Spreading like wildfire, school autonomy with accountability (SAWA) policies have transformed education worldwide. Rooted in new public management, SAWA is a 'policy bundle' that links greater decision-making at the school level with standardization and monitoring practices like large-scale assessments and performance indicators. As with every…

The aim of this article is to explore how Swedish principals experienced the decentralisation and re-centralisation reforms and how they affected principals' autonomy and decision-making capacity. Data were obtained from three surveys of Swedish principals, carried out in 2005, 2012 and 2019. The results show that principals experienced a high…

Over the course of the twentieth century, Ontario teacher education underwent substantial transformations in terms of policy, jurisdiction and design, which shifted authority from provincially controlled normal schools to more semi-autonomous teachers' colleges and finally to faculties within university campuses. In looking at these top-level…

This paper reports on the findings from a multi-site case study conducted in Australia, Finland and Jamaica which explored the conditions that enabled and constrained the autonomy of school principals. Systematic data collection was carried out in the form of interviews of school principals and the data was analysed using a qualitative approach.…

Privatisation of public services education is a key feature of the Global Education Reform Movement (GERM), where policy convictions, ideas, and strategies are integral to the "spreading and mutating" of reforms. While there are important projects that seek to describe and explain major changes to restructuring, ownership and funding,…

This article focusses on the evolution of the school governance model in Spain since the 1980s. In Spain and elsewhere in Europe, the state's monopoly over education has softened and new forms of educational governance have emerged. This has resulted in the decentralization of decision-making authority to individual schools, municipalities, and…

The article presents an analysis of the developments of higher education laws and regulations in the Western Balkans for the period 1990-2015, with the aim of mapping the regulatory arrangements for the private higher education sector and to explore the relationship between public and private higher education in the region. Based on a conceptual…

In the early 2000s, several post-communist countries launched reforms of university management and governance marked by the influence of a "modernization agenda" for higher education governance, which was promoted by the World Bank, the OECD and the European Commission. However, this "modernization agenda" was employed…

In 2003, the State of Qatar engaged the RAND-Qatar Policy Institute to assist Qatar University, the nation's first and only public higher education institution, with reform of its major administrative and academic structures, policies, and practices. This monograph summarizes that reform effort, which formally lasted from October 2003 through…

Autonomy in Swedish universities is investigated. A new approach to the analysis of the concept of university autonomy and an outline of a theory on university autonomy are presented. Autonomy is viewed as a vital characteristic of higher education; its role in Swedish education throughout history is analyzed. (Author/SF)

An analysis of the changes in Western European higher education in the last decade focuses on three developments, all with origins in earlier periods: the increased pace of international exchange and cooperation, strengthening of regional cooperation and planning, and a reassessment of the role of government in educational planning and governance.…