ABSTRACT
A major trend in public policy regarding the provision of educational services is the focus on notions and realities of autonomy. The dominance of elite and corporate types is premised on enabling educational services to remain depoliticised, where breakthrough concessions have been made through politicization and crisis inducing repoliticisation. The provision of education services through forms of autonomy is regarded as a positive feature by international organisations, national governments and within particular knowledge networks. The politicisation expanded in the post-Second World War period with clear investment by successive governments in democratic forms of school autonomy. Government depoliticisation or the ‘delegation’ of issues from politicians in political roles and public institutions to ‘arms-length bodies, judicial structures or technocratic rule-based systems that limit discretion’. Societal depoliticisation or ‘the transition of issues from the public sphere to the private sphere and focuses on the existence of choice, capacity deliberation and the shift towards individualised responses to collective social challenges’.
