Macfarlane, Kym Majella (2006) [ QUT Thesis ]

This thesis examines an instance of the failure of a parent-led bid for a new local school in Queensland at the end of the last millennium.

This parent-led and school-endorsed initiative failed despite a policy climate that appeared actively to encourage such initiatives from government funded school communities.

The work shows that the parents of Sunnyvale College, (a pseudonym), were both encouraged by the policy environment and discouraged by the response given to their new schooling initiative, from being full educational partners in the process of the schooling of their children.

The unanticipated failure is investigated as a case study of parent engagement set against a background of relationships between government and particular educational stakeholders in that time and place.

It examines how these relationships are played out in this context and what the implications of this are for contemporary relationships of this type.

Download the thesis at http://eprints.qut.edu.au/16322/1/Kym_Macfarlane_Thesis.pdf