ABSTRACT
Schools meeting these additional criteria most clearly are independent non-government schools and, in fairness to Caldwell and Spinks, their definition and discussion of decentralised school management is confined to publicly funded schools. That said, the decentralisation of responsibility for these four additional functions does not apply exclusively to the nongovernment sector and different types of publicly funded schools exercise varying levels of control over admissions, assessment and information. There is also sufficient diversity in the funding arrangements of different types of government schools to require its inclusion as a distinguishing characteristic when defining decentralised management. Not only does this diversity apply to publicly funded schools in different countries but it can also apply to schools of different types within the same country. In England and Wales, for example, each of the main types of publicly funded schools differ in some degree in their funding and their delegated responsibilities.
