The government of Chile mandated a system-wide reform in public school education in 2017. The reform calls for de-municipalization of the public school sector (345 municipal education departments under mayoral control) and the creation of 70 Servicios Locales de Educación Pública (SLEPs) between 2018 and 2025. The reform represents a largescale…

The decades from the 1960s to the 1980s were prolific in the emergence of a significant and diverse movement of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in Latin America. In the case of Chile, grassroots educational organisations navigated various political contexts. Initially, they played an active part in the process of social mobilisation and the…

In the previous decades there has been an unprecedented proliferation of Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) working in different policy fields. In hand with this process of 'NGOisation', there has been a growing academic debate regarding the role of NGOs in terms of their influence promoting or resisting the expansion of neoliberalism. For…

In this paper we analyse what standardization is and what it, with special reference to its application in education. For this we also show that standardization is a device of prevailing neoliberal policies. Such policies, contrary to established rhetoric, do not diminish the role of the state and administrations, but rather increase it, by…

Mainstream approaches in comparative education have paid more attention to trends in donors' priorities than to policy processes in recipient countries, overlooking the agency of national governments in the institutional configuration of vocational education and training (VET) in developing contexts. Drawing on constructivist political economy and…

This article reports the results of a study about the views of quality managers, in Chilean universities, with regard to the meaning of quality in higher education. The article begins with a brief description of Chilean higher education system. It portrays the context of the last 30 years, with a growing number of universities and little state…

This article analyzes the reasons behind the end of the ICT in education policy (Enlaces) driven by the Chilean Ministry of Education for 25 years. The argument is that the institution that sought to give sustainability to this policy over time, ended up losing its ability to lead relevant responses to the educational challenges posed by the…

In 1986 (first published 1983) Clark's triangle of coordination compared national higher education systems according to the dimensions of state authority, market and academic oligarchy. The picture was of a particular time, one in which those three factors could be ably used to illustrate major differences in how coordination took place.…

In this dissertation, I address the issue of social inequalities in education and the role of the education system in confronting them. The project involves two main parts, one empirical and the other conceptual. In the first part--chapters 1 and 2--I address the practical dimension of how to reduce social inequalities in education by exploring…

Institutional research (IR) in Latin America is experiencing dramatic growth due, in no small measure, to the need for quality assurance in educational institutions developing trained workforces for emerging economies. Quality can be assured only where it can be measured, and that is at the core of institutional research in countries to the south…

This volume collects several case studies on the relationship between government and higher education in developing nations in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. In particular these studies ask whether specific forms of government regulation help to solve the crisis of higher education in the developing world better than other forms of regulation.…

This book examines the decentralization and privatization of schools in Chile. It analyzes whether the introduction of market mechanisms in the supply of, and demand for, schools enhances educational performance. The text discusses the microeconomic assumptions underlying the proposition that elementary and secondary education could function as a…

This paper compares the changing role of local government in developing countries' education systems. Using case studies, it examines the role of local government in Zimbabwe, Chile, India, and Tanzania, thus offering a representative range of low- and middle-income countries. Each of the countries attempted to use local government as a source of…

Experiences of different countries in establishing mechanisms to coordinate development of higher education systems, diversify institutional financing, and increase efficiency of public investments are examined. Attention is drawn to the need for effective policy structures to manage higher education, link reform costs to benefits, acknowledge…

The Education Working Paper Series is produced by the Education Unit at the World Bank (HDNED). It provides an avenue for World Bank staff to publish and disseminate preliminary education findings to encourage discussion and exchange ideas within the World Bank and among the broader development community. Throughout the 1990s and into the…