large and well qualified staffs that focus on administering education, which often become a whole subsystem within the municipality. Also important and associated with the size variable is the level of wealth in the municipality. In contrast, small or rural municipalities can barely maintain a small group of staff who are often not dedicated solely to education. These unequal levels of management skills determine the wide range of ability to take full advantage of the opportunities and tools available to municipalities through the Educational Reform or other public investment agencies. Thus, for example, the PADEM role ranges from genuine municipal-wide education plans to very simple instruments for distributing teaching staff. Something similar has occurred with the ability to design investment and improvement projects. The municipalities with the most developed educational management skills have started to move into an area that was formerly considered the sole responsibility of the Ministry of Education: technical-pedagogical matters. Many municipalities have formed technical supervision and advisory teams that support work in the schools, generate projects to improve quality, supervise the development of reform programmes, and create competitive funds and other incentives for teachers and schools. Some municipalities have their own plans for upgrading teachers, often through hiring external services. In recent years, working agreements between some municipalities and provincial educational departments have allowed the latter to delegate some of their traditional supervisory and technical assistance functions to the former. Critical knots and problems in municipal education Equity The fact that school management is in the hands of the respective municipalities generates a basic problem mentioned above: the poorer and more isolated the school population, the more it needs the best educational service, but nonetheless in these conditions education tends to fall into the hands of those least able to handle it. This inequality affects both technical skills and the availability of financial resources. However, this is not the greatest source of inequity in the education system financed using public resources. Private subsidised schools are not required to admit all applicants, quite the opposite, most of these schools select children based on testing their skills and knowledge, and they expel students who perform or behave poorly. They also require that parents contribute financially. In other words, private schools, to maximise the benefits of working with public72
