Centralisation and School Empowerment: From Rhetoric to Practice Adam E. Nir (Editor) This book is published at an ideal time as far as developments in policy, professional and personal domains are concerned. In respect to policy, there is now ample evidence, as reported by Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), that decentralization in the form of school empowerment is a significant international trend. The same source also reports significant trends in centralisation… Given these trends, there are important implications for action in the professional domain. If authority and responsibility for important decisions are decentralised to the school level, what new knowledge and skills are required at the level and how should capacity be built to ensure that expectations are realised? The same question may be asked for those who work at the center… I have read much of the research and other scholarly work on decentralisation in recent times and I believe this book to be the most rigorous I have encountered… This book contains chapters from scholars who are at the top of their field and who provide perspectives form past and present in reporting on decentralisation... It is a special strength of the book that developments over time in nine countries in a particular region are addressed, with top-class framing and analysis by Adam Nir… Debates about school empowerment as described in this book are often conducted by participants who see power as a zero-sum game, that is, shifting power to schools means a loss of power at the centre. Experience is proving that this is a misleading game…