A review of community participation in school governance: An emerging culture in Australian education

Abstract

United States. Decentralisation of education to the local levels and governance by local education authorities is a concept that was developed in England and Wales. Even though the Australian education systems have been greatly influenced by the British and American models, they have long resisted change and continued with the centralisation of power and authority at State level and control of the school systems by the bureaucrats. Several attempts to decentralise education to local authority or regional levels had little success. However, since the mid 1970s, a new concept of decentralisation of education to regional levels with devolution of significant power and authority to school level and community participation in school governance has been emerging as a new culture in Australian school systems. While there are different definitions of 'community participation in school based governance', conceptually, it can be viewed as a formal alteration of governance structures, and a form of decentralisation that identifies the individual school as the primary unit of improvement and relies on the redistribution of decision-making authority through which improvements in schools might be stimulated and sustained. For this purpose, varying degrees of formal authority to make decisions in the domains of school's mission, goals, priorities, policies relating to financial, material and human resources as well as budgets are being transferred to the school level. For the purpose of exercising this power and authority, some formal structure known as a 'council' or 'board' consisting of the principal and the representatives of the teachers, parents, community and in some cases students is created so that school level participants can be directly involved in school-wide decision making. The devolution of power and the creation of the new