THE STRUCTURAL REFORM MOVEMENT IN AUSTRALIAN EDUCATION DURING THE 1980s AND ITS EFFECT ON SCHOOLS

The 1980's will be a period of restructuring for Australian education and four factors will be central to this process. 1. School‐based decision‐making will mean Principals are increasingly responsible for managing the education tax‐dollar and accountable to the client community. The School council will be the arena in which educators must explain their actions to and receive approval from parents. 2. New administrative structures, manifested in the formulation of major policy decisions in a consultative arena and the organization of Head Offices along functional lines, means a breaking down of traditional “top down” bureaucracy. Schools and Head Offices will be forced to act collegially rather than hierarchically and Principals will be required to show a new independence and responsibility in management. 3. Regionalization, probably the strongest trend to emerge from the structural reform movement, is a result of the dysfunctions, diseconomies, inefficiency and alienation which set in beyond a certain point in system and geographical size. It is here that the difference between an autonomous school system and a region within a system emerge, and the issue of what functions each locus carries must be resolved. 4. Declining and shifting enrolments, a demographic phenomenon, will mean Principals must learn such new skills and responsibilities as the reduction of staff numbers and the improvement of education in the context of decreasing levels of resources and student numbers. By outlining some of the changes facing educational administrators it is hoped that a calculated and coherent response to the demands of the decade will be possible.