In Canada, approximately 5.3 million students are served by public schools. Canada's public education systems remain a provincial responsibility, but within that basic governance structure, change is occurring. To the international trend of substantive change to public education governance, however, Canada appears to be a latecomer. Essentially, governance is who holds decision-making authority and how that authority is administered.
Many factors precipitate changes to education governance.
By far the most quoted Canadian reasons are public demands for fiscal restraint and increased accountability. The predominant trends in public education governance in Canada are both a move towards centralization of control and the appearance of decentralization. The former appears to be a budget-driven process, accomplished mostly through the removal, reduction and reorganization of local school boards and their structures. The latter, through increased community and parental involvement. School Councils Emerge School-based management is a promising model for public education restructuring that has been fully enacted in Britain and New Zealand.