This publication examines the links between decentralisation and new means of financing of educational facilities.

Who finances educational facilities? What are the criteria used and how are they applied? Each country has its own system; however, the general trends are towards diversification of funding sources and decentralisation of responsibility. This publication examines the links between decentralisation and new means of financing. Although local control can guarantee greater effectiveness and responsiveness to local needs, central government remains responsible for ensuring access to equity and equality of educational opportunity. The greatest challenge in education funding consists of achieving compatibility between these objectives and technological development.

This book focuses on the financing of formal primary and secondary education in developing nations. The study does not consider the areas of pre-primary, post-secondary, or nonformal education. Financing includes not only monetary inputs to education, but also material, labor, expertise, and land. The study examines the volume, nature, and mechanics of community financing in a range of settings. Policy issues facing governments and those who work with them are presented. Instruments for incentives, guidance, and control of community activities are considered. Specific strategies from different countries are presented and evaluated, along with the importance of monitoring and evaluation. The paper concludes by summarizing the lessons in the context of debate about centralization and decentralization. Sections of the book include: (1) "Communities and Their Characteristics"; (2) "Scale, Motivation, and Nature of Community Financing"; (3) "Mechanics of Community Financing"; (4) "Policy Issues Confronting Governments"; (5) "Government Incentives, Guidance, and Controls"; (6) "Challenges and Risks"; (7) "Monitoring and Evaluation"; and (8) Conclusion. (Contains an 87-item list of references.) (EH)

This publication examines the links between decentralisation and new means of financing of educational facilities.

Some decisionmaking (about educational finance and teacher recruitment) should be handled at the local level and some (about school organization and curriculum) at the regional level. Problems of equity can be addressed through a system of central government grants.

Central governments' supply-side expansions of schooling have not equally benefited all members of society, especially girls, indigenous peoples, tribal groups, disadvantaged minorities, and the poor. Public spending on education is often inefficient, higher education is subsidized at primary education's expense, and costs are becoming insupportable. To tackle such issues, some governments are exploring demand-side financing, whereby public funds are given directly to individuals or institutions on the basis of expressed demand. Use of decentralized, demand-side financing mechanisms (like vouchers and stipends) is common in member countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. After defining several mechanisms, this booklet provides some country examples aiming to increase school enrollment: stipends in Bangladesh, community financing in Chad, targeted bursaries in China and Mexico, voucher schemes in Colombia, assistance to private schools serving poor children in the Dominican Republic and Pakistan, student loans in Jamaica, and community grants in Pakistan. Program success depends on beneficiaries' involvement and support, parents' active participation, private-sector schools' involvement, partnerships with commercial enterprises, flexibility, capacity building, cultural relevance, equity principles, and transparent fund transfer formulas. Contains 47 references. (MLH)

This essential resource provides a roadmap for redirecting school funds in ways that will dramatically improve student performance. Lead author Allan Odden3⁄4one of the nation?s foremost scholars in school finance3⁄4offers a vision of finance reform that will give local schools more control over their budgets and ultimately boost student performance. Allan Odden and Carolyn Busch look at the inefficiencies in current education spending, examine varied approaches to school-based financing, and offer recommendations for restructuring financing systems to meet ambitious reform goals. In addition, they propose ways to make funding more equitable across districts, outline the various elements that make school-based management work, and describe the key roles and responsibilities for the district even in a decentralized system. Financing Schools for High Performance is filled with examples of creative finance structures, formulas, and actual school budgets that support student learning and rigorous instructional programs. It will prove to be an indispensable aid for state, district, and school-level administrators.

Decentralisation and Privatisation in Education explores the ambivalent and problematic relationship between the State, privatisation, and decentralisation in education globally. Using a number of diverse paradigms, ranging from critical theory to globalisation, the authors, by focusing on privatisation, marketisation and decentralisation, will attempt to examine critically both the reasons and outcomes of education reforms, policy change and transformation and provide a more informed critique on the Western-driven models of accountability, quality and school effectiveness. We want to demonstrate that claims of advantages in ‘efficiency’ brought about by privatisation in education are not always supported empirically as proposed by proponents. The book examines the overall interplay between privatisation, decentralisation and the role of the state. The authors draw upon recent studies in the areas of decentralisation, privatisation and the role of the state in education. By referring to Bourdieu’s call for critical policy analysts to engage in a ‘critical sociology’ of their own contexts of practice, and poststructuralist and postmodernist pedagogy, this collection of book chapters demonstrate how central discourses surrounding the debate of privatisation, decentralisation and the role of the state are formed in the contexts of dominant ideology, power, and culturally and historically derived perceptions and practices. The authors discuss the newly constructed and re-invented imperatives of privatisation, decentralisation and marketisation and show how they may well be operating as an educational model of a new global ‘master narrative’— playing a hegemonic role within the framework of economic, political and cultural hybrids of globalization.

This book, which is the eighth volume in the 12-volume book series Globalisation, Comparative Education and Policy Research, presents scholarly research on major discourses in decentralisation, school-based management (SBM) and quality in education globally. This book, which focuses on decentralisation and SBM as a governance strategy in education, presents theoretical aspects of the phenomenon of decentralisation/privatisation and contextualises them within the education research literature. It provides an easily accessible, practical yet scholarly source of information concerning the dynamics of decentralisation and SBM that normally take place when reforms are instituted to decentralize authority and power. Above all, the authors offering the latest findings regarding major discourses in dec- tralisation, SBM and quality in educational systems in the global culture emphasise aspects of that dynamic interactive process (see also Geo-JaJa 2006a; Gamage and Sooksomchitra 2006, Zajda 2009). This dynamic interaction in the process that is implicit in the title of the book is reified by calls for restructuring of schools f- lowing the idea that schools are not promoting human rights, social cohesion and sustainable development. The chapters as a source book of ideas for researchers, practitioners and policy makers in decentralisation and SBM in education contr- ute to the educational literature while enhancing the understanding of the larger dynamics involved in educational reform. It offers a timely overview of current issues affecting decentralisation in education in the global culture.