Class Wars: Money, Schools and Power in Modern Australia

Description

How Australians fund schooling has been a source of bitter political, social and religious division for almost two hundred years. And it remains so. The latest attempt to resolve the issue has been the Gonski Review, a 2012 report urging all jurisdictions to move towards consensus on a needs-based and socially just education system. The review almost immediately encountered forms of political obstruction that, in their class-based character, have their origins in the Menzies era. By examining the principles, the motives and the means of those who, since Menzies, have fought to develop and maintain a class-based education system at the expense of a broader view of social justice, this book explains how and why Australian education policy remains mired in political controversy.

Tony Taylor is Adjunct Professor at the Australian Centre for Public History, University of Technology, Sydney, and at Federation University. For half a century he has worked as an educator in schools and universities in the United Kingdom and Australia, teaching, researching and publishing in the fields of educational politics, history, historiography, history education, higher education policy and comparative education.

Here at last is a clear, comprehensive and compelling account of the decisions that have embedded the inequality of school funding. -- Stuart Macintyre If you've ever wondered how Australian school funding landed in such a mess, you'll find the answer in this lively and meticulous account of political opportunism, ideological zeal and policy commitment. -- Frank Bongiorno