Educational Centralization and Decentralization in East Asia

Paper presented at the APEC Educational Reform Summit

January 2004, Beijing, China

Frederick K.S. Leung

The University of Hong Kong

Introduction

Educational decentralization seems to be a global trend in the past decades. Astiz et al

(2002) observed that “over the past several decades, there has been a preoccupation with
decentralization in the policy discourse about education, particularly among the
developing nations of Latin America, South Asia, and Eastern Europe and among
international development agencies” (p.70), and Hanson (2000) found that “virtually
every country in North, Central, and South America has some type of educational
decentralization reform underway currently” (p.1).

The East Asian economies also seem to have caught up with this global trend. As can be
seen from the rest of this paper, all the East Asian economies discussed are introducing
some form of educational decentralization. What are the motives behind the
decentralization measures of these East Asian economies? Have such measures been
successful so far? If they are not successful, what are the reasons behind? How do the
successful or unsuccessful experiences differ from those in the Western countries? And
how can we explain the differences? These are some of the questions that will be dealt
with in this paper.

What is decentralization?

Decentralization may be defined as “the transfer of decision-making authority,

responsibility, and tasks from higher to lower organizational levels or between
organizations” (Hanson, 1998, p.112). There are at least three types of decentralization:
deconcentration, devolution, and delegation. According to Paqueo and Lammert (2000),
“deconcentration involves shifting management responsibilities from the central to
regional or other lower levels so that the center retains control”. “Delegation occurs
when central authorities lend authorities to lower levels of government, or even to
semiautonomous organizations, with the understanding that the authority can be
withdrawn”. Devolution, on the other hand, is “the transfer of authority over financial,
administrative, or pedagogical matters” on a permanent basis, and the transfer “cannot be
revoked on a whim” (Paqueo and Lammert, 2000, question 4). Furthermore, when a loss
of control is perceived as a result of decentralization, the measures may turn out to be
regaining of the authority devolved. This is a process that is sometimes named re-
centralization. In the following sections of the paper, some reform measures in some
East Asian economies will be analyzed with this framework of decentralization.
The Move of East Asian Economies towards Educational Decentralization

“Generally speaking, educational systems in the East, where the collective takes
precedence over the individual, have traditionally taken a centralized approach with
central governments developing, designing, and executing policies and standards for
school finance, curriculum, textbooks, assessment, and teacher preparation.” But as the
East Asian societies are becoming more and more complex, the East Asian governments
are finding a centralized approach to education failing to meet the needs of the
increasingly diverse population. The advance of communication technology and the
consequent shrinking of the global village have provided decision makers with a
repertoire of ideas from which they can refer to in solving these emerging problems. One
of such ideas is that of educational decentralization, and as pointed out above, almost all
East Asian economies are introducing some measures of educational decentralization.
Some examples of these measures in some East Asian economies will be described
below. As can be seen from these examples, although educational decentralization is a
common theme in these countries, the decentralization measures were triggered by very
different motives and took different forms.

China

The educational decentralization measures in China are a consequence of the market-

oriented economic reform that started in the late seventies. With decentralization away
from the centrally planned economy, there were some accompanying measures of
educational decentralization within the tightly centralized educational system. These
include devolution of authorities in the areas of management and financing of education.
For example, in a government document issued in 1985, it was specifically decreed that
“the power for administration of elementary education belongs to local authorities (State
Education Commission, 1985). As the Chinese society becomes more and more open,
the Chinese Government is finding the highly centralized educational provision unable to
satisfy people’s increasing demand in both the quantity and the quality of education.
Although the Chinese economy has been advancing dramatically since the late seventies,
funding for education is by no means lavish. Government funding for education, both in
terms of the percentage of GNP and in absolute terms, is low compared with the
developed countries. It is in this context that the government relaxed the monopoly of the
running of schools and began to allow some schools to be run by non-state sectors in
1994.

Minban schools

Minban schools or community run schools (minban literally means administered by the
people) are schools not run directly by the government, and they existed long before
1994. Prior to 1994, they represented efforts of the community in remote areas of the
country to provide for the educational needs of the people where the central government
failed to do so, and they were not part of the government’s policy. But today, minban
schools are part of the government’s educational policy, and they flourish in both the
remote hinterland as well as the big coastal cities. There are basically two types of

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minban schools. One category are those that are owned and run by private bodies, while
the other category, guoyou minban schools (guoyou means owned by the state),
theoretically still belong to the state but are run by private enterprises. The Chinese
Government falls short of calling these schools “private school”, as the notion of
“private” is still a taboo in the communist regime. But in essence, these schools are
private, although the state still has a fair amount of control in its running. For these
minban schools, the Chinese Government is changing its role from direct control and
running of the schools to managing them through legislation, funding and advice. There
are many factors that contribute to the rise of minban schools, but it is clear that the major
impetus is the need for private sources of funding to supplement the insufficient
government funding for education.

Curriculum, textbooks and examination

One cannot decentralize the operation of schools without a certain amount of

decentralization in the curriculum, and hence, another area of educational
decentralization in China is that of the curriculum and the textbooks. Prior to 1986, the
whole of the huge student population in China was following one uniform set of textbook
(published by the People’s Education Press), written according to a standardized
curriculum for all. Since the “open-door” policy of the late seventies, it was felt that this
set of standardized teaching materials was unable to cater for the needs of students of
different inclinations in this vast country. In 1986, the then Education Commission
announced that while the curriculum (or syllabus) would remain uniform, different
groups of educators and publishers were commissioned to published different textbooks
to cater for the different needs of students in different parts of the country. This
represents the first step of this highly centralized education system to decentralization its
control over the curriculum.

In addition to this policy of “one syllabus, many textbooks”, a handful of provinces and
cities were selected to pilot the development of their own curricula and syllabuses.
Shanghai is one of such places for testing out new practices. In the 1990s, Shanghai was
allowed to have its own examination system as well. For example, in 1995, Shanghai
abolished the uniformed middle school entrance examination and replaced it with a
system of local admission. In a culture where examination is of paramount importance,
this represented an extremely bold move. In 1997, the uniformed junior high school
examination was abolished as well.

However, among these moves of decentralization, there were at times moves in the
opposite direction. For example, a Shanghai Municipal Commission of Education was
formed in 1995 to take charge of all aspects of Education in Shanghai. The Municipal
Commission is directly under both the Ministry of Education of the Country and the
municipal government, and educational matters former under the control of other
departments of the municipal government were transferred to the Commission. This can
be interpreted as a reaction to decentralization, and Ngok and Chan (2003) saw this as a
move to “curb the loss of too much control from the center to the periphery” (p.92), and

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opined that in China, “centralization is still deemed to be necessary at the provincial (and
municipal) level so as to implement the central policy of decentralization” (p.94).

So we can see that educational decentralization in China is carried out with much caution.
The greatest incentive of decentralization comes from the need for the community to
share out the country’s financing of education. The decentralization measures are not
meant for devolution of authority to lower levels of the hierarchy for devolution’s sake.
Within this general trend of decentralization, there was at time the need for re-
centralization, as exemplified by the case of Shanghai above, for fear of the loss of
centralized control. The decentralization moves were taken because of practical
(financial) need rather than a genuine embracement of a philosophy of devolution of
authority. In the whole process, the maintenance of central control by the government is
still of utmost importance.

Hong Kong

Hong Kong is a relatively small place, and although it is divided into 18 smaller districts
for management purposes, the “distance” between the central government and the
districts is too small to be appreciable. So in Hong Kong, decentralization mainly refers
to the transfer of authority and decision-making from the government to the schools.
Hong Kong’s education system has traditionally been a mixture of centralization and
decentralization – centralized in terms of the curriculum and the examination structure,
but decentralized in terms of the operation of schools because traditionally most schools
in Hong Kong are operated by religious and other non-governmental organizations,
referred to as school sponsoring bodies (SSBs) in Hong Kong. Recently however, there
have been some major changes in the operation of schools, and the name of the game is
school-based management (SBM).

School-based Management

SBM in Hong Kong represents a typical example of re-centralization dressed up in the

form of decentralization. The SBM movement started as an initiative known as School
Management Initiative (SMI) in 1992 before the change over of sovereignty in 1997.
SMI was in essence a managerial restructuring, aiming at tightening the control of the
aided school sector (see discussion below). The system of government aid to schools has
a long history. Schools in Hong Kong were first established by the missionaries, and in
1873, the government introduced a grant-in-aid scheme to subsidize these mission
schools (Sweeting, 1990, p.209). Over the years, more religious bodies and other
voluntary organizations (such as merchant associations) operate schools. Even up to this
day, the majority of the schools in Hong Kong are operated by these voluntary bodies
(only about 6% of these schools are managed directly by the government), though they
are fully subsidized by the government. With the help of these SSBs, Hong Kong
underwent a massive expansion in its education provision in the seventies and early
eighties. After this quantitative expansion, when the government turned its attention to
the quality of schooling, it was found that the legal, funding and management framework
which had been governing these aided schools, originally meant for a much smaller

4
number of schools, was inadequate for the purpose of quality control. There are at least
four reasons for such inadequacy:

1. The number and variety of SSBs are much larger than when the system was first
set up. Many voluntary agencies other than the churches are now operating
schools. In the early 1990s for example, there were more than 221 such SSBs
(Education and Manpower Branch and Education Department, 1991, p.11), and
quality control became an issue for the government.
2. The legal framework, which originated in the early colonial years with the aim of
containing political influence from the mainland, was no longer relevant given the
imminent return of sovereignty to China
3. The roles and responsibilities of the various parties (EMB1, ED1, SSBs; School
Management Committees (SMCs) etc.) were not clearly defined in the existing
framework.
4. The funding mechanism for the aided schools was too rigid.

The SMI document (Education and Manpower Branch and Education Department, 1991)
made it clear that SMI is part of the government’s Public Sector Reform, hence the earlier
assertion that it was in essence a managerial restructuring. The document spelled out the
concerns of the government listed above, but it should be mentioned that these were only
problems as identified by the government. As far as the schools were concerned, they
found that the existing system of partnership between the SSBs and the government had
been working well. Therefore, when the document was released in 1991, not much
enthusiasm for the initiative was shown in the school sector.

The government however pushed on with the initiative, and in the Education Commission
report No. 7 (ECR7) released in September 1997, SMI was renamed School Based
Management, and packaged with the label of “quality school education”. So what was
instigated as a managerial restructuring is now packaged as a measure of quality
enhancement, and promoted in the name of educational decentralization. In his first
policy speech in October 1997, C.H. Tung, the Chief Executive of the newly formed
Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, endorsed the recommendations of ECR7 and
hence made it government policy. A committee was set up by the government to work
out the details of the SBM measures. But by this time, what was originally a measure to
rationalize the roles of various stake holders became a device by which the government
shifted the authority from the SSBs to the other stake holders.

This shift of authority needs to be understood in the context of the history of Hong Kong.
In the colonial days, because of the religious root of the British Government, the
Christian churches were seen to be receiving favour from the colonial government, and
this is manifested in the area of education. Most of the prestigious schools in Hong Kong
are church-run schools, and some alleged that these schools were better off not because
they had been doing well but because of the favour they received from the colonial
government. Now that sovereignty is changed to a government which has no bias

1
The Education and Manpower Branch (EMB) was the policy arm of the Government, while the Education
Department (ED) was responsible for the executive of educational policies.

5
towards Christianity, the change over provided a golden opportunity for reshuffling of
power, and the SBM move was seen by many as the government’s attempt in ripping the
power off from the Church.

Seen in this light, the SBM movement under the label of decentralization is in reality a
re-centralization of authority (regaining of control of the schools from the SSBs), or at
most a deconcentration where power is shifted from those that are seen to be less
supportive of the government to those sectors which the government has more control of.

Japan

Before World War II, the education system in Japan was a typical East Asian one, with
the central government making all decisions in the area of education: its goals, the
curriculum, the textbooks, and the status of teachers and students etc. After World War II
during the American occupation period, measures were introduced to decentralize the
Japanese education system according to the American model. These measures however
failed bitterly as they were seen to be not compatible with the Japanese culture. And at
the end of the American occupation when the Board of Education law was revised in
1956, although much of the decentralized structure remained, the Japanese education
system reverted back to a centralized mode. For example, the National Courses of Study
were strictly followed as a standard throughout the country (Muta, 1999). Central and
local educational agencies were theoretically parallel institutions with one not
subordinating to the other, but in practice, the “advices” from the central agencies were
taken as orders by the local agencies. The result is a superficially decentralized structure
with a highly centralized spirit (Wakai, 1996).

The next wave of reforms came in the 1980s as a product of globalization. Many
Japanese, the commercial sector in particular, were critical of the traditional education
system and called for change. In 1984, the government set up a National Council on
Educational Reform to study the situation and make suggestions for changes, and the
Council submitted its report to the Prime Minister in 1987 (NIER, 1988). The major
recommendations were a deregulation of administrative processes, and the liberalization
of education.

A series of reports in moving the liberalization forward followed. New courses of study
for kindergartens, elementary and lower secondary schools were introduced in 1998, and
those for senior secondary schools were introduced in 1999. In contrast to the old
curriculum, the new courses of study allow a certain percentage of the curriculum to be
flexibly designed by the school, thus delegating the school with more control over the
curriculum.

Schools however do not seem to be ready to take over such control yet. For example, a
major component of the new curriculum is a new subject entitled “integrated study”
which is totally school-based with no prescribed content by the Ministry of Education,
Science, Sports and Culture (known as Monbusho in Japan). It is hoped that schools will
take this opportunity to introduce new content with creative teaching methods that suit

6
the needs of their students. However, numerous requests were sent by schools to the
Monbusho for guidelines and examples on this new subject. Eventually, the Monbusho
succumbed to such requests and issued a publication of guidelines and examples. As can
be expected, such a publication immediately became the course book for the subject and
defeated the very purpose of introduction of this new subject.

An even more paradoxical phenomenon is how this decentralization process is taking

place. Schools and local boards of education are so used to following orders in a
centralized environment that they are relying on the orders from the hierarchy above to
carry out the decentralization measures. On the other hand, in order to safeguard the
successful implementation of the decentralization policies, the government imposes
sanctions on schools that fail to follow the guidelines set by the government (Kubota,
1994). As Muta (1999) observes, “it is odd that deregulation and decentralization, which
call for initiative at the grass root level, have been implemented in a uniform manner
from the top by conveying orders to educators at lower levels”. And as education
administrators are afraid to stand out and be different from the rest, “it is possible that the
Japanese system of education faces the paradox of becoming uniform more than ever as
the control by the national government decreases” (p.12).

Singapore

Singapore is a city state, and being small like Hong Kong, decentralization involves the
transfer of authority and decision-making from the central government not to local
regions, but to the schools. Two moves of decentralization are selected for discussion
below. One is the establishment of independent and autonomous schools, and the other is
the reform in the universities of Singapore.

Independent and autonomous schools

The education system in Singapore, like those in other East Asian economies, is highly
centralized. The first step in educational decentralization in Singapore was the
establishment of the Schools Council in 1981. The Council gave school principals the
opportunity of making their contribution to education policies of the country. This is seen
as the first step towards giving schools and the principals greater autonomy and wider
responsibility with regards to decision-making.

In 1985, because of the economic recession in Singapore, a committee was set up by the
government to study the problems faced by the city state. Based on the recommendations
of the committee, the Ministry of Education announced in 1986 that one of the guidelines
for education is that “Creativity in schools must be boosted through a ‘bottom-up’
approach whereby initiatives must come from principals and teachers instead of from the
Ministry” (Tan, 1986, quoted from Ho and Gopinathan, 1999, p.105). Consequently,
Singapore started an independent schools scheme in 1988, and three well-known schools
were encouraged by the government to go independent, which means that they are given
greater administrative and professional autonomy. In 1992, the government further

7
announced an “autonomous” schools scheme, and in 1994, six schools were named to be
autonomous schools. These schools, though not as “autonomous” as the independent
schools, were given additional funding and more flexibility in organizing their curriculum.
To date, there are 9 independent schools and 23 autonomous schools.

Independent schools are of course not something new in the eyes of Western educators.
But in the highly centralized Singaporean education system, this is no small step forward
towards decentralization. However, it must be pointed out that these independent and
autonomous schools are still under rather tight control of the government according to
Western standards. For example, they are still to follow the common core national
curriculum (although there is more flexibility in the “non-core” subjects), and they need
to adhere to government policies such as those governing bilingual language teaching.

Universities

Parallel to the decentralization measures in the school sector, there have been marked,
albeit still modest, moves towards decentralization in the university sector. The most
significant event in this regard is no doubt the establishment in 2000 of the third and the
first private university in Singapore, the Singapore Management University. It should
however be pointed out that this “private” university is still funded by the government,
which also has the power of determining the enrolment and the level of fees charged by
the University. However, compared to the other two public universities, it has more
autonomy in terms of the curriculum and the hiring and firing of staff. That a private
university is set up in Singapore is of some significance. Ever since the establishment of
the country, the Singaporean Government has been imposing tight control over its
universities (and schools). And for years, Singaporeans have been criticized as too rigid
and too compliant, and they are not creative enough to meet the challenge of the 21st
Century, and some people attribute this to the rigid education system. It is in this context
that the third University in Singapore was set up as a private university.

In the same vein and roughly at the same time, the two Singaporean public universities
were given greater operational autonomy. In 1999, an ad hoc committee was set up by
the government to review university and funding, and in 2000, the government accepted
the recommendation of the committee (Ministry of Education, 2000) that the two public
universities be given more autonomy in their operation. At the same time, a more
systematic accountability framework is put in place. Hence the government has decided
to change its role from one of “direct interventionist control” to that of “remote
supervisory steering” (Lee and Gopinathan, 2003, p.127).

As far as the motives of the decentralization measures are concern, these moves in
Singapore, unlike the case of China, do not seem to be prompted by fiscal concerns.
Even with the Asian economic crisis, the universities in Singapore are very well financed.
The incentive seems to come from a genuine concern in making the universities more
effective. As to the decentralization process itself, authority is shifted from the central
government to the senior management of the universities in the decentralization exercise.
For example, a performance-based salary structure is instituted so that the university

8
senior management team is now even more powerful than before the decentralization
move. So within the universities, the “decentralization” moves actually result in a
“centralization” of power within the university senior management team. Lee and
Gopinathan (2003) argued that this is a form of “centralized decentralization”, by which
“the devolution of mainly financial and human resource control in matched by the
concentration of policy and decision-making power and strategic command in the hands
of the top university management, with the state authority continuing to steer university
education at a distance” (p.128).

So it seems that the decentralization measures in Singapore are not aimed at devolution of
authority to the lower levels of the hierarchy per se, but are means to enhance efficiency
of the system. As far as the universities are concerned, this move is in line with
Singapore’s long-standing pragmatic policy on higher education, where universities and
other tertiary institutions are perceived as “public service institutions in which the
interests of the academic profession are seen as subordinate to the national interest” (Lee
and Gopinathan, p.128). So universities in Singapore are more like government
departments than autonomous academic institutions, and the recent “decentralization”
measures are more a shift of authority from one part of the government to another. In
other words, this is a deconcentration rather than devolution.

Taiwan

Of the East Asian economies discussed in this paper, Taiwan represents the most radical
as far as its educational decentralization is concerned. The decentralization movement
started with the lifting of the martial law in 1987. Although recent concerns about the
financing of education played a role in these reform initiatives, the main impetus of
change was politically triggered.

When the martial law was lifted in Taiwan in 1987, the political climate was one of rapid
democratization. Since every aspect of life had been so tightly controlled by the
government under the martial law, there was a sentiment among Taiwanese in the late
1980s of getting rid of any control from the government. In the realm of education, with
the transition to multi-party politics, the task of the education machinery in disseminating
the KMT government’s ideologies was no longer needed. This alleviated the need for a
tight political control of education, and made room for the decentralization of education.

Like other East Asian economies, the Taiwanese education system was very centralized
before 1987. All major educational policies, including the education budget, design of
the standardized school curriculum and textbooks, the examination system, appointment
of university presidents, policies concerning teacher education institutions etc. were
centrally determined. And for many years, private schools were forbidden. The more
open atmosphere after the lifting of the martial law prompted the Taiwanese people to
express their aspirations about different aspects of life more openly, including the very
important aspect of education. Dissatisfied with the very rigid education system, a mass
rally of more than 10,000 people was held in April 1994 urging for modernization of the
education system. Consequent to the rally, the 7th National Education Conference was

9
organized by the Ministry of Education in June 1994 to explore ways forward, and a
report was released in February 1995, urging for lowering the study pressure on students
and “freeing” education (Ministry of Education, 1995).

As a response to these pressures, a series of decentralization measures were taken. For

example: teacher education provision, which used to be provided in normal universities
(i.e., teacher training universities) and colleges of education only, was open to other
universities in 1994; and in 1996, the school textbooks market was made open to the
public. Later, agents other than the state were allowed to operate schools, and private
schools were actually encouraged.

In November 1994, a Council on Education Reform was established under the

directorship of the Nobel Laureate Y.Z. Lee. The Council produced a series of reports in
which a number of policy suggestions were made. Among them, the most significant is
the deregulation of education. According to the Council, the only way to modernize the
education system in Taiwan is to deregulate it, and there are four areas where
deregulation is needed: (1) responsibility for the use of educational resources, (2)
educational structures, (3) educational content, and (4) educational administration
(Council on Education Reform of the Executive Yuan, 1995, p.25). So radical are these
recommendations perceived that it is described as an “earthquake” in Taiwan (Weng,
2003, p.51).

It may seem strange that since it was the people who first demanded change, why did
these deregulation suggestions sound so radical to them? An analysis of the background
of those who made the proposals for change may shed light on this question Many of the
key players who made these recommendations received their higher education in the US,
and it is clear that these deregulation suggestions have their roots in a Western culture.
However, the general populace is still deeply rooted in the traditional Chinese culture.
Although they are not satisfied with the traditional centralized system, yet they find this
extreme form of decentralization incompatible with their culture which stresses harmony
and order (see discussion below). Hence, this “earthquake” actually represents a clash of
the cultures between the East and the West

Discussion

From the description and discussion of the decentralization measures in the five East
Asian economies above, it can be seen that the motives, substance and effects of the
decentralization measures are all very different. None of them is actually aiming at a
genuine devolution of authority to the front-line educators, or at improving the quality of
education.

In China, the minban schools were a means to solve the problem of financing education.
For Hong Kong, SBM was a device for reshuffling of power from the SSBs to other stake
holders so that schools are under better control. In Japan, decentralization measures were
carried out in a centralization spirit, while in Singapore, deconcentration measures were
taken to make sure of better control of the universities in fulfilling the national goals.

10
And in Taiwan, where the nearest to a genuine decentralization has taken place, the result
is an educational “earthquake”!

Since in none of these East Asian economies was the aim to “transfer of decision-making
authority, responsibility, and tasks from higher to lower organizational levels”, it is not
surprising that genuine decentralization was not achieved in any of these economies.
These unsuccessful incidences of decentralization demonstrate that the very idea of
decentralization itself does not sit well with the East Asian culture. In particular, two
characteristics of the East Asian culture are at odd with the idea of decentralization:
uniformity and pragmaticism.

The idea of uniformity, dayitong or a “unified domain”, is a distinctive trait of the

Chinese culture, the dominant culture in East Asia. There is a stronger emphasis in the
East Asian culture on the social rather than the individual aspect of man. Compared with
Western cultures which stress independence and individualism, the East Asian culture
emphasizes integration and harmony. Yang (1981) labeled this characteristic as “social
orientation”, in contrast to the individual orientation in the West. Related to this
orientation are traits such as conformity (Bond and Hwang, 1986) and uniformity (Sun,
1983). Under this culture, individuals are expected to fit themselves into the existing
social structure rather than the structure being tailored to suit the needs of individuals. It
is not difficult to see that these traits are more compatible with a centralized and unified
system rather than a decentralized and dispersed system. For example, the idea of not
standing out and be different from the rest discussed in the case of Japan above is one
clear manifestation of this character.

The East Asian culture is also characterized by its extreme pragmatic nature. Ideologies
are seldom pursued for their own sake, but are related to solving of temporal problems. If
we view the decentralization movement in the context of the wider movement of the
pursuit for democracy, we may begin to understand why it is difficult for decentralization
to take root in East Asia. For Westerners, ideological ideals such as democracy are
pursued for their own sake. But for the East Asians, they are perceived as means to serve
the purpose of efficiency rather than an end in itself. So for the notion of
“decentralization”, it is not taken as something with intrinsic value, but is utilized in
different East Asian countries as a means to achieve their own agenda.

For the West, whereas decentralization is for the purpose of “promoting flexibility and
innovation within systems’ and centralization is for “ensuring that systems are held
accountable for seeing that all students are achieving and mastering core content”, these
do not seem to be the concerns of the East Asian economies. For East Asian economies,
centralization is for control and decentralization is for efficiency (without losing the
control). So decentralization is a pragmatic rather than an ideological move. When it is
taken as an ideological move (as in the case of Taiwan), it may lead to chaos.

In this unified and pragmatic culture, it is not surprising that genuine decentralization is
not achieved. Actually, given this difference in cultures between the East and the West,
this notion of centralization versus decentralization may not be the best conceptual tool

11
for understanding the phenomena of educational reforms in East Asia. The same
decentralization measure may mean very different things in different cultures. Two
similar decentralization measures may have totally different motives and effects, and two
different measures may share similar motives and achieve comparable results.

For this reason, in order to benefit from the experiences elsewhere, future research should
not be confined to a survey of the latest practice in education reform or governance in
different countries. We need to understand the reform measures in terms of both the
contemporary problems faced by the different countries as well as the political and
cultural contexts in which the reforms take place.

Conclusion

Decentralization is not a panacea. One cannot expect that quality of education to be

automatically enhanced, or the education system to become more efficient or effective
simply because of decentralization measures. Decentralization is complex a notion that
needs to be understood in terms of the context of the culture of the place. We need to ask
why we need to decentralize and for what purpose specifically. We may then decide
what aspects of the education system need to be changed. The change may be one of a
decentralization move, or it may be seen as a centralization move. According to the East
Asian pragmatic philosophy, this does not matter. For in the final analysis, the goal to
improve the education rather than to follow a world trend blindly.

The cases discussed above show that this Western notion of decentralization cannot be
transplanted to countries which do not share the culture. Such alien notions will only be
distorted by the very powerful underlying culture when borrowed from the West.

References

Astiz, M.F., Wiseman, A.W. and Baker, D.P. (2002). Slouching towards
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