Abstract
The 1980s were a watershed for education policy. Margaret Thatcher became Prime Minister in the United Kingdom and Ronald Reagan was el3ected President of the United States. Both leaders were instrumental in applying neoliberal prescriptions to economic and social policy, including education. The latter was now to be exposed to the concept of the free market regulation, justified in terms of greater consumer choice and competition between education institutions. In New Zealand, the same decade was to see the advent of radical education reform ushered in by the Picot Report and Tomorrow’s Schools. All this was to provide a context, and indeed the spur for a fresh approach to the study of education policy across the globe: a vital project in which John Codd was to play a leading role.