Local Management of Schools: Research and Experience (BERA Dialogues) - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1853591521 ISBN 13: 9781853591525

Publisher: Multilingual Matters, 1992

Synopsis

Schools are now 'in the market'. Formula funding, largely based on pupil numbers, is designed to make the popular school rich and the unpopular non-viable. Legislation for 'open access' in the 1988 Education Reform Act (ERA), means that efficient schools, with high standards, are expected to thrive and expand, as the inefficient close down for lack of pupils. Associated changes in educational policy require teachers to 'deliver' the National Curriculum, assess their pupils' progress at seven, eleven, fourteen and sixteen, and, depending on local authority policies for phasing in the changes, take over the management of their own budgets. It is this last aspect of government policy - budget delegation based on formula funding - which, although it inevitably embraces all the rest - is commonly known as Local Management of Schools (LMS). LMS is not an isolated policy change but part of a comprehensive range of legislation designed to change the way schools work. In spite of the rhetoric, LMS has a pivotal role in locking 'self-management' into the mechanisms designed for increased central control. Far from 'closing the loop' in a rational system of market competition and opportunity, tensions and paradoxes inherent in the system are devolved on to individuals and groups who experience them as stressful dilemmas and perversities.

About this title

Synopsis

An edited collection of papers covering the early days of the local management of schools. The book features research by economists, management theorists and education researchers, and accounts of experience by LEA officers and a primary school Deputy Head. It points to a range of critical issues deriving from paradoxes in the theoretical models underpinning the 1988 Education Reform Act.

Edition details

• Publisher: Multilingual Matters
• Publication date: 1992
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1853591521
• ISBN 13: 9781853591525
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 192
• Editor: Wallace George N.