Year: 2012
Type: article
Abstract: Questions concerning education decentralization have been in the center of discussions for several decades now.The article supplements this discussion by analyzing how the decentralization of education policy is shaped at the national level and how its goals are elaborated at the local municipal level.To do this, the article analyzes per capita education funding policy in the Baltic states.I will proceed by analyzing interviews with persons responsible for education organization at the municipal level in Latvia.Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia have all introduced per capita funding in their education policy.Estonia introduced reforms in 1998, Lithuania in 2002, while Latvia in 2009.The three countries share many similarities in the policy implementation process and in problems they have to solve.Furthermore, all three countries with this policy have given greater voice in education planning to the local municipality and, as research attests, in all three states municipalities face similar problems in reform implementation.Latvian legislators, when implementing reforms, aimed to achieve two contradicting goals simultaneously: to improve pupils' achievement and to reduce education costs.Prior to the reform, the Ministry of Education and Science suggested that its success would depend on education planning-appointed local education experts assigned the task of guiding their county through the school network reorganization.This article illustrates similarities in the problems that the Baltic states have to face after the implementation of per capita funding.Additionally, it draws attention to the Latvian case-it analyzes the reasons why counties of Latvia have achieved differing results.
Author: Miķelis Grīviņš
Institution: University of Latvia
Language: English
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W2322407026