Abstract:

Presently, school directors in Russia have received a wide variety of powers to manage additional financial resources and involve public structures in the management process. During such transformation of the external and internal socio-economic environment of the school, various mechanisms for school resources managing have been formed. These mechanisms significantly affected the level of schools autonomy.

In this paper, we present some aspects of the study - which way the autonomy of Russian schools influences on educational outcomes. The study was conducted in the summer of 2021 in the form of an online survey of school directors or their deputies in all subjects of the Russian Federation. After clearing the data, the number of questionnaires accepted for processing was 9250, which is more than 20% of the general population.

The authors consider various groups of resources that influence the level of autonomy of schools. During the study, we identified four management mechanisms that determine different levels of school autonomy, and demonstrated the relationship between the level of autonomy and educational results. Thus, in most key issues, the higher is the degree of autonomy from senior management bodies the higher are school educational results.

More than two-thirds of the study participants answered that the key tool by which decision-making is centralized is "financial resources". More than half of the directors and their deputies believe that the "normative regulation of the activities of an educational organization" contributes to strengthening the vertical of management. Only every fifth respondent noted communication resources (the nature of relations with higher authorities, the management style of the head). On average, every tenth respondent notes the influence of social and territorial resources (territorial remoteness and the number of students).

The obtained results indicate that with increasing the degree of autonomy of the school (the choice of spending directions, the organization of the educational process and staff (teachers) management), the educational results of students also increase. Note, the feedback has been identified in matters related to the appointment of school leaders. At the same time, most managers noted the need to increase independence and autonomy in planning and approving the budget and setting the level of remuneration.

We state, that the autonomy of the school is an element of the resource potential. According to the majority of managers who took part in the study, the autonomy of the school is associated with developing its financial independence and decreasing the practice of direct administration by education authorities. It is revealed, that communication resources also have a significant impact on the level of school autonomy.

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.