Contractual or Responsive Accountability? Neo-Centrilist ‘Self-Management’ or Systemic Subsidiarity? Tasmanian Parents' and other Stakeholders' Policy Preferences

Abstract

WHEN state governments decentralised many administrative responsibilities to schools in the late 1980s and early 1990s, it was assumed that they would develop better capacities to manage, develop and govern themselves. In general, such decentralisation attempted to replace bureaucracies with corporate management, focus school evaluation onto the auditing of performance indicators, cut ex-school support structures in favour of locally contracted expertise, and displace hierarchy with collegial networks. The principle of public accountability in public education was redefined as a local obligation to be discharged through managerial, market and political mechanisms. The research reported here shows that Tasmanian parents actually prefer a far more educative and communitarian approach to accountability, and that this view is broadly shared with other key stakeholders: teachers, principals and state government officials. The empirical findings reported contradict orthodox structures, practices and theory and have substantial implications for policy making.