[3] The Independent Public Schools (IPS) initiative was launched in Western Australia in 2009 by then Education Minister Dr Elizabeth Constable and the State Premier Colin Barnett.
A review of the Western Australian IPS initiative commissioned by the Department of Education (WA) was undertaken in 2013.
[5] A study in Victoria, Australia, following self-managing reforms in that state found no direct cause and effect between the decentralisation of decision-making in planning and resource allocation, and improved learning outcomes of students.
[8] A comparison of the 2006 PISA results concludes that 'school level autonomy in relation to staffing, educational content and budgeting do not show a significant association with school performance.
However, a system-level composition effect appears with regard to school autonomy in educational content as well as budgeting.
Students in educational systems giving more autonomy to schools to choose textbooks, to determine course content, and to decide which courses to offer, tend to perform better regardless of whether the schools which individual students attend have higher degrees of autonomy or not'.
These effects include: increased administrative burden on principals;[11][12] levels of resourcing required to effectively self-govern;[13] and the intensification of 'the gaps between schools serving the rich and those serving the poor, gaps marked by growing differences in school size, student intake, resources and achievement'.