180
G O V E R N I N G D E C E N T R A L I Z E D E D U C A T I O N S Y S T E M S
9.2 National Governance and Local Accountability
P A R T T H R E E : T H E F I V E S T A N D A R D S O F D E C E N T R A L I Z A T I O N I N E D U C A T I O N
approve school curricula that in 90 percent of the cases are determined by centrally issued national curricula, the compact is still largely determined by the government, with all its implications for accountability systems. The same ambiguity applies to all other components of the compact, such as financing or service provision standards.
The point here is the fact that sharing responsibility between governments and lo-cal self-governments is not a simple matter of authority distribution. In decentralized systems, the increasing responsibility of local self-governments does not reduce the responsibility of the central government that follows from public financing. However, if public money is deployed to local self-governments for education, it is the local-self government that should be held accountable for the service that it provides through its schools. (In ad-dition, the overall systems designed to hold local self-governments accountable are not operated by ministries of education in most cases.)
Major Management Functions with a Systemic Character
Decentralization deploys all management functions either to the schools or to self-governments, or to agents operating on behalf of the self-governments. The primary cycle of management is that within the schools; this is the management of all processes that transform all inputs into educational outcomes. Therefore—as discussed earlier—school management performs the primary functions. The scope of management functions performed by local and regional self-governments in connection with managing local school network is narrower; it performs only a limited number of functions. However, the scope of these functions varies from country to country. For example, there are countries (or self-governments within the countries) that take advantage of economies of scale by managing the school facilities directly. In other countries, or other self-governments within the same country, the schools do it themselves.
Governance at the national level creates and operates the systemic frame for per-forming management functions at the lower levels. Directing, that is, one of the five classic management functions, is a specific organization-connected activity. Directing the administration of a local self-government, a county pedagogical institute, or a regional inspectorate—apart from sometimes centrally set qualification requirements and selec-tion procedures—has very little systemic relevance. However, all the other four classic management functions compose major subsystems that are subject to major changes in the course of decentralization.
The last function, controlling, has two major subsets that are typically separated in decentralized systems: financial audit and legal control on the one hand, and external quality evaluation on the other. While not denying the importance of financial audit and legal control, since the related institutional and procedural settings embedded into
182
G O V E R N I N G D E C E N T R A L I Z E D E D U C A T I O N S Y S T E M S
from the theme of this reading; in contrast, professional evaluation deserves a separate chapter (see Chapter 12). There are two other management functions with a strong systemic character that will be briefly discussed in this chapter: planning and “staffing,”
that is, human resource management in education. Although at an organizational level, financial management is considered to be part of overall management, at the systemic level, it is a distinct functional governance instrument that also will be introduced in a separate chapter (see Chapter 10).
Figure 9.3
Governing Connected Management Cycles
National Governance and Local Contexts
The underlying logic of responsibility sharing with the primacy of local management cycles has widespread implications. In most cases, governors of education at the national level are reaching out to service providers by influencing or changing the behavior of other actors in local accountability relationships, such as local self-governments or par-ents, who may have a direct impact on how schools are operating. Likewise, there always will be instruments at the disposal of central government agencies by which they can directly attempt to influence the behavior of service providers, such as school directors or teachers. However, as local accountability relationships are evolving in the course of decentralization, the behavior of all local actors will be increasingly determined by the dynamics of these local relationships.
With this, we arrive at the most difficult aspect of governance in a decentralized sys-tem. Central governments are not simply working through local actors; they are working
Governance of education
Central government agencies
Manging local school network
Local and regional self-government
School management cycle
Inputs Processes Outputs
P A R T T H R E E : T H E F I V E S T A N D A R D S O F D E C E N T R A L I Z A T I O N I N E D U C A T I O N
through local “force fields” that determine the latitude within which individual actors can consider their goals. In other words, as a result of decentralization, the behavior of local actors becomes “locally referenced.” A frequent and frustrating experience for the staff of ministries of education in decentralized Central and Eastern Europe is the fact that local contexts regularly overwrite central initiatives. This is especially obvious in Hungary, where actors at all levels have been living together uncomfortably in a decentralized system for two decades, and where the results of the growing number of policy evaluations are reporting a large number of implementation failures. But even in centralized systems the experts of central government agencies are often well aware that measures going against the grain of widely-shared views, sentiments, and interests (for example, anti-discrimination measures) are easily sunk by local “implementation.” There are countries (e.g., most of Scandinavia) where the willingness of local actors to behave in accordance with central government expectations is high, and there are others where this is extremely low. Although this matter is connected to the problem of willingness to comply with the law, it is much broader and much harder to grasp. However, an analysis of the cultural and attitudinal context of governance and management is far beyond the scope of this book. Therefore, we should acknowledge the fact that the appropriate instruments for central governance cannot be designed without understanding how the dynamics of local relationships and interactions interfere in the “chain of command”
of governance of education in a decentralized system. This is why opening the “black box” of extremely diverse local contexts through empirical research, as well as through policy and program evaluation, is essential.
If it is the locally constructed context that determines the latitude for the behavior of individual actors, central governance should adjust its instruments to the “compliance spirit” of local actors. Therefore, in cases and in countries when and where central initiatives may meet resistance or low willingness to comply, or they clash with deep, vested interests, central governance should use the dominant and intelligent instruments (Radó 2008).
Dominant governance instruments are those that have the potential to overwrite or change certain components of the local context within which actors are interpreting central initiatives from their own perspective. These are the instruments that, in terms of their impact, are strong enough to overrule the reasons for low “compliance spirit.” These instruments are often called “high stakes” instruments, such as combined school leav-ing and higher education entrance examinations that—because of the high stakes for students—impose a huge impact on teaching in general secondary education. However, even in countries with a low “compliance spirit”—in rare cases—low stakes and soft instruments can also be dominant; for example, persuading a critical mass of educa-tionalists about something may increase their willingness to comply.
Intelligent governance instruments are those that are open and flexible enough to easily adjust to the local context and that are able to learn. These instruments serve their purpose
184
G O V E R N I N G D E C E N T R A L I Z E D E D U C A T I O N S Y S T E M S
overwrite them. The best example for potentially intelligent governance instruments is the work of inspectors performing the external evaluation of schools. There are two fea-tures of inspection that may make it intelligent. The first is the underlying standards for inspection and the methodology that inspectors use that are open enough to incorporate contextual factors. It implies a high level of discretion and a high level of legitimacy.
The other condition is the perpetual organizational accumulation of “whatever works”
type of knowledge, that is, learning about what works in various contexts.
Although the lack of empirical research and policy evaluation does not allow us to judge the compliance of informal local networks in South Eastern Europe, a large amount of anecdotal information and personal observations suggest that the underlying concern for building dominant and intelligent instruments in these countries is no less valid in Slovakia or Hungary. For example, when a group of Bulgarian experts of various fields developed their mid-term priorities for education sector decentralization measures in 2008, they all agreed to focus on expanding the scope of school autonomy, because of the serious weaknesses in the long route of accountability relationships.