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School autonomy as ‘the way of the future’: Issues of equity, public purpose and moral leadership

journal contribution
posted on 2016-09-01, 00:00 authored by Amanda KeddieAmanda Keddie
This paper presents interview data from research conducted in two public high schools in the state of Queensland, Australia. The research was concerned with exploring issues of equity and diversity. Both schools had recently converted to ‘independent’ status within a new state policy reform – the Independent Public Schools initiative. This reform was seen as having a significant effect on matters of equity and diversity and so became an important focus of the research. Within current accountability parameters, there were concerns expressed by key personnel at the schools about how converting to an Independent Public Schools was both enabling and constraining student equity in terms of resource distribution and school access, and undermining schools’ focus on their public purpose in relation to imposing an excessive focus on narrow external accountability measures. These concerns bring to light the significance of moral leadership within autonomous schooling environments – shaped as they are by regimes of accountability and competition that can clearly compromise student equity and delimit schooling purposes.

History

Journal

Educational management administration and leadership

Volume

44

Issue

5

Pagination

713 - 727

Publisher

Sage

Location

London, Eng.

ISSN

1741-1432

eISSN

1741-1440

Language

eng

Publication classification

C Journal article; C1.1 Refereed article in a scholarly journal

Copyright notice

2016, Sage

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