Capacity of municipalities with extended powers to administer regional education and its relation to the level of support to schools
Abstract
The aim of the paper is to understand the relationship between municipal staffing capacities and the level of their provision of operational support to schools. This paper presents findings from online survey on municipalities with extended powers (MEPs) which has been conducted in 2021.
Around 80% of MEPs participated in the survey. The results show that larger MEPs employ more staff dedicated to the school policy agenda, but neither support nor willingness to provide it are correlated with the number of these staff or the size of the MEP.
Thus, support of MEPs, albeit of varying sizes, appears to be driven by other characteristics than the differently measured size of the MEP, but we find indications that only significantly larger MEPs with more project staff and a high number of the directorate of the school facilities may be more active in supporting their schools, which should be the subject of further research.