National education policies reference a representation of an imagined subject of schooling derived from a broader social imaginary that underpins the projects of the state, in a process which I refer to here as 'the logic of policy'. I offer an account of how this representation is derived and propose three conceptual elaborations of this view. I then consider ways in which shifts occur in this social imaginary, especially at moments of substantial social, economic and political change, and ways in which these shifts are communicated. This imagined subject is referenced in processes involving both state and non-state entities, mediated by historically specific governance instruments.The main part of this paper offers an illustrative historical example of the working of this logic in the context of the Cape Colony and apartheid South Africa, where the instrument of governance that was central to this process was the commission of enquiry. The concluding section briefly considers whether the logic of policy works in much the same way in a contemporary policy environment, where new policy technologies have largely displaced the commission of enquiry.