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Contracting resources in education : a comparative study of the politics of educational planning and policy making in England and Australia

Planning and policy-making may be represented in one dimension along a continuum from the technocratic to the political mode and on another dimension as the cyclical process of policy formulation, adoption and implementation. Within this matrix the roles of administrator, planner and policy-maker can be identified and divided into steps. There should be constant interaction among planners, policy-makers and administrators and, depending on the issue, varying degrees of overlap of function. This derived planning/policy-making paradigm is applied to the problem of contracting resources for education. In contrast to the expansion of the previous two decades, education systems in several Western nations in the 1970s faced economic recession, disenchantment with the education process and declining enrolments. The problems created by these changes in primary and secondary education in England and Australia are analysed in the areas of recurrent and capital expenditure and particularly in their impact on teacher education, staffing, curriculum, accommodation and governance. Attention is focussed on the policy solutions developed especially in response to declining enrolments at the national level from the early 1970s to mid-1980 in England and to late 1980 in Australia. Case studies are made of the Inner London Education Authority and the Australian Capital Territory Schools Authority. Evidence for the hypothesis that governance is centralised in a contraction situation is ambivalent. There is limited evidence to support the hypothesis of a three stage reaction to declining enrolments: avoidance of recognition of the problem, a spirited defence of vested interests and a planned response to minimise the threats and use the opportunities provided. In neither England nor Australia had comprehensive policy responses to declining enrolments emerged by 1980. The thesis concludes with policy recommendations for the A.C.T. Schools Authority in the 1980s.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:630546
Date January 1981
CreatorsPrice, B. J.
PublisherUniversity College London (University of London)
Source SetsEthos UK
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeElectronic Thesis or Dissertation
Sourcehttp://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/10019454/

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