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Discretion to Use Rules: Individual Interests and Collective Welfare in School Admissions
Author(s) -
TWEEDIE JACK
Publication year - 1989
Publication title -
law and policy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.534
H-Index - 45
eISSN - 1467-9930
pISSN - 0265-8240
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-9930.1989.tb00026.x
Subject(s) - discretion , bureaucracy , welfare , orientation (vector space) , collective responsibility , social welfare , public relations , political science , public economics , law and economics , economics , law , geometry , mathematics , politics
This article examines the approaches of British education authorities towards school admission decisions. Two models of case‐level decision making in social programs are developed— the individual client orientation which focuses on using discretion to adapt decisions to the needs and choices of particular clients and the collective welfare orientation which emphasizes developing bureaucratic rules and procedures to decide cases efficiently. Education authorities use their discretion about how to decide school admissions to adopt primarily collective welfare approaches. Their emphasis on efficient rules and procedures continue even after parents are given rights of school choice that require an individualized examination of each parent's request. In the conclusion, the persistence of the primarily collective welfare orientations in school admissions is used to examine the pressures towards similar orientations that exist in all social programs.