3 - School accountability policies moving across scales: a comparative case study in decentralized educational systems

Summary

Introduction: the global dissemination of accountability reforms

In recent decades, as a result of globalization processes, most countries around the world are facing an imperative for policy change. Globalization has deepened the international flows of capital, technologies and individuals, as well as of information and political agendas. As a result, a Global Education Policy (GEP) field has emerged, and educational policies and the role of governments have been simultaneously rescaled (that is, government authority and political legitimacy have been progressively located at the global scale) and transnationalized (that is, political power has been increasingly flowing from nation states’ arenas to global ones; see Lingard and Rawolle [2011]). However, the increasing importance of global actors and scales of governance does not mean that the state has a secondary role in the context of this global field (Edwards et al, 2022). Instead, we witness the transformation of the main features, functions and modes of operation of the state regarding the government of public sectors, such as education systems.

In line with such transformations, many public administrations and education systems worldwide are experiencing profound reforms inspired by the core principles of New Public Management (NPM), which aim at debureaucratizing and “modernizing” state apparatuses, as well as seeking more efficiency, quality and efficacy of public services (Hood, 1991; Ball and Youdell, 2008; Pal, 2012; see also Wilkins et al, Chapter 11 in this volume). Accordingly, many educational systems are promoting school autonomy with accountability reforms, operationalized with the use of Large- Scale Assessments (LSAs) for accountability purposes. Reforms with these characteristics have been termed Performance- Based Accountability (PBA) policies (Verger et al, 2019).

The theory of change for accountability reforms is based on the tension between school- level autonomy and centralized administrative control at a distance, often through testing instruments, with several incentives attached to them, ranging from reputational to financial ones. These reforms are expected to generate a virtuous cycle of innovation and educational enhancement due to the capacity and autonomy of schools to respond to their contextual needs and to use the data provided by tests to implement improvement measures.