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This chapter looks at the experiments of the Aam Aadmi Party led government’s initiatives in building teacher quality for its government schools in the capital city. Outlining the contours of neoliberal influence on Indian education policy and its consequences on teacher quality, the chapter explores the political rationality that governs the case of Delhi. It does this by understanding the changing subjectivities of the school teachers within the educational reforms. The government schools in Delhi have been blamed for worsening school performance especially in student learning outcomes through basic educational tests conducted by various assessment and evaluation surveys. Among other reasons, poor teacher quality has been identified as one of the major causes of this poor performance of government school children. Therefore, gaps were identified in the teacher support system and efforts were made to revamp the system. The chapter brings out in detail how the state’s initiatives in educational reforms have produced paradoxical situations and unintended effects in practice as the state has retained a controlling role even though the reform strategies show a shift toward increasing autonomy and deregulation.

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.

This paper is a historical review of the development of private primary and secondary education in Hong Kong from 1841-2012. The purpose of this paper is to examine the evolving relationship between the state and private schools in Hong Kong.

This paper utilizes sources from published official documents, public data available on government websites, archival documents and newspapers. The authors also carried out a few individual interviews with legislators, government officials and principals who were familiar with the history of private education in Hong Kong.

The colonial Hong Kong Government adopted laissez-faire policy in greater part of its rule until 1970s. The year 1978 marked the period of “state control” until the 1990s when privatization and deregulation emerged as a world trend in the governance of education. The role of government changed to that of “supervision” instead of “control.” Further, it is shown that the change of sovereignty did not avert the trend of decentralization, deregulation and privatization in education which is entrenched in the management of public affairs in human societies.

The findings provides an illuminating look into the development of a society and how it grapples with the fundamental questions of the degree of social control and proper use of political power in a colonial setting.

A study of the published statements of Australian school administrators revealed that two distinctive configurations of power and service relationships are projected in their publically presented images of state school administration as it relates to government and the public. A previous Traditional Centralist‐Unity configuration is now being replaced by an Emergent Devolution‐Diversity conformation. Analysis was directed to (a) understanding the significance of the two images in terms of their function as public communications, and (b) accounting for the shift in the imagery in the light of pressures for change, the way administrators are interpreting change as turbulence, and the projection of counter images incorporating critiques of government school systems. To help organise analysis, it was assumed that images of system administration have the potential to communicate: 1. information, 2. explanation, 3. judgements and value positions, 4. statements designed to advance sectional interests, and 5. themes and persuasive symbols. It was also assumed that the shift in the public images of administrators may be studied in the way their images relate to three basic sources of administrative tension: tensions which arise from problems of meaning, problems of aspiration, and problems of practice.

The purpose of this paper is to promote governance quality by presenting a school of government model.

To this end, seven schools were selected from among 25 outstanding existing schools of government by purposive sampling. Subsequently, these schools were carefully examined and categorized into primary and support processes through a comparative study and the categorical content analysis approach.

The resulting four primary processes of education, research and agenda-setting, discourse-making and networking, and training and cadre-building, and the five sub-systems of schools of government were extracted. The outputs of the school of government model were classified into the three categories of training cadres experienced in public policy and administration, discourse-making and influencing the environment and theorizing. Finally, the extracted categories were approved by the relevant experts through the fuzzy Delphi method.

This paper can contribute to the training of policymakers and policy researchers, as well as to the establishment, and more effective management, of schools of government.

This paper is an effort to identify the difference between government and private primary schools in terms of physical infrastructure, schooling costs and student's performance. Further, the paper assessed the role of physical infrastructure and schooling costs on the performance of students. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

This study used India Human Development Survey (IHDS) data. Bivariate, trivariate, χ2 and ANOVA test, factor analyses and Theil index are used as methods of analyses.

The results present a distinct picture of government and private primary school education in India in terms of physical infrastructure standards, schooling cost and performance of students. In all the three selected indicators, private primary schools remained a forerunner or outperform the government primary schools in India. Besides this, the physical infrastructure and schooling cost found to have effect on performance of students both in private and public schools.

Since government primary schools hold more than 70 percent of total students, there is an urgent need to improve the standards of primary education in these schools. Further, efforts are needed to reduce the gaps between private and public schools in terms of its basic physical facilities and performance of students in the country.

The paper used the IHDS to examine the existing differentials between government and private primary schools. The analysis is purely an original work.

The purpose of this paper is to illuminate the history of national education policy through an interview with one of its significant makers and critics, Lyndsay Connors, a former Australian Schools Commissioner.

The paper occurs as an interview. The text is based on a revised conversation held as an event of the Australian and New Zealand History of Education Conference held at the University of Canberra, on 26 September 2017.

Australian educational policy is peculiarly complex, and apparently “irrational”. This appears especially so in relation to the government, tax-raised, funding of government and non-government schools. A combination of the peculiarities of Australian federalism in relation to education, political expediency, popular exhaustion with the “state aid” debate, the power of entrenched interest groups and the distancing of democratic decision making from the decision-making process in relation to education all play a part.

The originality of this contribution to a research journal lies in its combination of autobiography with historical policy analysis.

This paper aims to trace the evolution of two initiatives – the direct subsidy scheme and independent schools initiative – their genesis, rationale, current form and take‐up rate. It also analyses them as education reforms in terms of policymaking dynamics. The very notion of the term “privatization” will be examined.

The article examines the two school privatization schemes in Hong Kong and Singapore, by putting into perspective a discussion of their policy implications, thereby reflecting on their similarities and differences in their agenda, implementation and implications.

The findings indicate that the DSS and independent school schemes in both Hong Kong and Singapore are in line with the global trends of privatization. It is suggested that the governments of the two places have adopted different approaches in the implementations of their schemes.

The paper shows how the direct subsidy scheme and independent schools initiative represent attempts over the past two decades by the governments of Hong Kong and Singapore, respectively to promote school privatization.

This article suggests an explanation for the complex history of the relationship between the government high school and the Australian middle class. The main elements in the constructing of a framework necessarily include the following inter‐related effects: the historic alienation of the Roman Catholic population from the Australian public school system, federal government interventions into school policy and funding, demographic pressures, the rise of neoliberalism, and the development of distinctive and multiple ethnic populations in the cities. The final section of the article takes as its case study, the history of middle class schooling in the city of Sydney, especially from the mid 1970s to the end of the century. Sydney is an atypical Australian city in many respects, and the study of its middle class and schooling does not stand as representative of the Australian experience. Nevertheless, its great population and significance in the national economy makes its story a crucial story in the national context. Because much of the evidence for this last section derives from the Australian census, it is introduced by a brief discussion of census‐making. Preceding that section of the article is a summary discussion of the significance of social classes in the history of Australian schooling.

The purpose of this study to add to the body of knowledge by examining and discussing school choice trends through the perspective of rational choice theory. This qualitative research explores rationale behind the choice of government schools by middle-class parents in contemporary India. This research will also shed light on the features of the schools that parents consider while making school selection process. Finally, research focuses upon the process and context of decision-making and dynamics involved therein. In other words, the attempt is being made to understand what is the yardstick used by parents to differentiate “good” and “bad” school.

This qualitative research was conducted in two government (central and state) schools in Lucknow, India. The findings of the study are based on 22 qualitative interviews conducted with parents of school-going children, and principal or headmaster of the school. The interviews were unstructured and open-ended and were supported by observations. The observation was not only made of the social setting but also the reaction of the participants. The idea was to develop an emic view of the subject by exploring valid narratives. Pseudonyms were used to report the finding so as to maintain the confidentiality of the research subjects.

This research found that the majority of the parents chose school according to their social class, that is, the lower middle-class parents sent their wards to state government primary school, while the middle-class parents preferred to send their wards to central government school (Kendriya Vidyalaya). This study, therefore, lends credence to the contention that the middle class is a variegated social category and the dynamics of school choice vary across its subcategories. This lends credence to the contention that school choice decision is not solely a utilitarian choice and may be guided by emotion as well.

The originality of the research lies in the fact that the authors are extending the arguments made by the rational choice theory. The theory proposes that individual makes rational decisions motivated by self-interest and people look for the finest product or service and in pursuing them attempt to maximize their overall utility. Derivatively, Indian parents rationally make school choice decisions for their wards, gathering information and weighing various options and subsequently choose the “best” school for their children. This study moves beyond the prevailing perception that public schools offer low-quality education, and nobody attends such schools out of choice.