CHALLENGES IN GLOBALISING PUBLIC EDUCATION REFORM: Research-Based Evidence from Flores Primary Schools

In a globalising and internationalising world, the spread of public education reforms across national boundaries and cultures has multiplied. More particularly, efforts to restructure public schools with an emphasis on implementing School-Based Management (SBM) have become the keystones of reform in many countries. In Indonesia, since the UNDP (1997) found how the poor quality of national education and low human resources quality impacted on severe economic and social problems in the late 1990s, national education decision-makers have been struggling to create better national quality education. With the turn of the 21st Century, Indonesian education reforms agenda have been emphasized on shifting public education policy and management from centralized bureaucratic fashion to more decentralized democratic structure. This paper highlights the challenges of the globalising world in education with particular reference to the adoption of effective SBM in Indonesia. The data reported here are on the basis of an empirical survey involving 504 school council members, including school principals from Ngada Flores followed by 42 interviews with all relevant stakeholders.