The impact of school governance restructuring on public financial support systems

Changes in public policy with respect to governance structures require complementary changes in public policy concerning the financing of educational services. Drawing on their findings from studies in Australia, England and the USA, the authors present a framework to clarify what is happening in the restructuring of school governance and to project the implications for public policy concerning the finance of schooling. The political system is represented by a decision matrix which arrays the decisions that have to be made about financing schools (who gets what, when and how) with the primary decision makers (society, the educating profession and families). The decision-making process is shown to be a dynamic one, causing the nature of acceptable decisions to change along with political-economic environments and with priorities given to policy objectives. Using the model, the implications of alternative centralization/decentralization strategies for school finance policy are examined under varying circumstances.