FEDERAL GOVERNMENT INVOLVEMENT IN AUSTRALIAN EDUUCATION 1964–1975

The years 1964–1975 saw an unparalleled expansion of the Commonwealth Government's involvement in Australian education at all levels. At the beginning of that decade the Menzies Liberal‐Country Party Government, which had repeatedly asserted that education was a State not a Commonwealth responsibility, was directly involved only in the university sector. Yet by 1975 Federal involvement had been extended to include not only the creation of a Federal Department of Education and Science but also the assumption of broad responsibility for determining the national priorities and levels of funding in the college, school, technical and further education and pre‐school sectors.