The growth and spread of large-scale assessments and test-based accountabilities: a political sociology of global education reforms

ABSTRACT

The Global Education Reform Movement (GERM) is expanding internationally and reaching countries that seemed to be immune to this education reform approach until quite recently. Accordingly, more and more educational systems in the world are articulated around three main policy principles: accountability, standards and decentralisation. National large-scale assessments (NLSAs) are a core component of the GERM; these assessments are increasingly used for accountability purposes as well as to ensure that schools achieve and promote centrally defined and evaluable learning standards. In this paper, we explore these trends on the basis of a new and original database on NLSAs, as well as on data coming from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) questionnaires. In the paper we also discuss how different theories on policy dissemination/globalisation explain the international spread of NLSAs and test-based accountability worldwide, and reflect on the potential of a political sociology approach to analyse this globalising phenomenon.

KEYWORDS:

• Standardised tests
• educational assessment
• test-based accountability
• policy instruments
• educational policy
• globalisation

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. This information has been in turn complemented by background papers behind the referenced reports. This is especially the case of Country Reports prepared in the context of the OECD’s Review on Evaluation and Assessment Frameworks for Improving School Outcomes (OECD, 2013a).

2. This is the case of the Flemish-speaking community and the Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles in Belgium, and the case of England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland in the United Kingdom.

3. The specific uses of national assessments have been explored with data coming from the PISA schools’ questionnaire, given the limits of available information on this particular topic in administrative sources.

4. Figures 6 to 10 include also non-OECD countries or economies participating in PISA, as they draw on data from principal questionnaires administered as part of the programme.

5. The 2007 and 2015 editions of the Global Education Monitoring Report (EFA-GMR, 2007, 2015) constitute an exception to this.

6. The year 1995 was selected as the starting point given the difficulties in collecting comparable and reliable data for prior years. Nonetheless, as reported in Eurydice – EACEA (2009), national testing did not become widespread until the 1990s.

7. Conversely, school-internal (i.e. non-standardised, non-external) assessments are not considered in our database.

8. The census- vs. sample-based distinction does not apply to tests with certification and selection purposes since these are not designed for survey purposes. The “coverage” effectively achieved by this modality of testing is essentially a function of its compulsory or optional character.

9. From the perspective of meritocracy, national tests would be instrumental in identifying and rewarding talent, as well as in motivating students to work more diligently (Hutt & Schneider, 2018).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the European Research Council under the European Union’s “Horizon 2020 Framework Programme for Research and Innovation”, [grant number 680172 – REFORMED]. http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/100010661