Home > Revue internationale d'éducation Sèvres > n° 48 > Abstracts

L'école et son contrôle
n° 48, September 2008

Many educational systems seem to be viewed with growing distrust today and schools will consequently be increasingly regulated and subject to more stringent requirements in terms of results.

The notion of ‘control’, which for some decades has been considered an archaic concept, is now back in force in more up-to-date forms to meet new challenges, on both a national and worldwide scale . We are witnessing changes in its role and a redefinition of its relationship with ‘assessment’ practices, which have also seen considerable development over the last fifteen years to become an important part of public policies aimed at improving the quality of education.

The Revue internationale d’éducation de Sèvres chose to conduct a survey of this question in England, Chile, China, France, Poland, the Basque Country in Spain and Switzerland, looking at seven educational systems that differ in terms of geographical situation, political heritage, organisation and experience of assessment and control. Two European comparisons complete this overview.

What one notices first of all is the increased number and greater diversity of assessment and control activities, the results of which are increasingly made public. The number of people involved has also increased, as has the influence of various networks and national and international standards.

In this new context, surveys such as PISA have become necessary benchmarks. Growing use is made of control mechanisms centred on results. Teachers in some countries even have to present accounts.

This development raises important questions: is the need for accurate data to appraise pupils' performance being used to sidestep debate on the purpose and objectives of compulsory education? Are we moving towards international accreditation systems for assessors, a phenomenon already emerging for higher education and quality? What is the present and future role of inspection in countries like France, and in Europe as a whole?

School control is becoming a many-pronged process, consisting of cross-referenced assessments involving many players. This is a major change: the State now acts as a ‘regulator’; relations between central and local levels are changing; pupils and their families, elected representatives, local managers and community leaders all wish to play a greater role.

It is this situation that has led to the emergence of a new method of governance, with the school at the heart of the assessment and control system.

Abstracts :
Controlling schools (n° 48, September 2008)

Introduction
School assessment and the return of control
Alain Bouvier, Philippe Duval

The changing role of assessment in Chile’s education policy
M. Leonor Cariola H, Lorena Meckes G.
This article goes back over the history of school assessment in Chile, showing how the country has progressed from a system based on autonomous schools, subject to market regulation, to a more centralised system with greater State intervention to promote standards and quality of education. At the same time, the system implemented to measure the quality of education, the SIMCE, has changed to take into account new uses. So long as it was used to help schools identify their weaknesses, its tests spanned a broad definition of education. Since the introduction of financial measures based on results, however, tests have shifted their focus to prior learning and “curriculum” at the expense of more personal aspects.

China: the sudden emergence of assessment
Wang Xiaohui
Against the backdrop of a booming economy, China set itself the target of devoting 4% of GDP to education in 2000. Local government has been made responsible for the nine-year compulsory education programme and must finance it. Many difficulties have been encountered: for example, education is no longer completely free, causing children in rural areas to drop out of the school system, while some state-run schools charge for their courses, putting the nouveaux riches at an unfair advantage. The government has taken steps to guarantee fairer access, making sure that compulsory education really is free and cracking down on abuses. Specialised assessment institutions have been set up to cover a very wide range of activities. China’s goal is to define quality assessment criteria for basic schooling and to set up a monitoring system. The country is in the process of transforming its administrative model in education, with a shift from quantitative growth to qualitative performance.

Building an assessment system
The example of the Basque Country
Josu Sierra
The Basque Country does not have a longstanding tradition of assessment. ISEI-IVEI, the Basque Institute for Research and Evaluation in Education, was founded in 2001. It recommended participation in several types of assessment: international, national and/or local, focusing on compulsory primary and secondary education, as well as on language levels within a bilingual system. Since then, the Basque Country has developed an ambitious assessment programme. As of 2009, the programme will assess the basic skills of pupils in year 5-6 (primary school) and year 8 (i.e. the second year of secondary school). This assessment, which will not be restricted to school programmes alone, will imply a significant leap in quality. The inspection authority and various education support departments will work alongside ISEI-IVEI to help each school define and implement its own school plan for improving results.

From yesterday’s testing to tomorrow’s assessment
School supervision in Poland
Jolanta Zajac
The Polish education system has been undergoing a major upheaval since 1989. It is currently seeking to build genuine teaching quality to provide pupils with key skills and allow them to become part of the knowledge-based economy as it exists today on the European Union labour market. Fully aware of what is at stake for the country’s young generations, the Polish education authorities hope to overcome these difficulties by setting up an effective inspection system to appraise the work of its schools. Various bodies, particularly at the regional level, will be involved in inspecting and assessing schools. This article provides an overview of the current situation and also takes a look at future prospects.

On the road to a multiple school supervision system? The English example
Philip A. Woods, Patricia Broadfoot
This article analyses the main trends in educational policy in England over the past twenty years, probing the extent to which they promote central control or autonomy in the governance of schools. It is suggested that what may be emerging, within the context of multiple governance models that can be discerned in these trends, is a new, distinctive model – plural controlled schooling. This is characterised by constrained empowerment. The systemic limitations within the plural controlled schooling model – in the scope for innovation and in the composition of new players and partners in education – are briefly highlighted.

The main weak point of school assessment and inspection in France
Claude Thélot
Good performance of modern education systems is built on three pillars: a framework defined by the authorities governing the school and which includes goals and priorities as well as certain instruments such as programmes; the autonomy of the school and those involved in running it; the assessment of organisation and practices – this assessment must be the rule and its conclusions acted upon. Within this context, inspection helps to avoid “irregularities” and is followed by sanctions when such irregularities are proven. The main weak point of assessment and inspection processes in the French education system is that not enough attention is given to their conclusions in the implementation of education policy. While high quality tools and procedures are available and preliminary actions (defining objectives and making recommendations) exist, too little attention is given to their outcomes, whether the assessment concerns pupils, schools or teachers. Although it may be in the nature of things for assessments and inspections to have little effect, this “little” must grow, not to restrict the headteacher’s or teacher’s freedom of choice, but to improve the service they provide.

Autonomy and inspection of teaching work. A European survey
Nathalie Mons
Drawing on a survey conducted by the Eurydice Network in 2009 in twenty-eight European countries, the article highlights ongoing changes in teacher assessment. One change that is emerging in most countries is a growing tendency towards the “inspection” of teachers and their work in four key areas: multiple “inspections” (external inspection, self-evaluation, internal inspection by headteachers, peer assessment, or a combination of these) ; process inspection leaving more and more room for assessment based on pupils’ results; assessment varying from collective assessment of teaching teams to individual teacher assessment; lack of incentives and rewards associated with these assessments.

The current role of inspections in Europe
Ferry de Rijcke
How can the work of inspectors be best organised and on what should it be based to allow inspectors to fulfil their assessment and inspection duties as effectively as possible, while observing and promoting the principle of school autonomy? The author points out that growing pressures on schools (from society as a whole and from pupils’ families) go hand in hand with the increasing number of school audits and data gathering initiatives. In Europe, inspectors’ activities are characterised both by their considerable diversity and by the existence of common subjects resulting from changes in the tasks devolved to schools. The author puts forward a number of recommendations concerning the main areas in which inspection authorities are involved and looks ahead to the future of inspection teams and their activities.

Education standards – are they the Moebius strip of Swiss schools?
Matthis Behrens
New management methods are being applied to Swiss government authorities, leading to a closer watch on performance and consequently creating a certain functional confusion in education with regard to assessment practices. These changes are highlighted by outside influences (adaptation to the European context and PISA) and have led to a redistribution of responsibilities. The cantons are relinquishing some of their sovereignty in favour of an intercantonal system. The intercantonal agreement, which goes by the name of HarmoS, provides for standards which serve a twofold purpose: the harmonisation of educational content and the supervision of performance as part of a national monitoring system. The article starts off with an overview of the Swiss system and current changes. It then goes on to discuss how education standards can be leveraged to harmonise curricula. Lastly, it provides some insight into how supervision and assessment functions are interwoven.

Bibliography
Cécile de Bouttemont