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While school leaders have commonly functioned as school managers, the urgency for improving learning outcomes highlights the need for school leaders to function more as instructional leaders. However, a number of barriers exist in exercising instructional leadership in the developing country context. School leaders often lack capacity for instructional leadership and operate under significant constraints, such as chronic shortage of materials, operating funds, and staff development resources. Knowledge about cultural and organizational factors influencing school leadership behaviors can inform conditions for strengthening instructional leadership. This discussion essay provides a framework for expanding comparative and international inquiry into the challenges of instructional leadership in terms of the principal–agent problem, school leader sense of self-efficacy, and the integration of teacher incentives.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the existing mechanism of school management committees (SMCs) and to propose an improved framework for strengthening its process and outcomes. In 2005, the Education and Literacy department, Government of Sindh decentralizes the administrative and operational authorities to school level in the form of SMCs. These committees have been vested with several roles and responsibilities in accordance with the objective of SMCs set in by government in assistance with different international donor agencies.

The purposively selected respondent that includes 35 stakeholders among which 25 stakeholders has been interviewed individually while other ten has been interviewed in the form of two focused groups consisting of five members each. The findings based on the interviews are analyzed using the thematic analysis. This study analyzes the formation of SMCs, roles and responsibilities of members, Allocation SMC funds and its utilization methods. The study includes the challenges faced by these committees in school administration and operations with their recommendations for overcoming such challenges. Some common challenges include limited financial resources, interference of landlords and potential people of the community, limited administrative authorities and lack of interest of government toward government schools.

The recommendations have been categorized into three broad themes: strengthening of mechanism, strengthening through functions, roles and responsibilities and revising SMC fund allocation and its utilization.

The study proposed an improved framework for strengthening the process and outcomes of SMC.

The purpose of this paper is to systematically analyze the neoliberal challenges and problems facing public schools in the particular Hong Kong context.

Based on a systematic and critical analysis on the history and socio-political context of Hong Kong’s school policies and practice as well as the official documents and statistics, this paper examines the impacts of neoliberalism in four main aspects of school education in Hong Kong: school governance, accountability, privatization and government expenditure.

Convergence, as well as deviation, on neoliberal globalization occurs in the particular Hong Kong context. School bureaucracy has irresistibly expanded. Policymakers have placed increasing emphasis on instrumentally evaluating schools while decentralizing, diversifying and privatizing education. School leadership has become focused solely on succeeding within those imposed performance management and metrics, pulling ahead of school competitions and prioritizing easily quantifiable and measurable tasks. Teachers have faced a potential threat from the loss of autonomy through the market logic and consumerist metrics. The rise of privatized education has further intensified school practices based on competitiveness and performativity. On the other hand, resource cutbacks and financial constraints – problems that are generally inflicted by neoliberal discourse – have rarely occurred in Hong Kong.

This study is part of concerted efforts in research that adopts the comparative and critical perspectives emerging from different social contexts to consider and flesh out how neoliberalism look across the school systems, how it challenges the systems differently, and how it evokes various responses from within the systems (Apple, 2001). Taken all the efforts together, a finely nuanced understanding of the trails of neoliberalism can help collectively re-discover school education as a social good, and collectively re-imagine and reshape alternatives for the future.

This paper offers an international and comparative perspective and further nuances to an understanding of how neoliberal policies and ideology are recontextualized in countries across the globe given particularities of different local contexts.

Describes a study which investigated the relationship between the vision and five dimensions of leadership behaviour of principals in Hong Kong. A survey was carried out on 48 secondary schools involving 548 teachers. Half of the sample schools were in a pilot scheme of school‐based management, the school management initiative (SMI). Factor analysis and multiple regression were used to analyse the data. The results suggested that five dimensions of leadership behaviour were all significantly related to the vision of principals for both types of schools. Whether the school was participating in the SMI or not also had a significant effect on the relationship between the vision of principals and three dimensions of leadership behaviour. Contrary to the expectations of the SMI and the suggestions by some researchers that teachers need to be particularly empowered in schools undergoing reforms, the findings of this study demonstrated that for principals with average and below average scores on vision, the degree of empowerment perceived by teachers in schools under the SMI was lower than for schools not under the reform. However, principals with high vision in schools under the reform had the highest scores in all five dimensions of leadership behaviour. The SMI may provide opportunities for leaders with vision to bring about a better environment for school improvement. These results provide important insights for those responsible for the implementation and evaluation of the SMI in Hong Kong, and perhaps for other systems devolving decision‐making power to more self‐managing schools.

School‐based management programmes have been launched in various regions of the world to enhance education quality in schools. Presents a multilevel self‐management framework necessary for effective implementation of school‐based management. Proposes strategies for minimizing restraining forces and developing plans for effective multilevel self‐management in schools. Suggests three stages of implementation: unfreezing stage, changing stage and reinforcing stage. The time frame is critical for implementing the three levels of self‐management and, therefore, its management is discussed. Proposes seven types of skill required to work more effectively through the above stages, reduce resistance and gain support from school members.

This chapter guides the reader to an understanding of social responsibility in educational settings, namely on school/university social responsibility (USR). The phenomenon of social responsibility in these settings is nuanced when encountering stakeholders, either external or internal. This chapter conceptualizes school/USR and describes related stakeholders and their management strategies. In addition to this, the chapter discusses eight transition lines of stakeholders developed on the expectations of stakeholders, the degree and the format of engagement and impacts on society and institutions: pupil–student; teachers-academics; parents; alumni; future employers; business sector; funding providers; and society at large. It concludes that a managerial pattern while implementing social responsibility by involving stakeholders differs by educational setting. This is to say that school social responsibility is rather carried out through process, whereas USR concerns both process and outputs. This distinction results in introducing the definition of school/USR as a commitment toward performance based on ethical and other conventional principles that are respectively substantiated in the mission, values and related activities in the interplay with all possible stakeholders in order to create social value foremost.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the current school‐based management (SBM) policy reform in Indonesia, with an emphasis on the impacts of shifting authority and responsibility to school level, as well as challenges confronted by the school council members, followed by remedial measures to minimize the problems.

The paper employed a mixed‐method research design comprising an extensive empirical survey followed by semi‐structured and focused group interviews and examination of relevant documents. The data reported here are on the basis of an empirical survey involving 504 school council members from Ngada‐Flores, followed by 42 interviews and focus group discussion (FGD) with all relevant stakeholders.

The research findings demonstrate how devolution of power and authority to school level can create partnership in participatory school decision making in terms of setting a school mission, shared‐vision, annual programs, school budget, school textbooks, school buildings, school‐based curriculum and even students’ discipline policies. In turn, devolving power and authority to school level has created several changes in schools, including in‐school culture changes, and increased participation of school communities. These factors have led to the improvements in teaching‐learning environments and student achievements.

The findings of this study are specific to the context of Ngada‐Flores, Indonesia. The possibility for the general applicability of the findings is limited by the scope, the sample, and the cultural context of this study. Accordingly, even though there could be common features, the findings may not have general applicability to other systems.

The paper suggests that capacity building in school level is required for the effective implementation of SBM policies and programs, including in‐service training, regular professional development sessions and workshops on effective school leadership and management, as well as school development planning.

This paper could be significant because of the absence of similar studies in the Indonesian context. The findings could be helpful in informing practitioners, the local and national authorities and all those interested in school education on how SBM with devolution of power and authority to school‐level decision makers assists in‐school improvements and student achievements, as well as problems and challenges confronted by school leaders in the implementation of SBM.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the perceptions of a sample of Hong Kong principals and teachers of the extent to which quality management (QM) has been effectively implemented in primary schools. The features of QM improvement implemented in Hong Kong primary schools include: values and duties, systems and teams(ST) resources and changes(RC) and meeting pupil needs and empowering staff.

A quantitative, survey questionnaire was adopted in this study. A total of 322 respondents (83 principals and 239 teachers) out of 83 primary schools responded to the questionnaire.

The finding shows that all four features of QM are perceived as being implemented in Hong Kong primary schools. There are significant differences between the perceptions of principals and teachers towards “value and duties”, “ST”, “RC” of QM. However, there is no significant difference between the perceptions of principles and teachers towards “meeting pupil needs and empowering staff” of QM.

This paper is a first step towards extending the theory and practice of QM to principals and teachers in Hong Kong primary schools.

Change in the New Zealand state education system during the 1980s brought about a transfer of responsibility for school financial management from the centre to the school level. The purpose of this paper is to report an investigation of how aspects of this devolved responsibility have been operationalised and managed in a secondary school setting.

The empirical study is based on four case studies.

The paper concludes that the expectations of an espoused economic‐rationalist approach to school‐based management have yet to fully permeate into the schools' way of “doing” devolved financial management. Accounting and management technologies have come to be used as a tool of rhetoric and have served a useful, political purpose, although not in the way intended by the reform architects.

This conclusion raises a question about the administrative reform and whether the consequential outcomes have yielded the espoused efficiency and educational quality gains.