Stakeholders Involvement in Performance Management in Public General Schools

Abstract

In response to increasing concerns with the legitimacy and efficiency of public spending, performance management as a part of world-wide public sector reform, called New Public Management (NPM) has taken place. This is also the case of educational sector. In Estonian education system, legislation formally enables to design an integrated performance management system. But there is few research done to investigate how these policies and regulations ought to be put into force in order to gain the benefits considering the schools' and pupils' better performance. This study investigates how different stakeholders are involved into the performance management in Estonian general schools. The study is based on empirical survey data gathered from 303 schools providing secondary education in Estonia. The research findings have three main implications. Firstly, the paper contributes to the scarce knowledge about implementation of performance management issues in public schools. Our analysis revealed that compilation of school development plans in Estonian schools is rather a formal obligation. Therefore we propose that the analysis and discussion of the school development plans is needed to organize on regional level, involving all main stakeholders of a school. Secondly, we suggest that in the circumstances of a decentralised education system, like in Estonia, it is needed to implement, central practical performance assessment principles and guidance for the schools. Thirdly, it is highly necessary to improve schools’ cooperation with different stakeholder groups. Also the framework involving different stakeholder groups in the decentralized schools management system should be built up.