ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the framing narratives of the 'big stories' of the global and Australian policy context in which policy enactments at Grange High School are enfolded. The chapter conceptualises policy as intervention, discourse and text. It explores the discourses that construct contemporary policy and the role of international organisations which disseminate these discourses, thus contributing to parallel policy formation and policy borrowing between nation states. The Australian Policy Handbook defines policy as 'an authoritative statement by a government about its intentions built on theories of the world'. The authors of the handbook point out that 'good policy ideas are assessed for their emotive fit as much as against criteria of logic, consistency, intellectual rigour or political coherence'. Within the Australian context federal government intervention in the 'lived experience' of teachers, students and parents in schools is relatively new because of the structure of the Australian federal political system, which designates education as a state and territory responsibility.
