School autonomy as ‘the way of the future’

Abstract

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.