Class Wars

How Australians fund schooling has been a source of bitter political, social and religious division for almost two hundred years. And it remains so. The latest attempt to resolve the issue has been the Gonski Review, a 2012 report urging all jurisdictions to move towards consensus on a needs-based and socially just education system. The review almost immediately encountered forms of political obstruction that, in their class-based character, have their origins in the Menzies era. By examining the principles, the motives and the means of those who, since Menzies, have fought to develop and maintain a class-based education system at the expense of a broader view of social justice, this book explains how and why Australian education policy remains mired in political controversy.