We are currently having Board of Trustee elections in New Zealand. From what I've heard it is quite a unique system where the central government has delegated a large part of the governance roll to the Board of Trustees of each school. The BoT consists out of parent representatives, the Principal and a staff representative (high schools have a student representative as well).
In this system the Board is responsible for the governance role and the Principal (and management team) for the management of the school. A little bit like the directors of a company and the CEO. In general schools in NZ have quite a lot fo freedom in terms of self management and how they deal with the curriculum.
Generally speaking I believe the system works quite well, but there are some pitfalls:
- There are some grey areas between governance and management. As long as the Board and the Principal get on fine it is not a problem, but when they disagree a lot the seperation of roles can be an issue.
- Some communities strugle to find enough suitable and quilified people to take on this role and this can disadvantage some schools.
- Some decissions of the central government can make it hard for the Boards to fulfil their role.
I would be very interested to know how govrnance and management is handles in other systems.
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