Abstract |
School Committees constitute a collective body adhering to local government and including stakeholders from the wider community: local government representatives, school heads and parents’ representatives. They cooperate closely with another important local entity, the Municipal Education Committee, representing the local government education service. The major legislation for the reorganization of local government under the name “Kallikratis” altered the structure, responsibilities and duties of the School Committee. School Committees are still delegated with the allocation of functional funds to schools, but the revised legislation reduced their number dramatically. The aim of this dissertation is to explore the effectiveness of the new law provisions and document possible malfunctions of School Committees. In addition, it aims to gather all parametric data necessary to build a formula (algorithm) for the allocation of state funding from the School-Committee to schools with a view to achieve further transparency. Mixed-type methodology was adopted, using questionnaires and semi-structured interviews. Data gathering was completed between September 2018 and April 2020. Our sample consists of 156 Primary and Secondary School-Committee chairmen, 78 Municipal Education Committee chairmen and 852 Primary and Secondary public school Heads, from all over the country. The results of the research indicate that the reorganization of the School Committee as an entity seems to have considerable beneficial effects. However, a large part of the school Heads express their concern as the administrative decentralization attempted with the Kallikratis law does not seem to have worked in the case of their own relation with the School Committee and the local government, in general. Although the reformed School Committee solved many problems of the past, it seems that there are still emerging malfunctions in both School-Committees and public schools, such as: Insufficient funding.
Lack of guidance from the central administration.
Lack of common way of management in all School Committees.
Bureaucracy.
Legal framework still confusing, as many previous regulations are still in use despite the reform of the Kallikratis law. Dependency relationship (schools-local government entities).
Inadequate administrative and technical staff.
Lack of tools for the transition to e-Governance.
Allocation of resources not fair for all schools, as there are no specific indicators and criteria taken in mind.
Not all SCs employ formulas for allocating funds to schools.
Only a small number of School-Committees post the allocation decisions of state funding on the site of “Diavgeia” (the State e-Governance site for transparency of financial decisions in the public sector). The derivatives of this doctoral dissertation are: a. a set of proposals for further legal reform, and b. the “Algorithm for allocating functional funds to schools”, an original formula for a fair and transparent allocation of state funds for the operational needs of schools.
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