The education sector in Nepal has gone through significant policy reforms in the recent years. School education also receives the largest government and donor budgetary allocations. The papers in this panel investigates the public finance dynamics in school education to enable better grounded understandings of public policy-making and implementation in countries undergoing transitions such as Nepal. The papers in this panel will locate public finance dynamics in school education within the larger socio-political context that is shaped by distinct ideologies, power relations and a series of interconnected networks of relationships. How do variously positioned social actors make meaning of public policy such as school education? What dynamics and strategies do they employ to manage the finances around school education? Are there any specific social relations in which they engage in order to facilitate these processes? This panel investigates the public finance dynamics in and around school education in order to understandideologies, social practices, power relations and networks within which public education governance are embedded.