Designing effective governance of education

Education systems all over the world have experimented with different ways to introduce education governance as a response to challenge to both quantitatively and qualitatively improve education services. However, in the same way that markets and governments falter, these governance arrangements can fail when the government fails to effectively steer and enable stakeholders to work together. This article proposes completeness of a policy mix – the deliberate combination of substantive and procedural elements of policy – as a crucial principle in averting governance failures. It uses case of the Philippines’ Education Service Contracting (ESC) program, one the largest public–private partnerships in education world, to illustrate that education governance reforms will continue struggle to be effective when procedural policy instruments are missing to concretely articulate the policy goals.