‘The freedom for a country, a region or an organization to govern itself independently’; ‘The ability to act and make decisions without being controlled by anyone else’ (Oxford Learner’s Dictionaries).
In education, autonomy may include local-governance autonomy, school autonomy and teacher autonomy (the extent to which teachers can make autonomous decisions about what they teach to learners and how they teach it). Also important are parent autonomy (around curriculum, school performance) and learner autonomy (giving learners control over their own learning process) (adapted from ‘autonomy’ in the Glossary of Education Reform).