ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to explore tensions between democracy and bureaucracy in Australian education from a political perspective. It considers in particular the proposition that in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in Australia government school systems were developed as large bureaucratic systems, but in the last decade there has been considerable divergence from this pattern as attempts have been made to resolve a tension between bureaucratic concerns of consistency, economy and efficiency on the one hand, and emerging democratic demands of participatory decision-making and localized autonomy on the other. In addition, it considers more broadly the extent to which tensions and conflicts in Australian education revolve around ideas of democracy and bureaucracy.
