Governing Communities: the Real Possibilty of Parent Choice in Schooling

In Australia since the 1970s there has been an invitation to parents to participate as partners with teachers in their children’s schooling. This invitation, explicitly expressed in the Karmel Report in 1973, has been repeated in many forms throughout the decades of the 1980s and 1990s, leading parents to believe that they are entitled to a say in how their children are schooled. Emanating from this invitation has been a focus on community participation and involvement which culminated in 1996, with an explicit invitation by the Federal government to parents to establish their own nongovernment school if schools in their area did not meet with their perceived needs. This paper explores the notion of real parent choice and community involvement, such as that which culminates in the non-government school establishment process, problematising this involvement and its impact on the schooling process, while examining implications for parents and school communities.