School autonomy with accountability reforms in Madrid: From instrumentation to policy enactment

Abstract

This thesis aims to study the recontextualisation of School Autonomy with Accountability (SAWA) reforms as a global education policy, translated and enacted in a subnational context. More specifically, the thesis analyses the instrumentation, impacts and enactments of SAWA policies in Spain, with a particular focus on the region of Madrid. SAWA policies aims to reform education systems by combining major levels of decentralization and school autonomy with novel policy instruments of accountability and evaluation, with the ultimate aim of improving the efficiency and efficacy of education systems (Verger et al. , 2019; Sahlberg, 2016). This model emerged under the tenets of New Public Management (NPM) during the 1980 in the Anglo-Saxon world, but has been disseminated in countries without managerial administrative traditions. This is the case of Spain, where school evaluation has been developed incipiently under a bureaucratic approach. However, since the 2000s, different Spanish regions have adopted external accountability mechanisms and governance reforms. In Madrid, SAWA policies have been implemented together with open school choice schemes in a relatively diversified quasi-market of educational providers. Overall, the introduction of accountability mechanisms to regulate a quasi-market education system has contributed to consolidate a governance shift towards a post-bureaucratic educational model. Under this policy context, this thesis analyses the instrumentation of SAWA reforms not only to gain a better understanding of the motivations, rationales and trajectories of the reforms but also to identify and analyse their main impacts and enactments. Adopting a multi-scalar approach, this thesis addresses the policy selection and adoption of accountability tools from a macro level of analysis; its main impacts regarding the interschool dynamics in the local education markets from a meso level of analysis; and its policy enactments at the school level from a micro analysis. The methodological strategy follows a case study approach, combining data sources and research techniques of a diverse nature, including qualitative interviews with policymakers and stakeholders (n=35), analysis of policy documents (n=12), interviews with teachers and principals (n=54) and survey responses of teachers (n=844) and principals (n=179). This thesis uncovers some interesting results at the different levels of analysis. From the macro level, the results show how international policy models and global discourses are gaining centrality in the diffusion of SAWA policies. However, their translation in the local and national context is contingent to diverse political, administrative and cultural factors. In Madrid, the SAWA reforms were adopted following international models, but they did not reach further consolidation due to political and administrative hindering factors, especially regarding the public dissemination of the standardised test's results. However, the test has been redefined and lasted together with school choice policies, generating important external competitive pressures that schools face adopting diverse logics of action in a vertically segmented education market. At the school level, this thesis illustrates how the components of the accountability mandate are differently enacted in the schools. Moreover, the results suggest that when school actors do not believe in the adequacy or fairness of the accountability system, they tend to decouple formal structures from real school practices. This thesis has important implications for policy and research. The results point out that when implemented in vertically differentiated education systems and under broad school choice regulations, SAWA reforms may contribute to further intensify school segmentation and, hence, limit the possibilities of improving those schools in more disadvantaged conditions, thus undermining the cohesive and levelling role of education and reinforcing its reproductive functions.

Date of Award	4 Jun 2021
Original language	English
Supervisor	Antoni Verger Planells (Tutor) & Gerard Josep Ferrer Esteban (Director)