Faculty of Education - Theses
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ItemThe establishment and operation of school councils in Victorian government high schools, 1973-1978( 1979)In 1976 reforms to the administration of Victorian government schools were instituted in response to pressure from political and education theorists, Education Department officials, parents and teachers. Advocates for reform were critical of a centralized and hierarchically administered education system which, they felt, was unresponsive to the needs of people affected by it - parents, teachers and students. Pressure for reforms to permit more broadly based participation in the administration of public institutions was responsible, between 1965 and 1973, for the granting of teacher autonomy in curriculum development. Finance was also allocated to schools by federal and state governments to enable them to define community needs and develop facilities to provide for those needs. Advisory councils came to be seen as too limited in powers and composition to effectively discharge these new responsibilities. Consequently, in 1973, the movement for reform of school councils commenced with discussions and negotiations between ministers, Education Department officials, representatives of parent, teacher and student organisations and interested groups in schools. These discussions were to result in the reform of the powers and composition of school councils and the election of newly constituted councils late in 1976. This study describes that reform movement and isolates the expectations of the advocates for reform. Interviews with principals and questionnaires administered to all councillors in nine high schools in the Ballarat Regional Directorate enable an analysis of the extent to which those expectations have been fulfilled over two years of operation of a limited sample of reformed councils from 1976 to 1978. Although new councils are now more representative and more actively involved in school administration the study shows that parental interest is still low, councils are not representative of all groups in society, and their powers are still too restrictive to allow them to influence the content and methods of instruction. These findings direct attention to the need for more detailed studies of community expectations for involvement in schools as well as careful analysis of decentralization of school government in view of the failure of the initial representative procedures in school councils.