Parent-generated revenue in public schools, in the form of fee-giving or fundraising, is fast developing as a robust source of financial revenue for public schools in OECD countries. In this paper we draw on a comprehensive empirical dataset of parent-generated financial revenue for public schools located in New South Wales, Australia. We draw on…

In Australia, debates around school funding tend to focus on comparisons of funding between school systems and what this means for equity. In this paper, while we look at school-level funding between systems, our emphasis is on private funding in public schools with a particular emphasis on the relationship between private funding and ICSEA. Using…

The Amended National Norms and Standards for School Funding (ANNSSF) policy of 2006 introduced a funding model to address equity in public schooling. Schools are ranked into one of five quintiles of which quintile 1 represents the poorest schools and quintile 5 the most affluent. The ANNSSF policy proposes that the state provide more funding for…

With the promulgation of the South African Schools Act, public education in South Africa was decentralised and communities were made responsible for the governance of public schools. White Paper 1 on Education and Training confirmed the inability of the state to meet the financial requirements of public education. Despite the fact that school…

Drawing on the quintile system of categorising schools, South African public schools are bifurcated into no-fee and fee-paying schools. Emerging research has shown that school principals in both categories of schools encounter several challenges with regard to school funding. In this article, we employ contingency leadership theory to examine how…

Parent involvement in their child's schooling is routinely celebrated and emphasised in government education policy in many countries. We take a critical lens to examining parent involvement by investigating voluntary parent fees in public secondary schools, and how these fees are patterned by school socioeconomic status (SES). In Australia, where…

New conceptions of public governance across nations have taken hold globally. In this article, we explore the involvement and expansion of a broad range of actors in public services delivery, beyond the remit of traditional government. While there are common features of this trend, variations reflect the significance of context-sensitive policy,…

Education reforms worldwide, in both developed and developing countries, address the content of education programmes and/or changes education systems. There are different paths, and different socioeconomic contexts, for those nations which pursue education reform, and Vietnam makes for an instructive example. The country's socioeconomic…

In view of redressing past imbalances created by the apartheid regime and achieving equity in funding public schools, the post-1994 government introduced the Norms and Standards for School Funding policy that severely reduces state funding to schools located within affluent areas. However, the South African Schools Act, No. 84 of 1996 makes…

This paper aims to examine the current inequalities within Nigeria's education system with a brief focus on Lagos, Ondo State and Ogun State. It will also examine how the current system is funded and will consider the percentage of GDP the government spends on education in Nigeria in comparison to other countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. In addition…

Milwaukee's system of K-12 public education is distinct from many other urban school systems in the degree of educational choices offered to students and their families. This range of options has fostered intense competition among Milwaukee's K-12 schools over the past decade. While enrollment in traditional Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS) has…

In recent years, competition for K-12 enrollment in Wisconsin among traditional public schools, charter schools, and private schools using the state's voucher programs has intensified. Because elementary and secondary education finance in the state primarily is driven by enrollment, this has presented increasingly difficult fiscal conditions for…

The academic success of Finland, South Korea, and others on recent international tests has sparked a renewed interest among educators and those concerned with education policy in the United States in looking to other countries for examples of how we might improve our education system. Teacher training and quality in leading countries has received…

The government's educational reforms since 1994 have focused on equity and redress. Redressing historical imbalances and achieving equity are fundamental policy mechanisms in attempts to restructure South African education. This aspiration is demonstrated in many education policies including the National Norms and Standards for School Funding…

This study examines inequalities of school funding as exclusively generated by the parent community in urban public schools, and potentially illuminates a secondary impact of between-school segregation. For schools that are largely understood as free, the substantial injections of private financing into public schools indicate a concerning tension…