ABSTRACT
One of the notable features of second wave devolution reforms, if we accept Max Angus’s (1990) argument that the federal initiatives during the 1970s constituted the first, is how very different they were in intent and purpose. Using borrowed rhetoric from the heady days of the Schools’ Commission Innovations and Priority Schools Programs,1 and appealing to the energies of the first wave reformers, devolution the second time around had a very different agenda for Western Australian schools. While each set of reformers talked about devolution and grassroots participation in decision-making within schools, a significant feature of the second wave of reform was a severing of educational means and ends, a shift toward measured output, and a dramatic reorganizing and tightening of the accountability structures for schools. In Western Australia these turbulent developments were punctuated by the most dramatic and momentous protests and strikes in decades by school administrators, teachers and students.
