Safe Schools: Challenges to Moral Panic and Risk Society Theories: The Politics of National School Educational Policy

With the advent of the Australian National Curriculum and risk society, moral panics associated with school education moved to a higher level. The 2016 Safe Schools moral panic well illustrated this, it also showing the extent the Christian Right has followed these developments, through its traditional leverage on school education policy, to now reaching into the Prime Minister’s office. With the Safe Schools moral panic, the Australian school curriculum reached new levels of politicisation, at the same time providing fresh insights into the interplay of school education curriculum, moral panic theory and risk society theory.