Corporate Federalism: The Emerging Approach to Policy-Making for Australian Schools

The concept of corporate federalism has been created to indicate the way a national approach to the development of policy for Australian schooling has been utilized by the Hawke Labor government (1983-present) (Lingard, 1991). Negotiated consensus at the Australian Education Council (AEC), the intergovernmental body consisting of the federal and state education ministers, has been used to arrive at these policies and at the same time to circumvent politically the constitutional and financial realities of Australian federalism.