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Introduction
Antoni Verger is a professor of sociology at the Department of Sociology of the Autonomous University of Barcelona. Antoni does research on Social Policy, Educational Policy and Comparative Education. He coordinates the ERC funded project REFORMED - Reforming Schools Globally: A Multiscalar Analysis of Autonomy and Accountability Policies in the Education Sector.
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Additional affiliations
June 2007 - February 2011
March 2011 - present
Education
September 2002 - December 2007
Publications
Publications (201)
Policy convergence is an often-assumed outcome of transnational policy movement. However, different scholars have recently drawn attention to the need to unpack and critically interrogate such assumptions – going beyond the policy adoption stage and paying greater attention to sources of policy variation. This chapter engages with these debates by...
The literature on education policy movement – that is, the diffusion, transfer and translation of education policy globally – has continued to expand. This expanding research on policy movement has built on established approaches, while also reflecting the development of new approaches or the combination of existing ones. However, the underlying th...
This special issue examines the policy model of School Autonomy with Accountability (SAWA) and its diverse configurations. The focus is on understanding how SAWA reforms shape governance practices and influence educational systems in different educational settings. Drawing on a range of theoretical perspectives, the issue explores how political fac...
Performance-based accountability (PBA) has gained popularity worldwide due to its promise to strengthen the effectiveness and equity of educational systems. Nonetheless, its implementation does not always generate the expected reactions within schools. Through a configurative review, we systematically reviewed 133 empirical studies focusing on PBA...
La gobernanza de los servicios públicos se rige, cada vez más, por políticas que enfatizan la recogida de información y la definición de códigos y estándares de buenas prácticas (Le Galès, 2011). Muchos gobiernos adoptan este tipo de políticas debido a la capacitad de control que les otorgan sobre el comportamiento y los resultados de los proveedor...
The movement of policy is a core feature of contemporary education reform. Many different concepts, including policy transfer, borrowing and lending, travelling, diffusion and mobility, have been deployed to study how and why policy moves across jurisdictions, scales of governance, policy sectors or organisations. However, the underlying theoretica...
Between 2011 and 2015, at the dawn of the global financial crisis, Spain went through severe austerity measures that led to social unrest and to the emergence of new expressions of collective action. In the educational field, teachers' unions and grassroots movements organised against the neoliberal and neoconservative policies promoted by the cent...
Despite controversies surrounding faith-based schooling, religious schools continue to play a prominent role in numerous education systems. Nonetheless, empirical research on nonstate religious schools operating in a market context remains limited and fragmented. On the one hand, while religious and cultural studies investigate the evolution of rel...
In this chapter, we aim to overcome some of these limitations by interrogating the convergence thesis in relation to the policyimplementation stage, based on a deductive design oriented at assessingthe impact of theoretically plausible sources of variation. We depart fromthe premise that, despite the international expansion of PBA, its actualimplem...
Introduction
This edited volume contributes to the literature on global education policy by bringing together, extending and problematizing different theoretical and methodological approaches to policy movement. A variety of concepts – including policy transfer, borrowing, lending, travelling, diffusion, dissemination and mobility – have been deplo...
Introduction
Policy convergence is an often- assumed outcome of transnational policy movement. The policy convergence thesis can be summarized in that, as a result of globalization pressures and the increasing role of international organizations in policy activities, systems tend to develop “similarities in structures, processes and performance” (B...
Contemporary educational reforms emphasise school autonomy, performance-based management, and accountability as necessary policies for attaining improvement goals. Despite their widespread adoption, the configuration and enactment of these policies are discretionary and contingent, deeply influenced by the interaction of local contexts, organisatio...
In February 2024, McKinsey & Company released a new global report on education entitled Spark & Sustain: How All the World’s School Systems Can Improve Learning at Scale. The report aims to provide a toolbox for policymakers and other stakeholders on the policy reforms and governance strategies that can promote significant and sustained improvement...
School governance reforms have changed teachers' work in many aspects and have been associated with increasing teachers' discontent and demotivation. Research on which school policies and organizational practices teachers prefer is scarce and faces challenges. Our conjoint experiment identifies the importance given by teachers to different work dim...
This paper presents the methodological approach of the REFORMED project research strand 2 (RS2), specifically, of its qualitative phase. Following a sequential mixed-methods design approach, the qualitative phase aimed to understand the rationales behind different forms of engagement of schools with SAWA policies. The main emphasis is placed on how...
Durante la legislatura autonómica 2011-2015, el sector educativo de las Islas Balears se vio inmerso en un profundo proceso de reforma educativa que combinó la aplicación de estrictas políticas de austeridad con un ambicioso plan de reforma del modelo lingüístico. Como resultado de estas reformas surgieron nuevos actores colectivos y redes de acció...
This chapter explores the processes of differentiation “between” teachers who work in countries with different professional regulatory models. It provides a novel approach to analysing the influence of different performance-based accountability (PBA) policy approaches on the professionalism and work of teachers. To do this, the chapter presents the...
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 tho...
Over the last years, a broad consensus has been forged regarding the negative impact of market policies on educational equity, especially in terms of school segregation. The preoccupation with the equity effects of educational markets has penetrated the policy agenda of different countries, although it has not crystallized in a univocal reform appr...
La innovación educativa ocupa un lugar central en el discurso pedagógico contemporáneo. La innovación se asocia a la introducción de mejoras educativas de distinta naturaleza, pero también, y en un sentido más amplio, a la configuración de la escuela como institución educativa moderna. A pesar de que tiende a ser concebida como un proceso bottom-up...
Federal and highly decentralized political systems open different spaces to interpret, adapt, and enact international policy trends and ideas within the same territory. Spain, a country with a highly decentralized educational system and contentious territorial politics, is a very suitable case to analyze these dynamics. Spain and its different regi...
School systems are shifting towards forms of post-bureaucratic governance (PBG), implying higher levels of school autonomy, choice, and performance-based management. Under this governance approach, which combines forms of administrative and market accountability, schools face greater levels of competition and external pressure to perform. Schools e...
Under test-based accountability, side-effects-including practices to inflate test results, often seen as cheating-are usually associated to so-called high-stakes policies. However, the influence of different types of stakes in the generation of this type of practices has been overlooked in education research. Based on a survey experiment, our resul...
La industria educativa se encuentra en plena expansión. Así se manifiesta en la creciente demanda educativa y en la creación de nuevos mercados. También en la extensión geográfica de numerosos negocios educativos, y en elcrecimiento económico del sector. Asesores financieros como GSV-Advisors y HolonIQ tasaron el valor del mercado de la educación m...
Este artículo tiene por objetivo identificar las principales estrategias de influencia del sector privado en el ámbito de la política educativa. A pesar de que un número de estudios cada vez mayor documenta la creciente implicación del sector empresarial en la formulación de políticas públicas, la investigación empírica sobre esta cuestión sigue si...
El modelo de conciertos educativos español se instauró hace casi cuatro décadas con la Ley Orgánica del Derecho a la Educación del año 1985. Desde entonces, España se ha situado entre los países de la OCDE con un mayor peso de la provisión privada subvencionada. A pesar de que el modelo de conciertos se instauró con la intención de equiparar la ofe...
The privatization of basic education is a global phenomenon growing in all corners of the world. However, education privatization is a multi-faceted process, which crystallizes and evolves in different forms and which eludes simplistic characterizations. This article defines educational privatization and examines its growth in different regions, di...
In recent decades, the governance of educational systems has experienced dramatic changes in many countries. Schools have been given more autonomy whilst being held increasingly accountable at the central level through standardized testing and other forms of external evaluation. The mechanisms of performance-based accountability (PBA) and the conse...
Pese a la creciente popularidad de las Alianzas Público-Privadas (APP) en el sector educativo, existe un amplio consenso académico sobre su impacto negativo sobre las desigualdades educativas. En los últimos años, organismos internacionales como la OCDE, la UNESCO o el Banco Mundial han mostrado una creciente preocupación por dicho impacto. Sin emb...
Evidence-based policy making (EBPM) is currently portrayed as the most appropriate approach to public policy formulation. Through EBPM, the locus of decision making is expected to shift from political authorities to networks of experts. EBPM enthusiasts also assume that this policy approach favors more open and participatory policy processes in whi...
The overall goal of the ISEE Assessment is to pool multi-disciplinary expertise on educational systems and reforms from a range of stakeholders in an open and inclusive manner, and to undertake a scientifically robust and evidence based assessment that can inform education policy-making at all levels and on all scales. Its aim is not to be policy p...
Education has been extremely affected by the coronavirus disease crisis, with almost all countries temporarily closing their schools in 2020. After the first stage of the pandemic, in which national governments focused on guaranteeing the academic year’s continuity, key international organizations emphasized the need to adopt structural policy refo...
The global expansion of non-state actors as providers of basic education has frequently taken place under the umbrella of some form of public-private partnership (PPP). PPPs have expanded despite an increasing number of studies warning about the possible negative consequences of higher levels of private provision on equity, such as school segregati...
The availability of public funding for private schools, in both primary and secondary education, has become a common feature in a number of OECD countries. The expansion of public subsidies for privately owned schools has consequences that go far beyond the involvement of private actors in the provision of education. These include deepening forms o...
Providing a comprehensive introduction to the topic of accountability and
datafication in the governance of education, the World Yearbook of Education
2021 considers global policy dynamics and policy enactment processes.
Chapters pay particular attention to the role of international organizations and
the private sector in the promotion of performan...
Providing a comprehensive introduction to the topic of accountability and
datafication in the governance of education, the World Yearbook of Education
2021 considers global policy dynamics and policy enactment processes.
Chapters pay particular attention to the role of international organizations and
the private sector in the promotion of performan...
This paper seeks to better understand the influence of international organizations within the national policy domain by examining the OECD’s use of peer reviews. Focusing on one such review in the Netherlands, it asks: why are these reviews commissioned, who is involved, how are ideas about educational governance promoted, and how do they impact na...
Existing research tends to attribute the varying responses to accountability pressures to variables of a different nature, ranging from school leadership styles to the broader socio-economic contexts in which schools operate. However, to date, research has overlooked the role of subjective variables (such as school actors' perceived and experienced...
La OCDE ha desempeñado un papel activo en la construcción y la difusión de la autonomía escolar con rendición de cuentas (SAWA por sus siglas en inglés) como un modelo internacional de política educativa. Como mostramos en este artículo, lo ha hecho activando tres mecanismos de gobernanza, a saber, la recolección de datos, la evaluación de las polí...
Despite the trendsetting of East Asian HPES, education policy commentary and literature on this region remains rather underdeveloped and predictable. In Comparing High-Performing Education Systems: Understanding Singapore, Shanghai, and Hong Kong, Dr Charlene Tan moves scholarship on East Asian HPES in a new, sorely needed direction. This review es...
Privatization is a process through which the private sector increasingly participates in economic activities that used to be the remit of the state. Privatization processes can occur in many forms, in various degrees, and at different paces: they can be drastic or gradual; exogenous or endogenous; de facto or by design. The contemporary privatizati...
Despite Public-Private Partnerships’ (PPPs) growing popularity within education policy circles, research on their effects yields contradictory results. The understanding of PPP effects is limited by the prevalence of generalist analyses that neglect to acknowledge the exceptional heterogeneity of the policy frameworks in which PPPs crystallize. Bui...
The World Bank has a reputation as a promoter of pro-market educational reforms inspired by the so-called (post-)Washington Consensus (PWC). However, a mechanic association between the World Bank reform agenda and a broad policy paradigm such as the PWC is problematic in that it neglects the diverging interests that are likely to exist within this...
The OECD has played a key role in the global dissemination of school autonomy with accountability (SAWA) as a global model of education governance. This chapter aims to understand the practices and forms of agency through which the OECD has developed and disseminated SAWA as an instrument model of governing education, despite the modesty of its leg...
Educational public–private partnerships (EPPP) have been widely implemented in the Philippines, primarily through the Education Service Contracting (ESC) voucher. Yet, the effects of this voucher on privatization of education, school choice, and competition dynamics remain largely understudied. This article addresses this gap through an investigati...
Sociological research on school choice has mostly been dominated by studies analyzing the experiences of middle-class families rather than marginalized or minority populations. Drawing on 8 months of ethnographic case study research, this article explores the school choice experiences of disadvantaged families accessing publicly subsidized low-fee...
Resumen Las políticas pro-privatización son un componente cada vez más importante en los procesos de reforma educativa en muchos puntos del planeta. América Latina es la región en la que la privatización educativa ha avanzado de forma más acusada en las últimas décadas. Sin embargo, la literatura académica sobre el tema es todavía escasa y son poco...
This paper examines the increasingly diverse range of roles played by the corporate sector in shaping education policy. While a growing body of scholarship has documented the deepening embeddedness of the corporate sector within policy-making processes, empirical research on the strategies mobilized by corporate actors remains unsystematised and fr...
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 wit...
The engagement of corporate actors in education policy processes connected to the advancement of a pro-market agenda has become more frequent in recent years. However, what remains unclear are the specific mechanisms that endow private actors with increased authority and legitimacy as policy advocates. This chapter examines the emerging strategies...
This paper reflects on the main conceptual and theoretical components of global education policy as an emerging field of studies. Global education policy research looks at how global education agendas are being constituted, and by whom, and what are the implications of global dynamics of a different nature in the promotion of education policy chang...
L'autonomia de centre i la rendició de comptes (o accountability) són polítiques orientades a la millora de la governança escolar que s’apliquen als sistemes educatius de molts punts del planeta. Molts agents educatius consideren que aquestes polítiques són adients a l’hora de promoure, tant l’eficàcia escolar, com la diversificació i la innovació...
O Movimento de Reforma Educacional Global (Global Education Reform Movement –GERM) está se expandindo internacionalmente e alcançando países que aparentavam ser imunes a essa abordagem de reforma educacional até muito recentemente. Assim, os sistemas educacionais do mundo têm sido cada vez mais articulados em torno de três princípios políticos prin...
The Global Education Reform Movement (GERM) is expanding internationally and reaching countries that seemed to be immune to this education reform approach until quite recently. Accordingly, more and more educational systems in the world are articulated around three main policy principles: accountability, standards and decentralisation. National lar...
Pro‐privatization policies are at the center of global debates on educational reform processes of an increasing number of countries and regions. This chapter explores how to disassemble the nature, constraints, and variants of educational privatization in the different countries and territories in the Latin American region. It establishes a typolog...
An increasing number of countries are adopting accountability systems in education that rely on the external evaluation of students’ learning outcomes through standardized assessments. The international dissemination of this form of accountability, often known as test-based accountability, does not imply that exactly the same policy is adopted ever...
Recent educational reforms and legislative changes in both Catalonia and Spain have been inspired by New Public Management (NPM). Accordingly, policy ideas such as school autonomy and accountability—including test-based accountability and the evaluation of teachers’ performance—have strongly framed the education policy debate, as well as tangible e...
El artículo analiza los factores y condicionantes que han favorecido la difusión de las práctica de rendición de cuentas en el ámbito educativo a escala global en base a las principales teorías sobre difusión de políticas educativas. Metodológicamente, el artículo se basa en una revisión de la literatura sobre el tema que incluye cincuenta y un art...
As one of the most polarised areas in education research, the education privatisation debate generates opportunities for knowledge-brokers to promote their preferred policy alternatives. Based on bibliometric analysis techniques, this paper maps the configuration of the academic debate on privatisation, and explores how it is connected with the ref...
El artículo analiza los factores y condiciones que han favorecido la difusión de las políticas de rendición de cuentas a escala global, y el papel desempeñado por las organizaciones internacionales (OI) más prominentes en el campo educativo al respecto. Metodológicamente, el artículo se basa en una aproximación a la revisión de la literatura conoci...
Austerity policies have been a common response to the economic crisis of many European governments. The cuts in the social sphere have affected educational budgets and have forced states to manage the crisis with political and discursive strategies. This article develops a critical analysis on how the Spanish State and the Catalan government in par...
The aim of this special issue, “Global Perspectives on High-Stakes Teacher
Accountability Policies”, is to provide insights into a diverse set of policies focusing on teachers’
accountability, including the underpinning ideas and cultural and socio-economic contexts of these
policies, as well as their effects on teachers’ work, the teaching profess...
In recent years, the Civil Society Education Fund has supported national education civil society coalitions (NECs) in low-income countries so that they put pressure on governments and donors to implement the Education for All agenda and the Millennium Development Goal on education. This article draws on literature on global governance as well as on...
RESUMEN: Los Colegios en Concesión (CEC) son un programa de escuelas chárter que se implementa en Colombia desde el año 1999. A pesar de su modesta expansión (72 escuelas, 107.000 alumnos), los CEC disfrutan de un amplio reconocimiento internacional tanto académico como político (p.ej., por parte del Banco Mundial o el Banco Interamericano de Desar...
Episodes of disaster are powerful triggers of education reform. The sense of urgency and bewilderment associated with catastrophic situations (including natural disaster or armed conflicts) prove a seizable opportunity for education reform advocates, rendering other stakeholders more receptive to drastic interventions. In particular, catastrophic s...
Public-private partnerships (PPPs) are increasingly perceived as an innovative policy approach to provide education for all in many different settings, especially in developing countries. Many international organisations, bilateral aid agencies, and philanthropic and corporate organisations have advocated PPPs in education as an appropriate policy...
