ABSTRACT

Traditionally, New Zealand Labour governments have occupied the high ground in matters of educational reform. Under previous Labour administrations, the system has undergone its most significant periods of innovation, development and expansion. New educational policies have been promoted and implemented primarily on the basis of their educational value, with fiscal effects receiving only minor, if any, consideration. As the education system has expanded, the role of the state as major funder and provider of education has been largely unchallenged. This situation, however, no longer prevails. Educational policy has been linked so closely to economic policy in recent times that any attempt to analyze the former without regard to the influences of the latter would be inevitably deficient. This raises a number of important issues concerning the inter relationship between the economic, political and cultural spheres of governmental activity. Any analysis of these issues, therefore, must examine contemporary theories of the state and its role in each of these spheres.