The widespread adoption of school autonomy with accountability reforms in education has generated debate regarding the relationship between autonomy, innovation and accountability. While at the policy design level, these three elements are highly related, several authors highlight the contradictions among them. By analyzing key documents and…

In this opinion piece, the author reflects on some similarities with the National Health Service (NHS) in England, which has a long history of leadership tensions as hospital trusts have tried to wrestle administrative and operational decision-making away from clinicians and consultants.

School districts across the country have long been finding ways to give greater autonomy to schools, theorizing that providing school leaders with authority over the decisions that most directly affect their students will enable them to better meet students' needs and, in turn, improve student outcomes. Charter schools, which are public schools…

Internal governance in West African universities is faced with considerable government participation in the performance of their traditional functions. External governing relationship is a function of government policies of the institutions and their commitments to stakeholders. The pressure to "deliver the goods" in good quality as well…

Improving the quality of charter school authorizing is critical for improving the quality of charter schools and the outcomes experienced by students and communities. As every charter school has an authorizer, improvement in authorizing has the power to be among the most significant catalysts in creating many more high-quality schools and closing…

In this article, we draw upon notions of occupational professionalism and organizational professionalism to interrogate the complex, and sometimes contradictory, teacher learning practices that characterize educational policy enactment. We apply these understandings to the Growing Success assessment and evaluation policy in Ontario, Canada, and in…

In the year 2000, a global agenda to achieve quality education for all children by 2015 was birthed. However, even after the lapse of this period, quality of education remained low in developing countries. In light of this, the World Bank developed a framework for assessing education quality based on six facets, namely, assessment; autonomy;…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to provide national information on school autonomy, leadership and student achievements in Finland. Design/methodology/approach: The paper is a literature review on Finnish studies focusing on school autonomy, leadership and student achievement. The studies have been reviewed on the basis of a content…

The goal of this work is to better understand the institutional changes in the educational systems of the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia. We demonstrate that the educational reforms implemented during the transformation introduced very different institutional arrangements in the four countries, despite the fact that their systems…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to illustrate the dialectical interplay between centralisation and decentralisation forces so as to understand how schools leverage on its autonomous pedagogical space, influence the diffusion of innovations in the educational landscape of Singapore and how a centralised-decentralised system supports (or…

This article aims to explore the evolution of school leadership in Italy toward a model of leadership for learning. Italy is undergoing radical changes in the governance structures (school autonomy and accountability) affecting schools in general, and school principals in particular, based on the way they promote, manage, and monitor the…

Policy discourse officially operates to distinctly influence public perception in an irrevocable and normalising manner. In a Maltese educational scenario of gradual decentralisation and increased accountability, I explore the "effects" of both the global and the local policy discourse of networks and networking on the practising…

The executive summary a case study of two authorizers--Denver Public Schools and the District of Columbia (D.C.) Public Charter School Board--both with strong outcomes in many areas and a high or growing charter enrollment. For each, it summarizes how their approach to authorizing has shaped the way they address the issues that arise as charter…

This report provides a case study of two authorizers--Denver Public Schools and the District of Columbia (D.C.) Public Charter School Board--both with strong outcomes in many areas and a high or growing charter enrollment. For each, it summarizes how their approach to authorizing has shaped the way they address the issues that arise as charter…

This article reviews the impact of discourses on "New Public Management" (NPM) on compulsory schooling in Switzerland during the last two decades and traces its implementation in the Canton of Bern. The analysis suggests that while NPM reformers initially promoted increased school autonomy, the introduction of market elements and school…