Globalized Educational Governance, Decentralization and Grassroots Responses

A group of reforms (educational restructuring) including introduction or reinforcement of freedom of choice, privatization, decentralization and sometimes centralization of goal formulation, curriculum, and outcomes-based assessment is being globalized. It includes a hybrid consisting of elements from market thought, étatism and communitarianism and is associated with a new type of governance (NG). Although an important component of this package, decentralization alone is not sufficient to make such governance work. Findings on decentralization and its outcomes in terms of local participation generally and in case countries in particular is the main theme of this study. The outcomes seem to consist of a hybridization of globalized features and standardized policies filtered through the national system, on the one hand, and local interpretations, meanings, intentions and actions, on the other hand. Case studies at the school level were conducted in Cambodia, Nepal, Mozambique, Senegal, South Africa, Nicaragua, Norway and Greece.