TOC

TOC

One of the last education reforms of the colonial government was the decentralization of school governance to protect the privileged position of whites-only schools by giving them autonomy to protect their resources and admissions policies prior to the advent of Zimbabwe's independence in 1980. While this was initially reversed at Independence through increased centralization of the provision of education, by 1996 a policy guideline proposed the decentralization of education through the transfer of some functions and authority from central government to local authorities and schools. This paper examines the prospects of this policy to devolve the provision of education and observes that the real motive force behind the policy is the ideological orientation of donors to reduce the role of central government in the provision of public education as part of economic rescue programmes for Zimbabwe. Since economic conditions had precedence over political considerations that were clearly in favor of greater central control of the education sector in order to redress colonially inherited inequalities, the paper concludes that the success of the policy depends on government capacity to bankroll the reform process.