This abstract provides an insight into a study that focuses on the role of local authorities as important intermediaries in the process of translating education policy into practice, and in particular in implementing system-level policy decisions at school and classroom level. Municipalities and their education boards become critical actors in educational contexts, where decentralisation of decision-making in education is increasing or taking place. Thus, this study contributes to the under-researched area of the role of local authority in implementing education policy, and the relationship between the different levels of education governance (Adolfsson & Alvunger, 2020).

Based on the review of scientific literature and content analysis of regulatory documents, the study examines the role of municipalities in policy implementation by comparing three different perspectives:
(1) the role of municipalities as described in the scientific literature and empirical studies of other countries’ experience (international perspective),
(2) the role of municipalities as defined in the key national level regulatory document - Education Act (national perspective),
(3) the role of municipalities as defined in their own regulatory documents, that determine their operations and functions (local perspective).

The central research questions, therefore, are: how local authorities define their role in their regulatory documents and whether and how this differs from the nationally defined role and the role described in the scientific literature and empirically researched international practice.

The study covers an analysis of 5 large and medium-sized municipalities in Latvia. Content analysis comprises of three stages: data collection; coding and category creation; data interpretation and comparison, including quantitative analysis of feature repetition and proportions, as well as qualitative analysis, looking at wording and meanings.

The main finding of the study is that local authorities are proportionally more oriented in their documentation towards administrative functions, and relatively little towards strategic and substantive roles, as highlighted in the Education Act, and even more in scientific literature and international practice. They see themselves more as administrative bodies, primarily responsible for information distribution, procedure description and process organisation, and less as an active player in policy interpretation and coherence, partnership building, and instructional leadership (Nicholson & Wilkins, 2024; Rorrer, Skrla & Scheurich, 2008). This allows to conclude that local authorities play a relatively passive role in the implementation of education policy decisions and do not fully use the mandate given to them by the government to direct the implementation of national-level policy decisions at the local level. Furthermore, scientific literature and international practice outline much broader area of influence that local authorities could have than it is fixed in the existing local authorities’ regulatory documents.

Keywords: The role of local authorities, implementation of education policy, educational governance.