<p>The national curriculum and the School Act emphasize the importance of establishing partnerships between schools and local businesses. The formation of partnerships was expected to be facilitated by the decentralization reforms that took place in the beginning of the 1990’s. These reforms gave schools and municipalities greater scope for adjusting education to meet local circumstances. However, central government has not made financial resources available for stimulating the establishment of school-business partnerships, nor does it penalize municipalities that do not set up such partnerships.</p><p>The questions in focus in this study are: why do partnerships arise, how are they organised and what factors are important in achieving a partnership which can function in practice? Urban regime theory is applied to explain why collaborations occur and policy network theory is used to analyse how they are organised. A further aim of the study is to examine whether the partnerships can be defined as urban regimes.</p><p>The study was based on case studies of four upper secondary schools in Sweden, each in a different municipality. These municipalities are all industrialized, but the structure of their industrial base varies. Two are dominated by one or a few major companies whereas the others are characterized by the predominance of many small businesses. The study focuses on how three vocational study programmes – industry, electricity and building - collaborate with local businesses.</p><p>The study shows that the main explanation of why a partnership arises is that both partners believe that they can gain something by collaborating. For schools, the main reason for establishing a partnership with business is a belief that this will make the vocational education programmes more attractive for pupils. Through partnerships, schools can get access not only to practical experience for their pupils, but also help from business with developing the content of courses and some financial contributions. However, the economic benefits are of limited importance compared with the perceived gains in terms of the development of the educational content of the courses. This goes against results from studies in other countries.</p><p>For business, it is particularly important to be able to influence decisions about the content of local education. By doing so, they hope to ensure that the pupils, after having completed their education, will enter the local labour market with more relevant qualifications.</p><p>My research shows that several requirements have to be present for a successful partnership to be established. First, there must be a commitment and firm intentions from both partners. Second, size of the businesses involved in the partnerships is important for how they are organized. Larger businesses tend to see the partnership from a more long term perspective. However, it is also possible to organize collaborations with smaller businesses if they can be united under a common organisation. Third, specific actors make a difference in the partnerships. Devoted and interested key actors who are closely associated with the partnership are very important for the continuity of the partnership</p><p>The study suggests that urban regime theory and policy network theory are useful for understanding why and how partnerships between schools and businesses are established and retained. However, it can not be concluded that these collaborations in themselves are urban regimes at a more local level. This would require that their focus was much more long-term.</p>

University of Macau / Faculty of Law

PUBLIC-PRIVATE PARTNERSHIP AS A POLICY INSTRUMENT: THE CASE OF &Ccedil / ALBiR This dissertation assesses the nature and features of public-private partnerships in the case of &Ccedil / ALB&amp / #272 / R. In this study, the public policy literature (especially policy transfer, policy formation and implementation, and network approach) has been used to explain the policy process for the adoption of such a policy instrument. The findings of this study can be summarized as: Firstly, this study indicates that the selection of policy instrument- public private partnership- in the case of &Ccedil / ALB&amp / #272 / R was not neutral as the proponents of managerialism assert but it was ideological. Secondly, there occurred a democratic legitimacy problem for the establishment of public-private partnerships in &Ccedil / ALB&amp / #272 / R case when citizens in the elections elected a mayor who was against privatization. Thirdly, after the establishment of public-private partnership the steering performed by &Ccedil / ALBiR is not traditional command and control mechanism but instead it is managerial collaboration and persuasion mechanism. In addition, local government&rsquo / s working in accordance with managerial principles has brought about the elimination of public values. Lastly, this study shows that public-private partnership is not efficient enough due to compensation fee paid in early years, high operating expenses, and blurring of boundaries between public and private sector. Therefore, the main argument of this dissertation is that public-private partnerships as policy tools should be assessed case by case since so called characteristics of public-private partnerships such as efficiency, and equity may not exist as in case of &Ccedil / ALBiR.

本研究係針對台灣高級中等學校之城/鄉、公/私立及學校規模之學業成就與教育資源進行研究。以大學入學考試中心提供之數據進行分析。經由三因子變異數分析結果指出城地區的學業成就高於鄉；公立學校成績高於私立；學校規模學業成就依序為大、中、小型。城鄉皆以公立高中學業成就優於私立高中；在城的公立高中學業成就又高於鄉地區。公立大型高中學業成就高於公立中、小型；私立大型、中型、小型學業成就排序亦同。再藉由典型相關分析可知公立學校學業成就與教育資源有典型相關最後使用t檢定比較教育資源的差異，得到生師比及平均班級人數並無城鄉差異；在公私立學校間的平均班級人數以公立優於私立。公立高中學校於教育資源及學業成就均優於私立學校，此與國外研究不同。 / The purpose of this research explores the relationship between the academic achievement and educational resources among urban/ rural schools, public /private schools and different size of senior secondary schools in Taiwan. The raw data offered by the College Entrance Examination Center is analyzed in this study. By three-way ANOVA, we found the academic achievement of urban schools is better than that of rural schools. The academic achievement of the public schools is better than private ones. Furthermore, the academic achievement of the large-sized schools is better than that of the medium and small-size ones. In addition, the academic achievement of the urban public schools is better than that of rural public ones. The academic achievement of the large-sized public schools is better than that of the medium and small-size public ones. The result shows the same order while it comes to the difference of academic achievement among private school of different size. There is significant canonical correlation between educational resources and academic achievement in the public school. Finally by t-test, the research’s result represents that pupil-teacher ratio and class size have no significant difference between urban schools and rural ones. And the class size of the private schools is larger than in public schools. In Taiwan, the performance of academic achievement and educational resources in public schools are better than private ones that differ from some previous foreign studies.

With rapid urbanization and population growth in urban areas, urban development is necessary and urgent. However, with tight land supply from expropriating new farmland, redeveloping urban villages at central urban area would be full of potential. Basically, an urban village is the byproduct of rapid urbanization, with collective-owned non-agricultural use land surrounded by a state-owned urban area. Because of the particular land ownership structure in urban villages, conventional urban redevelopment methods are not suitable for the redevelopment of urban villages, public-private partnerships had been introduced into urban redevelopment to integrate the power and resources of private sector into the process of urban redevelopment with a legal contract, to form a collaboration between public and private sections, and to share the profits and benefits. A study on such partnerships in the redevelopment of urban villages could be instructive and enlightening for the future redevelopment of rural non-agricultural land in China. The major aim of the research is to discover the conditions under which partnerships for the redevelopment of urban villages could be established in China. The redevelopment of three urban villages in Shenzhen, namely the villages of Yunong, Gangxia and Huanggang, were thoroughly studied. A research framework has been established by examining the power relations of such partnerships and has been tailored to the scenario of redevelopment of urban village in China. The partnership synergy between local government, urban village communities and private developers, and role conflicts of each participants have been analyzed by considering the impact factors inherent in the institutional context of municipal government and the cultural context of urban villages in Shenzhen. These factors affect the composition, the process and the outcome of partnership in redevelopment of urban villages. The study found that because institutional support and land resource are exclusively and irreplaceably provided by the local government and the urban village, local government with systematic power is the primary partner who influences the partnership in redevelopment of urban villages the most. The local government arranges and executes the redevelopment timetable, decides the objective of redevelopment and devises rules of redistributing redevelopment profits. Under some conditions like better location, larger size and well-organization and efficient leadership, the secondary dominator namely village community becomes more important on the power balance of partnership. Private developer has no unique advantage in the partnership and could only be the follower of other two partners. Case studies from different cities with diversified institutional and cultural context are expected to be included into the future research areas. / published_or_final_version / Real Estate and Construction / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

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No abstract available. / Thesis (M.Sc.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2011.

Mémoire numérisé par la Division de la gestion de documents et des archives de l'Université de Montréal

The central argument that I advance in this dissertation is that the influence of the Rockefeller Foundation (RF) and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) in the governance of global health and agricultural development has been derived from their ability to advance knowledge structures crafted to accommodate the preferences of the dominant states operating within the contexts where they have sought to catalyze change. Consequently, this dissertation provides a new way of conceptualizing knowledge power broadly conceived as well as private governance as it relates to the provision of public goods. In the first half of the twentieth-century, RF funds drove scientific research that produced tangible solutions, such as vaccines and high-yielding seed varieties, to longstanding problems undermining the health and wealth of developing countries emerging from the clutches of colonialism. At the country-level, the Foundation provided advanced training to a generation of agricultural scientists and health practitioners, and RF expertise was also pivotal to the creation of specialized International Organizations (IOs) for health (e.g. the League of Nations Health Organization) and agriculture (e.g. the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research) as well as many informal international networks of experts working to solve common problems. Finally in the neo-liberal era, RF effectively demonstrated how the public-private partnership paradigm could provide public goods in the face of externally imposed austerity constraining public sector capacity and the failure of the free-market to meet the needs of populations with limited purchasing power. Since its inception, the BMGF has demonstrated a similar commitment to underwriting innovation through science oriented towards reducing global health disparities and increasing agricultural productivity in poor countries, and has greatly expanded the application of the Public-Private Partnership (PPP) approach in both health and agriculture. Unlike its intellectual forebear, BMGF has been far more focused on end-points and silver bullets than investing directly in the training of human resources. Moreover whereas RF has for most of its history decentralized its staff, those of BMGF have been concentrated mainly at its headquarters in Seattle. With no operational programs of its own, BMGF has instead relied heavily on external consultants to inform its programs and remains dependent on intermediary organizations to implement its grants. Despite these and other differences, both RF and BMGF have exhibited a common capacity to catalyse institutional innovation that has benefited historically marginalized populations in the absence of structural changes to the dominant global power structure. A preference for compromise over contestation, coupled with a capacity for enabling innovation in science and governance, has resulted in broad acceptance for RF and BMGF knowledge structures within both state and international policy arenas. This acceptance has translated into both Foundations having direct influence over (i) how major challenges related to disease and agriculture facing the global south are understood (i.e. the determinants and viable solutions); (ii) what types of knowledge matters for solving said problems (i.e. who leads); and (iii) how collective action focused on addressing these problems is structured (i.e. the institutional frameworks).