ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an account of the relation between non-government schools and public administrations in Australia in the past 200 years. Educational administration is about providing a better future. The future, however, demands survival. For the non-government schools, survival requires a distinctive identity in the face of shrinking budgets, internal and external scrutiny, and a growing convergence with the government school sector. The Roman Catholic community protested the exclusion of their schools from the public purse and decided to fund their schools from their own resources. Major challenges confronted Australian schools in the 1950s and 1960s and had a serious impact on the provision of schooling in the non-government sector. The expansion in the number and kind of schools in the non-government sector has resulted in a drift in the number of students away from the public schools and towards the non-government schools.
