Equity and Influence in the Funding of Schools

This book traces the policymaking processes of the Review of Funding for Schooling (2011), which fundamentally changed school funding policy in Australia. School funding is a key element of any equitable school system. This is because the distribution of government funding for schooling leads to significant differences in the educational opportunities available for individual students, schools, and communities. The book shows that although education policy is often thought about as an abstract process, it is a series of small critical moments that create the policy and progress implementation towards or away from equity in school funding. Sinclair offers a new theory for understanding and then impacting in real-time the policymaking process towards equity in school funding, the “critical moments theory”. In doing so, he identifies where education leaders, teachers, policymakers, scholars, and community members all have the agency to influence policy from conceptualisation to implementation.