ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on a shared belief that educational planners and policy writers have a great deal to learn from developments and practices on school sites if they are to provide more effective leadership in policy formation and implementation. Focusing upon inclusive learning initiatives developed in schools as a basis for organisational development and change responds to the problem of the distance between teachers and education bureaucracies. Education authorities continue to draw advice from those who presided over the categorisation and separation of students considered disabled to shape integration policy and practice. Some explanations of the idiosyncratic nature of education policy in Australia are required to avoid confusion. The panel believes that the way in which education authorities manage resources is an important variable in the generation of school cultures, particularly in relation to patterns of student inclusion or exclusion. The categorisation of students for resource delivery, as opposed to the development of programmes which require resourcing, is apposite.
