Multi-scalar Interactions and Educational Reform: The Trajectory of School Policy in Catalonia Within the Spanish State

This chapter combines insights on the singular nature of policymaking in the context of federal states with a policy trajectory approach to examine the evolution of educational reform in a setting characterised by complex multi-scalar interactions, namely the Catalan region within decentralised Spain. Drawing on interviews with key actors and a thorough document analysis, this chapter focuses primarily on understanding how and to what extent Catalonia has been able to use its margin of political and administrative autonomy within the Spanish (quasi)federal state to promote a singular approach to educational policy. The results are presented according to four different reform stages. The policy trajectory described shows how educational reform has been shaped by the constant interaction between the Catalan and Spanish governments in a context in which the division of competencies is ambiguous and constantly renegotiated. The chapter argues that the singularisation of the Catalan policy model is politically contingent. Despite the Catalan education system has been rethinking itself for a long time, its ‘desire to be’ intensifies when territorial conflict and political disagreement with the Spanish state intensify. The territorial conflict has direct effects in the singularisation process, but also important indirect effects such as facilitating the emergence of new influential policy actors and ideas. Nonetheless, scalar tensions tend to be constrained to specific areas such as the language of instruction, and do not necessarily result in divergent policy approaches to school governance. Policies on school autonomy, evaluation, leadership, and competence-based education have been encouraged by the Spanish legislative framework since the 1990s. The singularity of the Catalan education policy lies more in the fact that it has pioneered the instrumentation of such policy ideas embedded in a broader NPM approach to education, and in its more recent assemblage with pedagogic innovation ideas.