Resumen de Fent retre comptes a les escoles: desenvolupament i implementació de la rendició de comptes basada en proves en el sistema educatiu autònom dels països baixos
Amidst a period of unrest in Dutch education, this thesis examines a particular set of globalized education policies and their impact in the Netherlands. These are school autonomy with accountability or ‘SAWA’ policies, laying at the heart of school governance reforms inspired by new public management ideals. One the one hand, ‘autonomy’ describes the state of schools and/or their management bodies being made responsible for education quality, while ‘accountability’ is designed to ensure that this quality is maintained through the introduction of standards, evaluated through national assessments, to which consequences are attached. This policy model is promoted by influential international organisations including the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development ‘OECD’ as a way to raise student performance. This research focuses on the evolution and enactment of SAWA in the Netherlands, paying particular attention to test-based accountability or ‘TBA,’ the policy instrument at the centre of the model. It asks: How and why have school autonomy and test-based accountability policies in the Netherlands evolved over recent years, and what impact has this had on teachers’ practices, beliefs and overall professional experiences? Data for the study were collected between October 2017 and November 2019 through semi-structured interviews (n=61) and document analysis. Participants included; policy makers, OECD staff, and principals and teachers across six primary schools. Policy documents, school documents, and OECD policy review documents were amongst those analysed. Findings indicate that SAWA policies in the Netherlands have been influenced by a complex interplay of factors at various levels. TBA developed incrementally over several years and included the recalibration of long-standing policy tools. Accountability reform was justified through quality concerns; increased decentralisation led to the problematisation of excessive and unchecked school(board) autonomy and a discourse of a deteriorating education system. It was further legitimized with the use of international ‘expertise,’ whereby organisations, particularly the OECD, have promoted and normalized SAWA policies using means such as benchmarking, competition and peer-pressure. Nonetheless, the strong institutional history of the Dutch education system, particularly its legacy of school autonomy, has played an important role in calibrating and softening TBA. The result has been a unique national formation of a globalized policy.
Looking beyond the policy level to the enactment of TBA, data suggests that teachers in the Netherlands share many of the same experiences as those working in renowned high-stakes contexts, with accountability policies shaping their everyday tasks and very notions of what it means to be a (good) teacher. Narrow quality standards and high workloads due to demanding administrative tasks, have resulted in teachers in the ‘autonomous’ Dutch system feeling under pressure to perform and constricted in terms of what and how they teach. This pressure is felt in both low and high performing schools, with teachers in the former feeling under close watch of the school inspectorate to achieve satisfactory results, and those in the latter perceiving greater pressure from parents and principals to maintain good results. In these environments, teachers reported to experience a discrepancy between their practices and beliefs, adjusting their working approaches to accommodate one, the other, or both. The few teachers who expressed a professional alignment with the TBA agenda were all early career stage, justifying performative practices through student achievement. Beyond this, teachers who perceived themselves to be meaningfully included in curriculum development and/or in curricular decision-making reported a lesser degree of frustration with the demands of TBA. Regardless of varying experiences, this research has indicated that fragmented and incremental SAWA policies, influenced by a concoction of (sub)national and transnational ideas, have led to accumulating demands on education practitioners and may be leading to fundamental changes in the teaching profession.
