To mark the fiftieth anniversary of NZJES, this invited paper examines possible education policy and policy scholarship futures. It is argued that in order to predict the future, one needs to appreciate how socio-historical struggles of the past have contributed to present education policy settings, and to identify the continuities and discontinuities between the past, the present and possible policy futures. Public policy in New Zealand in the twentieth century was dominated by struggles between social democratic and neoliberal conceptions of the good society. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, neoliberalism remains in the ascendancy. However, the major social, economic and environmental challenges of the future will include climate change and sustainability, technology and work, and population growth, inequality and living harmoniously. The paper considers the role of public education policy in assisting society to frame and address these equitably.