ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book explains that change was inevitable, yet the issue of what to do with 'surplus capacity' in schools generated a number of controversies. It describes the changed context before clarifying the significant questions raised for the politics and government of education. The book focuses on clarifying the changing pattern of values, organization and power in this latest phase. Nevertheless comparison with the past will help to illuminate more clearly contemporary patterns in the politics and government of education. Falling rolls raised questions about a number of educational policies. The questions raised by falling rolls and the transformed context of education led to changes in policy and procedure in the system of government of institutional reorganization. The different phases of institutional reorganization illustrate, it is argued, changes in the system of education government.
