The introduction of school governing bodies in South African schools has largely been motivated by a democratic discourse of communal participation, belonging and accountability. How this has been interpreted has seemingly been limited to understandings of parental participation in the daily functioning of schools. In turn, research on school…

The emergence of Chief Executive Officers as leaders of educational service providers is positioned in multi academy trusts, the preferred structure of schooling in England. Within this structure, the Chief Executive Officer position is distinct and different from previous constructs of headteachers, since the Chief Executive operates at both…

Universities present themselves as meritocratic organizations; however, there is evidence that such claims are 'rationalised myths'. This article is concerned with the perceived effect of micropolitics on academic careers in two case study universities: a collegial Spanish and a managerial Irish one. The data are drawn from 86 semi-structured…

In England the balance of responsibilities between national and local government for the governance of education is changing. Relationships between schools are shifting and new structures, groups and alliances are being created in response to national policy. The article is part of a project to understand how the new local education landscapes are…

This article explores newly appointed principals' descriptions of a decentralised and market adopted school system. An institutional logics perspective is applied to analyse how logics visible at the national level evoke images among principals at the local level. Empirical data consist of 66 examinations from the National Principal Training…

In 2008 the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development presented system leadership (leadership beyond a single institution) as more effective than traditional approaches to public services delivery in responding to the external drivers of globalisation, new technologies and increasing societal complexity. This paper reports the…

This paper addresses the issues of managerialism and collegiality in universities in times of change. It is based on a case study of a New Zealand university from 1985 to 2010 using interviews with key participants and documentary evidence from the public and private domains. The study concludes that views of university staff about the concepts of…

The changing education landscape in England, combined with a more rigorous form of governor regulation in the form of the Ofsted 2012 Inspection Framework, are together placing more demands than ever before on the 300,000 volunteer school governors in England. These school governors are, in many cases, directly accountable to the Secretary of…

This paper examines the school of the future, aiming to identify and aid the implementation of the most desired version of school autonomy in Cyprus. More specifically, the study initially forecasts the areas of financial decisions that the school of the future might autonomously manage, identifies the negative effects that may appear along the…

This paper addresses if, and to what extent, the current working methods of the Dutch Inspectorate of Education affect the governance of school boards in schools for primary education. A key facet of the working method is the inspection meeting with the school board. Drawing upon a large quantitative study (n = 244) we are able to identify some…

The structure of the English school system has been the subject of almost continuous change since the late-1980s. The most recent was commenced by the Conservative-Liberal Democrat Coalition government, which was elected in May 2010. This policy set in train, very quickly, processes through which all schools have been encouraged, and in some cases…

Drawing on data from a series of semi-structured interviews this article reports on findings from a research project focusing on the responses of two local authorities and their secondary schools to the Academies Act 2010. The article considers the background and the development of the education system in both localities. It goes on to focus on…

Recent reforms in England's education system have been justified on the grounds that other countries have pursued similar approaches to education reform. Many such policies that by-pass or otherwise diminish meso-level institutions demonstrate a commitment to the idea of devolving authority to local actors. The current reforms in England and…

This article deals with the changes introduced in the Italian education system after the 1997 School Autonomy reform. Looking at the complex interplay between global influences and processes of local inflection, the work explores the degree to which we are witnessing a significant shift towards a new mode of governance and the interplay between…

The Conservative-Liberal Democrat Coalition government elected in 2010 has argued contemporary reform will increase the autonomy of schools in England. Given the complexities that exist, however, in the balance between autonomy and control, we explore how school leaders view autonomy as it exists within the wider policy framework. The article…