This paper presents the beginning of an analysis of the Education Department of Western
Australia's Local Area Education Planning (LAEP) Framework, which has involved school
amalgamations, closures and sometimes the emergence of middle schools. Policy making is
an intrinsically political activity; a way by which governments prescribe social change. At the
micro level of policy implementation it is likely to be sharply contested as agents
(administrators, teachers, parents and students) struggle to understand and influence the …