Faculty of Education - Theses

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'Ten years after' : equality and the disadvantaged schools program

Scott, Christine Margaret ( 1987)

In 1973 the Interim Report of the Schols Commission was published providing a blue print for educational policy and planning for the 1970's and 1980's. In particular, the report focussed on the notion of equality in its educational context and the means for the achievement of its expressed ends through specific programs. One such program is the Disadvantaged Schools Program. A full decade of implementation has taken place. This thesis attempts to examine: the theoretical and political warrants of the notion of equality expressed in the Karmel Report, and the effectiveness of its translation into action through the Disadvantaged Schools Program. The focus of the thesis is that the Karmel Report was fundamentally inconsistent in its expression of the concept of educational equality. It examines the contradictions and ambiguities in the Report and the implementation of the Disadvantaged Schools Program against original goals and intentions. The Disadvantaged Schools Program, it is argued, has been undermined by these conceptual inconsistencies, by grants to non-government schools and by the way in which the Program itself came to be administered.