Governance of government middle schools in urban China and India: comparative analysis of supportive accountability and teacher perceptions

Effective governance that ensures proper management and utilization of various resources is increasingly emphasized as a key to achieving quality and inclusiveness in the basic education sector. This chapter aims to contribute to the understanding of education governance in urban settings of two of the largest – yet relatively under-explored – public education systems in the world, namely China and India, with a particular focus on their arrangement of teachers’ in-service training and career advancement as supportive accountability mechanisms. Hence in most developing countries, including India and China, government schools remain the predominant provider of basic education. Within the emerging literature on governance from bodies such as the World Health Organization, the World Bank, UNDP, the notion of accountability is increasingly highlighted as a key to achieving good governance. To further extend the understanding and theorization of accountability, one part of the literature has come up with several typologies of accountability.