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Governance, funding and accountability glossary
32 terms from C18, Governance, funding and accountability — each defined in the primer's own words. Every term the primer teaches links to the slide that teaches it.
C18 · Schools and systems
Governance, funding and accountability
“The system is one organisation with one owner.”
Every term below is defined in the words of governance, funding and accountability, primer C18 of understanding the context of education, and opens the primer at the slide where it is taught. 1 term is also defined by another primer in the series; where the two differ, both wordings are given. The whole context glossary holds all of them together.
| Term | Definition | Referred to in | Read further |
|---|---|---|---|
| C | |||
| Centralisation and decentralisation | Whether decisions are taken at the top of a system or lower down. Not one variable: the OECD counts 23 decisions in four domains, and a system can be centralised in one domain and devolved in another (OECD, 2018). Hooge and colleagues (2012) distinguish three routes down: deconcentration, market mechanisms and participative democracy. |
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| D | |||
| Data governance | Who may collect, hold, link and use data about students and schools, under what authority and for how long. It is treated in Assessment systems (C14), which covers what the data can and cannot support. | ||
| Decision rights | The right to decide, which is not one right: it is split across central, regional, local and school levels, and devolved decisions usually sit inside a framework set by a higher authority (OECD, 2018). |
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| E | |||
| Equity funding | Additional money attached to need rather than headcount: disadvantage, language, special educational needs, remoteness. What such funding does to attainment gaps is the subject of Equity and educational disadvantage (C19); this primer covers only how it is allocated. |
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| F | |||
| Funding formulae | Published rules that convert counts and characteristics into an allocation. Formula funding is what made devolved school budgets administrable at scale, and it encodes priorities that are rarely argued about directly (Levačić, 2008). | ||
| G | |||
| GeBIZ (SG) | Singapore's government electronic business system, on which requirements, procedures and evaluation criteria are published, and on which "an award notice with the name of the supplier and the contract sum" is posted (Ministry of Finance, 2025, 2026). |
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| Governance | How a system distributes three things: the right to decide, the duty to fund, and the obligation to explain. Most arguments about schooling are arguments about that distribution, conducted in other vocabulary. |
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| Government, government-aided and independent schools (SG) | Government schools are run by the ministry; government-aided schools were "set up by various community organisations" and charge the same standardised fees; independent schools "have the flexibility to set their own fees and develop their academic and non-academic programmes" (Ministry of Education, n.d.-d). Specialised independent schools serve particular talents; specialised schools serve alternative pathways. |
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| I | |||
| Inspection | Evaluation of a school by external visitors who observe and judge, rather than by scores alone. In England, a fail rating raised subsequent primary test scores with no sign of score inflation, while a high rating changed nothing measurable (Hussain, 2015). |
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| M | |||
| Multiple accountability | The horizontal form in which schools involve "students, parents, communities and other stakeholders in formulating strategies, decision-making, and evaluation" (Hooge et al., 2012). It is the least developed of the four and the least studied. |
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| N | |||
| Natural experiment | A comparison that a reform makes possible without anyone designing it: Wales abolished school performance tables while England kept them, which allowed a difference-in-differences comparison of two similar systems (Burgess et al., 2013). |
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| New Public Management | The reform movement of the 1980s that brought targets, contracts, competition and explicit performance measurement into public services, named and critically examined by Hood (1991). | ||
| P | |||
| Per-student funding | Money allocated by headcount, usually varying by stage. It is the comparable unit across systems and years, because total spending moves with enrolment. |
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| Performance indicators | The specific quantities a system chooses to watch. The choice is a governance act: effort follows what is published, which is the mechanism behind both the gains and the distortions of test-based accountability (Figlio & Loeb, 2011; Bevan & Hood, 2006). |
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| Principal–agent theory | The economic framing of governance: one party acts on behalf of another whose interests and information differ, which generates monitoring costs and incentive design problems (Eisenhardt, 1989; Jensen & Meckling, 1976). | ||
| Professional accountability | The horizontal form of accountability that works through "credible, useful standards and the creation of professional learning communities" rather than through reputation, so that schools answer to standards and peers (Hooge et al., 2012). |
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| Public procurement | The rules governing purchases made with public money. Singapore states three principles: transparency, open and fair competition, and value for money (Ministry of Finance, 2025). |
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| Public–private partnerships | Long-term arrangements in which a private party finances, builds or operates part of a public service under contract. The World Bank's survey sets out the main forms and the conditions under which each has been used (Patrinos et al., 2009). |
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| Q | |||
| Quasi-markets | Arrangements in which the state still funds and regulates while families choose between competing providers. Hooge and colleagues (2012) treat market mechanisms as one route to decentralisation, with mixed effects on quality and evidence of increased segregation. |
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| R | |||
| Resource allocation | Deciding how much money goes where. In nearly half of OECD systems this is decided centrally, while decisions about how resources are used inside a school are more often taken at school or local level (OECD, 2018). |
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| S | |||
| School autonomy | The set of decisions a school may take, and how freely. Across OECD countries about a third of decisions taken at school or local level are taken in full autonomy; the rest sit inside a framework set by a higher authority (OECD, 2018). C15 The decision rights held at school level; across 42 countries it affected achievement negatively in developing and low-performing systems and positively in developed and high-performing ones (Hanushek et al., 2013). |
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| School choice | Arrangements that let families choose between schools. The economics literature finds no systematically reliable achievement gain from vouchers, some detrimental effects, sorting under large programmes, and improvement in public schools facing competition (Epple et al., 2017). |
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| School clusters and superintendents (SG) | In Singapore, mainstream schools are "grouped into clusters by geographical location" under four zonal branches of the Schools Division, each cluster facilitated by a Cluster Superintendent who supervises school leadership teams and plays "a key role in personnel and financial management" (Ministry of Education, n.d.-b, n.d.-c). |
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| School rankings and league tables | Ordered public lists of schools by a performance measure. When Wales stopped publishing them, school effectiveness fell relative to England, with the loss concentrated outside the top quartile (Burgess et al., 2013). |
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| School vouchers | One instrument of school choice among several; the economics literature finds the evidence insufficient to recommend widespread adoption, while multiple positive findings support continued exploration (Epple et al., 2017). |
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| T | |||
| Tenders | The route for larger purchases, in which a notice is published, bids are evaluated against published criteria and the award is recorded publicly. In Singapore this applies above S$90,000, with a lighter route up to S$1 million (Ministry of Finance, 2026). Check current policy. |
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| Test-based accountability | School performance accountability resting on standardised student testing, public reporting and rewards or sanctions; it produces gains and distortions together, because effort moves to what is measured (Figlio & Loeb, 2011). |
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| Total cost of ownership | "A methodology and philosophy which looks beyond the price of a purchase to include many other purchase-related costs" (Ellram, 1995). In schools the largest hidden costs are usually staff hours for training, support, data migration and eventual replacement. |
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| Transparency | Making requirements, criteria and outcomes public. It is an instrument rather than a window: publishing a figure creates an audience, and the audience creates an incentive (Burgess et al., 2013). |
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| V | |||
| Value for money | The standard a public buyer is held to. Singapore's formulation: "We look beyond the lowest price. Quality, reliability, risk, timeliness, and long-term costs matter" (Ministry of Finance, 2025). It is not the same as the cheapest compliant bid. |
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| Vendor management | The work of running a supplier relationship after the contract is signed: checking delivery against the contract, monitoring costs, documenting decisions and handling disputes. In public procurement it is a named stage, not an afterthought (Ministry of Finance, 2026). |
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| Vertical and horizontal accountability | Vertical accountability "is top-down and hierarchical", covering compliance with rules and answering for performance. Horizontal accountability "presupposes non-hierarchical relationships", covering professional standards and answering to students, parents and community (Hooge et al., 2012). |
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