Deciding Who Controls What
There is ongoing debate about the appropriate locus of decisionmaking within the
education sector. The debate remains unresolved because the process requires that
policymakers rationalize and harmonize a complex set of complementary functions
that includes curriculum design, teaching methods, student evaluation, textbook
production and distribution, teacher recruitment and pay, school construction
and rehabilitation, education financing, and parent teacher linkages. The choices
of who does what are further complicated because each of these functions has to be
evaluated for primary, secondary, and tertiary education, and often for preschools
and adult literacy as well. Some emerging areas of consensus are summarized in
the following paragraphs.
SETTING STANDARDS. The central government is generally better equipped to address
equity issues and ensure a common minimum educational standard. Distribution of
Service Delivery