The Politics of Education in Australia

In Australia there is a strong and widely-accepted belief that education and politics are, or at least should be, separate. Yet education is a thoroughly political enterprise. For the most part, formal education is under direct government control, and it now constitutes an important area of government responsibility. Consequently, the education system can be thought of constituting a separate sub-system within the political system. But to understand some or the other inter-relationships between politics and education it is useful to conceptualize the political and educational systems as separate but interacting systems within the Australian social system. As a field of study and research, the politics of education has been neglected by both educators and political scientists, although very recently this situation has begun to change. A number of important areas for research are outlined and discussed.