Abstract:

Introduction:
Institutional autonomy of schools has been the subject of much discussion in the educational space. The main focus of the study was to determine the impact of the school autonomy degree on learning outcomes. The authors have developed a methodology to study the degree of school autonomy. A questionnaire was developed to analyse the educational environment at municipal and regional levels (taking into account the research conducted in OECD countries). The report presents the results of a survey by the author's methodology of more than 10 thousand school principals from all regions of the Russian Federation. The autonomy coefficient is determined and its influence on educational outcomes of schools is demonstrated.

Objectives:
The main aim of the study was to analyse the relation between the schools learning outcomes and the ratio management resources among regional, sub-regional governments and schools.

Method:
School autonomy was analysed in three main areas:
- Autonomy in the organisation of the learning process;
- Autonomy in financial matters and budget planning and approval (management of resources, including staffing);
- autonomy in solving issues of school personnel management.

The following algorithm has been designed by the authors within the framework of assessing the results of educational systems functioning:
- formation of a indicators system required to diagnose the school autonomy degree;
- approbation of the developed indicators;
- design of a questionnaire as a tool for diagnosing the autonomy degree;
- questionnaire survey of school administrators;
- processing of primary survey data, including their classification and labelling;
- formation of aggregated indicators of school functioning processes;
- construction of formula and calculation of school autonomy coefficient;
- identification of factors that have a significant impact on educational outcomes;
- assessment of the relationship between the coefficient of autonomy and educational outcomes.

Conclusion:
It is worth noting that the degree of schools autonomy has different impacts on learning outcomes depending on aspects of the school. School autonomy has a positive impact in the issues of educational process organization and teachers' staff recruitment. On the contrary, negative influence is observed in the issues of school administrative staff management.

Acknowledgement:
The article was prepared as part of the implementation of the state task of the FIRO RANEPA.

Keywords:

Educational process, school autonomy, models of educational organization management, a school management survey.