ABSTRACT
While decentralisation is recognised as a taken-for-granted international trend, its uncritical acceptance as a concept can fail to appreciate its distinctive focus in different educational systems. By drawing upon descriptions of reforms in the compulsory school sector in a wide range of national settings, this chapter illustrates this variation. Using ideas about allocations, mechanisms and mixed economies discussed in Chapter 3, the first section argues that moves towards decentralisation in different countries can be grouped into two sets, one of which has a principal focus on professionalism and the other on regional decentralisation. The second main section uses the matrix on distribution of responsibilities from Chapter 2 to describe change in each of the countries under the four headings: curriculum and assessment, human and physical resources, finance and access. The ideal types-command, market, college and collective-explored in Chapter 3 are then used in an analysis of the direction of change. For each country we also discuss the reforms in terms of our evaluation criterion of autonomy, accountability, efficiency and equity.
