Abstract:
This paper discusses how the Government of New South Wales (NSW) is attempting to enhance the quality of public education by, among other strategies, radically altering management structures and practices. It is shown that, despite some conventional political wisdom, the intervention was mandated and warranted, and will have its greatest effect on NSW State school education in the medium and longer term. The discussion examines the causal context and the Government's agenda for reform. It summaries the work, findings and recommendations of a contracted Management Review using the views of a participant observer, and suggests likely effects in the largest centralised education bureaucracy of the Western World. The final section relates this case study of administrative policy-making to some recent theories in educational administration. It concludes that while the actions of key participants might be interpreted as philosophy-in-action and as personal searches for meaning and immortality through structure, the effects of a restructuring strategy can be interpreted as the organisational equivalent of genetic engineering.