Governing Australia's Public Schools: Community Participation, Bureaucracy and Devolution

In the face of demands for greater democracy, efficiency and accountability, public education structures that have been in place for over a century are undergoing a major reconstruction. These demands have converged into forces for devolution to school communities of responsibilities for aspects of school governance that were previously the preserve of centralized state bureaucracies. For over a century these same demands underpinned the establishment of highly centralized structures and processes for governing public education systems in Australia.