ABSTRACT
In the past 15-20 years, policy initiatives in the United Kingdom have been introduced with the intention of redefining the individual’s relationship with the welfare state. In many fields of public policy, such as health, housing and education, the relationship has been readjusted by transferring powers from ‘producers’ to ‘consumers’ and by changing the nature of accountability. New approaches to management and the introduction of market-orientated policies have been instrumental in this development. In education, devolved management of schools aimed to secure a new form of educational governance by redefining roles and relationships amongst the various interested parties. These include central government, local education authorities, individual schools, teachers, parents and pupils. Devolved management of schools (DMS) is intended to reduce the administrative, financial and political influence of local education authorities by making schools more responsible to parents as ‘consumers’. It features four main policy themes:
● increasing competition among schools in attracting pupils, with school budgets largely determined by the number of pupils at the school
● promoting lay, especially parental, participation in school decision-making ● enhancing teachers’ and other educational professionals’ accountability to
parents ● greater delegation of decisions to school level, with local education
authorities adopting a strategic and enabling role and providing only a small number of services to schools.
