What has been the experience of decentralising education in Latin America? What have been the greatest barriers to reform? This paper for the World Bank examines these questions, comparing reform efforts in Argentina, Chile, Columbia, El Salvador, Mexico, Nicaragua, and Venezuela, with Spain and the United States. The paper explains the fundamental issues, goals, processes, and strategies that shape educational decentralisation on the continent, concluding that political factors rather than financial or technical ones pose the biggest threat to reform.
Educational decentralisation is pursued by governments worldwide, but became prevalent in Latin America since the 1980s with the emergence of democracies. Differences in the political, social, and economic makeup between countries in the region gave rise to widely different experiences from pursuing similar strategies. Successful decentralisation requires knowing the stated and hidden goals driving reform. These are: accelerated economic development, increased management efficiency, redistribution of financial responsibility, increased democracy and local control, market-based education, neutralising competing power centres, and improving educational quality. However:
- The greatest barriers to reform are political. Decentralisation is often identified with a specific centre of power making it difficult to generate broad and sustained support.
- Decentralisation does not guarantee improved service delivery or quality. It provides a new opportunity, but requires leadership and collaboration to realise these goals.
- Education cannot be fully decentralised but must strike a balance between central policy setting and local implementation.
Decentralising education is good because the educational process should belong to society not the state. Strong leadership, shared vision among stakeholders, comprehensive advanced planning and flexibility are the prerequisites for success. Leaders must have both capacity and job security to see reform through. Other policy pointers for DFID are:
- Devolution rather than delegation of authority will be more successful because it provides for continuity in the change process.
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Opportunities should be transferred from the centre rather than problems.
- Power sharing arrangements between different levels of government are more effective when they are negotiated rather than imposed.
- Unions can be allies of government if both institutions realise benefits from devolution. The likely opposition of powerful unions is a central problem for reform in Latin America.
- Local initiative is reduced when total funding is dependent on central transfers.
- Phased decentralisation with transfer of authority after localities have passed specific tests of readiness works best. ‘Big Bang’ approaches are very difficult to execute successfully.
