INTRODUCTION

Abstract

In recent years, international funding organizations have thrown their weight behind decentralization of education systems around the globe, often making decentralization a precondition for financial assistance (Conyers, 1984; Hanson, 2000; Rhoten, 2000). Interest in delegating authority to local levels of government continues to grow: between 1992 and 1997, 12% of all projects funded by the World Bank involved some aspect of decentralization (World Bank, 1998). As Hanson notes in this volume, the Bank currently supports more than 40 governments that are attempting to decentralize their education systems. The strategies relied on to transfer authority over schools to local levels are as varied as the diverse governments that have embraced the concept in attempt to enhance system management. Indeed, a multitude of definitions have been ascribed to the term “decentralization”: “the concept has remained vague and highly ambiguous, even though used extensively by policy-makers as well as intellectuals” (Govinda, 1997, p. 3). Flexible delimitation of the term has provided observers with great latitude in making claims about the goals and results of measures introduced in the name of decentralization; it has also kept the topic lodged in the discourse on educational reform.