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Local financial management systems, an area of current interest, is reviewed, and the benefits and pitfalls associated with financial devolution described. Specific examples of experiences are given from local education authorities, and recommendations are made about the setting up of any such new system.

The Education Reform Act and, in particular, the Local Management of Schools will demand different skills, understanding and differing roles of senior management in educational establishments. This text draws on written assignments and experience of teachers and headteachers who piloted an MBA programme, designed specifically for senior teachers. Topics such as customers, product, price, promotion and the notion of teachers as a salesforce are unfamiliar to educators. They draw attention to the kind of strategic planning which will take place in schools as they take over responsibility for delegated budgets. All of this is new territory for the majority of state schools and this collection hopefully provides a useful resource.

In his article “The Management of Schools in Ncw South Wales (1848–1886): Local Initiative Suppressed”, E. J. Payne has argued that “The distinctly centralised pattern of educational administration did not evolve but was deliberately imposed, acceded to, and perpetuated, by reasonable people with varied motives, but their compromise was such that it has restricted the exercise of local initiative and the development of local institutions”. The purpose of the present article is to understand Wilkins and his employers' administrative problems and decisions rather than to judge them. The complexity of the historical situation in which they found themselves, the range of their possible decisions, and their day to day dealings with teachers and Local Boards as contained in archival records form the basis of the story told. This is mainly a story of the failure of many of the Local Boards to fulfil their responsibilities and the assessment by the Central administrators of the circumstances of their educational enterprise in country areas. To illustrate the financial, administrative, and geographical problems facing both the central and the local Boards a case study which is both typical and a‐typical of Local Patron performance is presented.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the Swedish National Agency for Education’s launch of the nationwide Lgr11 curriculum reform and how local education authorities (LEAs) in one municipality translated and responded to the National Agency’s directives.

This paper presents empirical data from a qualitative study of documents and interviews using the analytical perspective from Scott (2001, 2008) to explore regulative, normative and cultural-cognitive aspects of the National Agency’s communications. To analyse the local translations made by LEAs at the central municipal level, analytical categories of assimilation, loose coupling and transformation were used.

The overall results show that the National Agency primarily communicated its policy instructions to LEAs using normative and cultural-cognitive arguments and directives. The lack of sharper regulative directives, such as for division of labour, decision making, mandates and developmental roles, reduced the potential for LEAs to become influential actors in organising local implementation. An analysis using the assistance of assimilation categories, loose coupling and transformation of the paper also shows that LEAs need system support to accomplish more innovative middle-tier translations through elements of loose coupling and transformation – to become catalysts for school system improvement.

The research is designed to understand actions and interpretations within specific institutional, organisational and social settings.

This paper contributes to former findings by offering a novel perspective for understanding policy translation and the role of middle-tier intermediaries in decentralised education systems.

In New South Wales the bitter religious differences of the early nineteenth century combined with the Influence of Liberalism willed for the establishment of a national educational system which provided a compromise between the interests of warring pressure groups. The adoption of the Irish National System and its administration by the authoritarian William Wilkins ensured that the local management of schools should not develop. In contrast to England, New South Wales developed a highly centralized school system in which local initiative was severely discouraged.

Examines the construction of the funding formula, following the 1988 Education Act, used to determine the levels of devolved budgets in three English local education authorities (LEAs). Explains that, in each LEA, a team was formed to determine the funding formula. Also explains that, as most schools pre‐local management of schools (LMS) only kept aggregate records showing the cost of education at the levels of primary/secondary sectors rather than individual school level, the LMS teams faced serious problems in defining budget parameters, identifying cost elements and attributing costs to functions. More critically, points out that while the 1988 Education Act made it clear that the new budgeting system should be comprehensive in the sense of not merely reflecting past expenditure patterns but being based on perceived education needs, the LMS teams developed funding formulae which predominantly preserved the status quo established by historical expenditure patterns. Explores both the arguments and the mechanisms which each LMS team deployed in order to produce an incrementalist budgeting system and the constraints that operated on incrementalism.

Traces progress in introducing information technology to support administrative and managerial functions in local education authorities and their schools since 1983. Notes the move towards preparing information technology implementation strategies and the somewhat belated recognition of the need for information management of the system. Outlines some likely areas of future difficulty.

This paper focuses on the strategic role of elites in managing institutional and organizational change within English public services, framed by the wider ideological and political context of neo-liberalism and its pervasive impact on the social and economic order over recent decades. It also highlights the unintended consequences of this elite-driven programme of institutional reform as realized in the emergence of hybridized regimes of ‘polyarchic governance’ and the innovative discursive and organizational technologies on which they depend. Within the latter, ‘leaderism’ is identified as a hegemonic ‘discursive imaginary’ that has the potential to connect selected marketization and market control elements of new public management (NPM), network governance, and visionary and shared leadership practices that ‘make the hybrid happen’ in public services reform.

The English education system is going through an era of radical change which has been initiated by central government. A major thrust of this change focuses on local management of schools (LMS) – the extensive delegation of financial control to the school level. The effect of this is not just a financial one because it has a radical impact on the nature of schools and of the education system as a whole. This financial change has been paralleled by other changes such as the introduction of a national curriculum and open enrolment. Sets the major financial changes in context. Explains the structure of finance in the English education system and outlines central government′s increasing interest in delegated school finance (school site management), which culminated in the 1988 Education Reform Act. Finally, considers the significance at school level of the LMS legislation.

Explores two interesting areas for understanding the changing roles of principals. Describes, first, some changes in the political structure and in the educational policy which make clear that primary and secondary school principals are confronted with a turbulent policy environment; second, during the last 20 years, schools and principals have been involved in so‐called large‐scale improvement projects. Using research data illustrates what the consequences are for principals, and how they restructure their activities. From these analyses, it is obvious that in the coming years principals are expected to legitimate their local policy.