Patterns of schooling in Australia: Toward a historical materialist explanation

Since colonisation, schooling in Australia has developed from patterns of partial and elite provision. These patterns were initially made available at an elementary level and have today grown to levels of mass participation in both primary and secondary schooling. By drawing on distinctive institutional and policy shifts in the historical emergence of mass schooling, this article puts forward an historical materialist explanation that is both retrospective as well as prospective. The intention is to critically appreciate the changing patterns and forms of schooling in ways that reveal their class character. This is done by focusing on the theorisation of the mental and manual division of labour in Marx?s historical materialist theory.