Reforming governance through policy instruments: how and to what extent standards, tests and accountability in education spread worldwide

ABSTRACT

In the last decades, most countries have adopted data-intensive policy instruments aimed at modernizing the governance of education systems, and strengthening their competitiveness. Instruments such as national large-scale assessments and test-based accountabilities have disseminated widely, to the point that they are being enacted in countries with very different administrative traditions and levels of economic development. Nonetheless, comparative research on the trajectories that governance instruments follow in different institutional and socio-economic contexts is still scarce. On the basis of a systematic literature review (n = 158), this paper enquires into the scope and modalities of educational governance change that national large-scale assessments and test-based accountability instruments have triggered in a broad range of institutional settings. The paper shows that, internationally, educational governance reforms advance through path-dependent and contingent processes of policy instrumentation that are markedly conditioned by prevailing politico-administrative regimes. The paper also reflects on the additive and evolving nature of educational governance reforms.

KEYWORDS:

• Accountability
• decentralization
• national assessments
• historical institutionalism
• standards
• new public management
• policy instruments

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Antoni Verger http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3255-7703

Notes

1 The search terms can be consulted in the Appendix.

2 Although the reviewed literature also shows that social-democratic governments tend to be more belligerent with certain TBA uses when in opposition than when in power (see for instance Solhaug, 2011).

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 project: http://reformedproject.eu