language and literacy curriculum and teaching practice must be deliberately undertaken by teachers and activists if education is to maintain any control over the literacy agenda. (Contains 27 references.) (LB)

Australia's higher education is coordinated by a variety of federal, state, and informal agencies with complex interrelationships and tasks. After a sustained period of growth, the improved administration of higher education has been assigned a high priority by the federal government in the last two years. (MSE)

Explores policy formation in school councils and its implications for the future of educational decision making in Victoria, Australia. Focuses on the importance of agenda construction, utilizing theoretical works of Giddens, Bachrach, and others. Results suggest that human beings produce, reproduce, and transform the social realities enveloping…

Lack of overall planning has caused a malaise in Australian higher education. National policy-making has evolved through changes in the power structure and governments' interrelationships. Results include erosion of university autonomy, trends toward standardization within the system, and budgeting that does not consider individual institutional…

The Australian Tertiary Education Commission (TEC) report, which describes a politically preferred version of the higher education system, is put into historical, economic, and political perspective and criticized for its style and content. The workings of the public agencies concerned with higher education are outlined. (MSE)

This paper reviews some key ideas that have emerged from recent research into administrative practices in education and their relationship to organizational culture. "Culture" is defined as a system of knowledge and conceptions that members of an organization use for giving meaning to and coping with problems that they experience. The…

Two central features of Australian universities are a strong research base and structural organization reflecting a close relationship between teaching and research. Current policy deliberations have produced research policy recommendations for increased centralization, coordination, selectivity, and concentration of research and funding that are…

The process of developing the curriculum and determining educational policy in the schools of the state of Victoria, Australia, has shifted in recent years from being a function of the state bureaucracy to being a matter for collaborative decision-making among parents, students, teachers, administrators, and others involved in education. To ensure…

Developments in Australia's system of higher education and institutional and policy control in the last 20 years are compared with Great Britain's. It is concluded that the current Australian arrangement of authority between state and commonwealth has helped regulate higher education, but some improvements should be made before adaptation in…

Issues in selective admissions in Australia and especially in Victoria are reviewed. Administrative and policy issues are analyzed and some of the consequences of an imbalance between supply and demand are addressed. (MLW)