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EDUCATION GOVERNANCE IN COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE
Michael Mintrom Richard Walley
Rethinking Education Governance in the Twenty-First Century Conference
Thomas B. Fordham Institute
Center for American Progress
December 1, 2011
Abstract: This chapter surveys education governance in six jurisdictions that have enjoyed high
average levels of student attainment on standardized international tests over a sustained period.
The survey explores how different governing institutions and relationships shape the content of
education policy and school operations. The featured jurisdictions are: Australia, Canada,
Finland, New Zealand, South Korea, and the United Kingdom. Wide variation exists among
governance arrangements in these jurisdictions, so it is possible to assess whether some specific
arrangements generate better student outcomes than others. In fact, links between governance
and student achievement are weak, suggesting that intermediary factors have far greater
influence than governance itself. We claim that governance reforms will serve to promote
improved student achievement only when the new governance arrangements make educational
effectiveness the central goal. Further, due recognition must be given to the far greater influence
of policy and program factors, like teaching quality. We drawn six lessons for governance
reformers: (1) Avoid costly political battles, (2) Use appropriate diagnostic tools, (3) Recognize
the power of leadership, (4) Focus on classroom practices, (5) Address student preparation; and
(6) Address teacher preparation.
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EDUCATION GOVERNANCE IN COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE
Michael Mintrom and Richard Walley1
In the present era, the leaders of national, state, and local governments the world over caredeeply about the quality of schooling in their respective jurisdictions. Political leaders, public
intellectuals, and business elites have long recognized the importance of education for social
cohesion, for the transmission of social values, and for economic advancement. This explains the
widespread development in the nineteenth century of systems for universal public education, and
the efforts made worldwide in the twentieth century to emulate, expand, and enhance those
systems. The present era, then, shares with the past a relentless quest on the part of governments
everywhere to ensure that education of suitable quality is made available to as many children and
young people as possible. But the present era is also distinct.
The most noticeable difference between the past and the present is the urgency and importancethat is now attached to ensuring quality education for all. The causes of that difference are two-
fold, and closely related. First, it is now well understood that knowledge is the fundamental
driver of economic advancement (Florida 2004; Helpman 2004). Second, continuous economic
advancement predicated on the market system, and the competition engendered by that system,
has led to greater integration of local, regional, and national economies with global economic
processes (Friedman 2007; Porter 1990). Intensification of economic competition has wiped out
much of the stability and predictability that once characterized everyday life in economically
advanced democracies. Doing whatever can be done to win back some of that stability and
predictability has become a mandate for political leaders everywhere. In a nutshell, that explains
why education and, specifically, education governance, is a hot topic globally. It will remain ahot topic for the foreseeable future.
Through their combined efforts, the authors of other chapters in this volume have effectively
portrayed the range of issues that arise when we consider educational governance. There is little
doubt that governing institutions and relationships can have significant influence on the content
of education policy and on school operations. So while governance of public schooling in the
United States is fraught with complexity and controversy, everything turns on a simple question:
Who should control what happens in the classroom? To a large degree, the history of public
schooling in the United States is a story of battles for that control. The progressive movement
that was in ascendance from 1890 to 1920 placed considerable emphasis on the need to separate
1The views expressed in this paper are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the position of the New
Zealand Ministry of Education.
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the administration of governmental systems from the control of politicians (Knott and Miller
1987). The idea was that bureaucracies would be staffed by professionals exhibiting neutral
competence (Kaufman 1960). In the realm of public education, the progressive movement was
responsible for the creation of school boards that served to buffer schools from the direct
interventions of politicians in decisions concerning the curriculum, the hiring of staff, and so on
(Tyack 1974). Subsequent efforts during the twentieth century to rebalance the control of
schools, and give politicians and parents more influence have been thoroughly documented
(Ravitch 1983; Clune and Witte 1990). The progressive movement, and the governance
arrangements that it successfully locked in place, cast a very long shadow over public schooling
in the United States. By designas documented by Tyack and Tobin (1994)much political
savvy guided the establishment of the one best system of public schooling, and it was built to
last. This is shown by the resilience of the system against wave upon wave of pressures for
reform. The creation of education bureaucracies operating at arms length from political
influence has made systematic, top-down change extremely difficult. (See Jeffrey Henigs
chapter for a review of executive-level efforts to achieve greater control over public schools).
In this chapter, we seek to contextualize recent discussions of educational governance in the
United States by contrasting developments in this country with those in several other countries.
Our comparative study shows that distinctly different governance arrangements are equally
capable of producing excellent results, as measured by student performance on standardized
international tests. This finding is consistent with recent work by John Hattie (2005, 2009).
Through meta-analyses of student outcome data, Hattie has shown that a variety of classroom-
level practices have much stronger impacts on student learning than do differences in class size
and other matters that broadly link to school governance. We conclude from this convergence of
evidence that education governance can make a significant difference to student outcomes solong as it supports effective practices in schools and classrooms.
The chapter is organized in six sections. Part one considers general factors relating to
consideration and categorization of governance arrangements across different jurisdictions.
Part two considers the comparative performance of our case countries on international
standardized testing. We then move to a series of more specific case studies and cross-
jurisdictional analyses. Part three considers the contrasting cases of high-performers Finland and
South Korea. Part four briefly reviews the recent history of governance reforms in the United
Kingdom and the resulting effects on student outcomes. Part five considers the governance of
schools, their usefulness as units of comparison for performance, and some indicative
information on ways in which governance may, through intermediary factors, influence student
achievement. Part six presents our lessons for governance reformers: (1) Avoid costly political
battles, (2) Use appropriate diagnostic tools, (3) Recognize the power of leadership, (4) Focus on
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classroom practices, (5) Address student preparation; and (6) Address teacher preparation. We
conclude by considering the implications of these lessons for education governance reform in the
United States and elsewhere.
Part One: Ways of Thinking about and Comparing Governance
In seeking to understand governance struggles in any area of public policy, it is crucial to
appreciate the ways that specific actors can effectively undermine, constrain, or veto decisions
made by others (Konig, Tsebelis, Debus 2010). In general, the greater the number of people who
are given legitimacy to weigh in on decisions, the greater the number of veto points that any
given decision must clear. It seems redundant to note that comparing education governance
arrangements internationally is complex. The central questions of who makes which decisions on
what in what circumstances have a wide variety of permutations and forms that make simple
comparisons difficult. The range of factors needing to be governed, and scope of diversity even
within jurisdictions, should make us suspicious of simple conclusions. (This point resonates with
evidence in Barry Rabes contribution to this volume, where the focus is placed on governanceissues in the distinctly different areas of health care and environmental protection.)
Figure 1 presents a non-exhaustive matrix of actors and decisions in education governance. Each
blank box in the center of the matrix can be thought of as a veto point, offering an opportunity
for people to wrestle control in decision-making. The first thing to note about this figure is that
placing a check in any box on the matrix does not preclude a check being placed anywhere else.
Finances may be managed by a parent committee, approved by a local board, and voted by
central government within an existing and possibly quite limiting legislative framework. The
multi-dimensional complexity portrayed in Figure 1 continues to reveal itself when considering
that simple catch-all terms such as, for example, curriculum are not homogenous. Curriculumcan range from prescriptive programs of learning to broad frameworks with a great deal of
teacher autonomy; sometimes both alongside each other at different ages or with different
subjects. Additionally, it is a feature, particularly of many Anglo-Saxon systems, that dispersion
of control across this matrix varies across institutions within a jurisdiction. Long-established
private schools, and newer entities such as academies in the UK and charter schools in the US,
enjoy a greater degree of autonomy than their rule-constrained counterparts. But the payment of
fees or close engagement of parents in school decision-making changes the balance of what one
might call soft governancea degree of influence rather than control.
Finally, the nature and circumstance of the unit of comparisonthe jurisdictionhas hugeimplications for thinking about governance. For example, whether a decision or control is
delegated in legislation to a Cabinet-level Secretary of Education or a bureaucrat within a
Department of Education has implications that are played out in the context of the constitutional
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arrangements of the jurisdiction itself. Personalities, finely-attuned balances of power, and
political horse-trading in spheres completely unrelated to education may have profound
influences on the style of governance applied to education. It is also worth noting that decision-
making in these jurisdictional units tends to be driven more by individual idiosyncrasies that
structural commonalities. Even looking across a jurisdiction where school curriculum is set at a
national levelsuch as in New Zealandand one with more locally-established curriculasuch
as the United Statesdisguises the fact that New Zealand, with a school-age population of
around 750,000, is smaller than many of the local decision-making entities in the US.
Culturethe finely attuned balance of social norms and expectations that places pressure on
individuals and groups to behave in certain waysplays an enormous part in the successful
operation of education governance arrangements. Common evidence of the comparatively
greater success of parent education governance in high-income or high-SES areas is but one
indicator of this (Robinson and Ward 2005). Reducing layers of government control of public
schools can greatly reduce veto-points and, hence, contestation of decision-making. It also holds
the potential to address concerns about the uneven spread of managerial competenciesthroughout an education system. This helps explain why, during the past two decades, we have
seen mayors, state governors, and presidents seeking to achieve greater control over traditional
forms of school governance, always to the detriment of control previously exerted by actors
closer to the schools themselves, such as superintendents and boards (Allen and Mintrom 2010;
Henig and Rich 2004).
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Figure 1: Actors and decisions in education governance
Cur
riculum
Standardsand
Ass
essment
Enrolment
Rec
ruitment
Finance
Ope
rations
Management
stru
cture
Classsizeand
stru
cture
Property
mai
ntenance
etc
Central government
Local government
Local governance entities
(e.g. school boards)
Local or central bureaucracy
(e.g. Ministry of Education)
School governance entities
(e.g. UK governors)
Principals / head teachers
School middle management
Other specialists
(e.g. financial)
Parents
Teachers
Students
Other interested community
parties
External specialists
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(e.g. academics)
Etc.
The search for simple conclusions relating education governance to student outcomes is unlikely
to bear useful fruit. Easy conclusions abound, but those that hold up to rigorous interrogation are
few and far between. To further set the scene for this chapter we next consider soft and hard
control of schools, and indicate some ways to map veto points in educational governance. The
chief difficulty here is one of interpretation of information, and the real life effects of policy
settings. The example of school choice in Finland is instructive, and explored in a little more
detail later in this chapter. We note a number of seemingly conflicting key facts. School choice
in Finland is the most minimal of all jurisdictions under discussion. Official settings can simply
be characterized as zero choice; school places are assigned and that is that. Nonetheless, a
process exists whereby parents can apply to have this assignation changed, and around a quarterof parents do so. We also note that around 50 percent of Finnish principals report other schools
in their locality competing with them for students. So some degree of choice (or de facto
choice) exists in Finland, but clearly, the ability of parents to actualize this choice is limited. So
how does one characterize the level of choice in this system?
This leads to a further challenge, the role of soft governance. In systems as complex as
education, one anticipates a wide variety of individual circumstances. Relationships,
personalities, incomes, locations, and general predispositions all come into complex play.
Frustrating though it might be to those with an appetite for centralized control of schools, in
reality a school-level decision on particular testing practices can be as influenced by theprincipals friendship with a key parent as by central government policy. A simple and common
circumstance is practice around enrolment choice. Typically, home location determines
eligibility for attendance at a particular school across most jurisdictions. Property prices in those
areas reflect the ability to enroll a child in a favored school, and this will often in turn be
advertised by realtors. Parents with the necessary wherewithal will make these decisions
carefully, years in advance. This is a fascinating user-pays situation, where markets assign prices
to education through intermediary products, and provide some parents with one type of choice
where none is supposed to exist. Similar behavior is seen in some parents attending particular
religious institutions to secure enrolments into faith schools. Another example of the impact of
soft governance can be considered by working through Figure 2, which presents our suggestedmatrix in a case study of New Zealand. We highlight the relevant decision veto points below.
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Figure 2: Actors and decisionsan example from New Zealand
Cur
riculum
Standardsand
Ass
essment
Enrolment
Rec
ruitment
Finance
Ope
rations
Management
stru
cture
Classsizeand
stru
cture
Property
mai
ntenance
etc
Central government X X X X X
Local government
Local governance entities
(e.g. school boards)
Local or central bureaucracy
(e.g. Ministry of Education)
X X X X X
School governance entities
(e.g. UK governors)
X X X X X X X X
Principals / head teachers X X X X X X X X
School middle management
Other specialists
(e.g. financial)
X
Parents X X X X X X X
Teachers X
Students
Other interested community
parties
External specialists
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(e.g. academics)
etc
The matrix in Figure 2 highlights some key features of the New Zealand system of schoolgovernance. Local government and regional governance entities do not exist in New Zealand.
Every school is governed by its own board of trustees consisting of parents, teachers, students in
secondary schools and other local luminaries, and the school principal. Ostensibly, the board of
trustees runs all aspects of school operations with the principal acting in a kind of CEO role, and
reporting to the Board. There is a strong theoretical and legislative underpinning to this
arrangement. But real life examples of differing arrangements abound. Common forms include
instances where the principal has captured the board and runs a benign dictatorship with little
meaningful parent input. Another common form involves instances where the board works in
direct opposition to the principal in dysfunctional arrangements that tend eventually to be
dissolved by central government intervention. Thus, local governance of schools tends to becharacterized by levels of expertise, the strength of specific personalities, the historic level of
board engagement in decision-making, and the availability of financial resources.
Fundamentally, in New Zealand at least, there are as many governance arrangements as there are
schools. This should not lead us to abandon our line of enquiry concerning how governance
arrangements shape educational outcomes. However, it should lead would-be reformers of
governance systems to be alert to the difficulties surrounding efforts to wrestle control of what
happens in schools and classrooms. Most importantly, we should avoid applying generalizations
to situations that defy simple categorization.
Part 2: Contrasting Approaches to Education Governance and Student Performance
In this chapter we have chosen to consider six jurisdictions in particular as they share broad
comparability, in terms of reasonably well-developed systems of universal public education
(albeit with varying levels of private contribution). It is fundamentally more meaningful in terms
of culture and concept to compare the US to, for example, Australia or the UK than to Qatar.
Nonetheless, one of the recurring themes of this chapter is the caution that must be exercised in
comparison and transposition of results and findings. Small differences play out in large ways.
As a starting point for considering the impact of governance on student outcomes internationally,
we now summarize outcome data from the OECDs Program of International Student
Assessment (PISA). The overarching question from examination of this, and other evidence, is
whether it demonstrates or infers a link between governance arrangements and student outcomes.
The data from this program is relatively comprehensive for all comparator jurisdictions (PIRLS
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b) Mathematics
c) Science
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The results presented in Figures 3a, 3b, and 3c have two notable features. First, the means
themselves have small standard errors (usually somewhere between two and five points), so
differences are both substantively and statistically significant. Second, all our jurisdictions
appear to perform reasonably well; only the United States and the United Kingdom drop a little
below the OECD mean in some years and subjects. With the possible exception of the science
and mathematics scores for the United States, none of these jurisdictions perform inadequately,
at least in this study. There is no evidence of a crisis in student outcomes. Nonetheless, ifkeeping ahead of the rest of the world in education matters for economic competitivenessand
evidence increasingly suggests that it doesthen there is good reason to avoid complacency and
to look for lessons to learn from other jurisdictions that are producing equivalent, or slightly
better, education outcomes.
The jurisdictions under study seem to fall into three distinct groups. The US and UK hover
around the OECD mean in most years and scores, although the UK appeared to suffer a serious
degradation in performance between 2000 and 2006 (no data are available for the UK from
2003). There is a mid-high performance group of jurisdictions that appear relatively stable,
although falling slightly over time in reading and math: New Zealand, Australia, Canada.Finally, both Finland and Korea are notable for their consistently high but slightly unstable
scores over time.
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One factor that seems to merit consideration is the congruence across the three sets of results. It
is not the case, for example, that students from Finland seem to be tremendously good at science
but suffer in terms of literacy. They just appear to be equally good at everything. Equally, the dip
and then rise of US performance is common across all three sets of data.2
There are two possible
conclusions to be drawn here. Firstly, something exogenousabout the administration of the
test, for exampleproduces such consistent results across areas that do not need to be consistent.
But PISA is a carefully designed study with a large sample size (countries need to assess at least
4,000 students to participate). The other possible conclusion is that there is indeed something
common about the learning experience of many students participating in the study. Possibly, the
education systemand the governance settings of that systemare factors that exert a broad and
diffuse influence.
Figure 4 offers an attempt to compare PISA data to quantified measures of governance. It
considers reading, mathematics and science scores against three quantified governance measures
from PISA 2009. These are:
An index of school responsibility for resource allocation
An indicator of school choice, as measured by the percentage of principals reporting one
or more schools in the local area competing for students
An index of school responsibility for curriculum and assessment
There are important caveats that come with these measures. They have been chosen from PISA
as they are clear and quantifiable. However, taken on their own, they can seem counterintuitive,
and disagree with our assessments of country education systems elsewhere in this paper. For
example, Finlands relatively low score on curriculum responsibility reflects the role of local
boards of education as opposed to school-level decisions; but as noted elsewhere, these are small
and extremely local entities, and in practice teachers enjoy a great deal of autonomy over these
matters. In comparison, New Zealand reports a high degree of curriculum autonomy despite a
nationally legislated curriculum and a highly prevalent (although not compulsory) nationally
administered senior secondary qualification. This may be because the New Zealand curriculum is
a relatively non-prescriptive learning framework, which deliberately grants autonomy to teachers
while providing overall national consistency.
Similarly, a high percentage of Korean principals report competitor schools, despite the
Korean system offering virtually no parent choice. This may be more of a reflection of the
2The only counterfactual here is Korea, whose performance in reading seemed to peak in 2006, but at the expense of
science.
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perception of principals than actual parent discretion. This is but one indication of the influence
of culture and local circumstance, which can create distinct gaps between intent and outcome, or
between technical description and actual experience.
The results are interesting, as much for what they do not tell us as what they do. Simple
categorizations, and even key indicators and indices, do not tell a good story about governance.Links to educational outcomes remain opaque. We must constantly be wary of the allure of
simple heuristics. Nonetheless, it is worth noting that the only observable relationship here is a
tendency for higher-scoring jurisdictions to prefer national or regional resource allocation over
school-level. In itself, a counterintuitive finding, and one not supported when the results of all
PISA jurisdictions are taken into account. The same data for all jurisdictions participating in
PISA show, if anything, a slight relationship in the opposite direction.
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Figure 4: Relating Student Outcomes to Education Governance Arrangements
Index of school responsibility
for resource allocation(OECD mean = 0, positive
values indicate greater
balance of school
responsibility over regional
and national bodies)
percent of principals reporting
one or more schools in the samelocal area competing for students
Index of school responsibility
for curriculum and assessment(OECD mean = 0, positive
values indicate greater balance
of school responsibility over
regional and national bodies)
ading
tional
rage
nts)
thematics
tional
rage
nts)
ence
tional
rage
nts)
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Frustratingly, this analysis does not clarify the nature of governance factors that influence
student achievement. However, more can be learned from PISA by examining the impact of thelongest-standing alternative governance arrangementprivate education (see Figure 5).
Public, universal education for the vast majority of jurisdictions is a relatively recent
phenomenon, with a current lifespan of no more than 150 years. Private education has been the
predominant form of education for a much greater period of human history, but, for the ages of
five to around fifteen in most developed economies, has been usurped by publicly-funded
education over the last 100 years. The notion of private education is subject to as many
subtleties as education governance, but it is safe to assume that across most jurisdictions, this is a
form of education paid for by the consumer or their families.
As a broad generalization, the direct purchase relationship comes with greater institutionalautonomy, and greater accountability to the purchaser. Often private schools benefit from higher
levels of income than their public counterparts, and enjoy better facilities, and sometimes are
able to offer higher rates of teacher pay. Due to the purchase relationship, and the wide
availability of a free-of-charge alternative in most jurisdictions, private schools tend to be
populated by students from wealthier backgrounds.
The PISA 2009 results contain much cogent information about the effect of private schooling.
Most importantly, across the participant countries, a thirty-point reading score difference, in the
favour of private schools, exists between students attending private and public schools (OECD,
2010). This is approximately equivalent to two-thirds of the difference between the lowest- andhighest-performing comparator jurisdictions in 2009 (the UK and Korea). However, this mean
difference between public and private schooling outcomes narrows to negligibly few points when
controlled for socio-economic status (OECD 2011).
The OECD suggests a small number of factors of private schooling that account for the
remainder of this point difference. These include choice of curriculum, better disciplinary
climates and better resourcing. Across our comparator jurisdictions, the picture is one of highly
interesting variance. The two highest-performing jurisdictions, Finland and Korea, show a small
but relatively stable advantage in private schooling. The UK and U.S. results are different and
quite extraordinary, however. In the lowest-scoring comparator jurisdictions, private schoolingmakes a huge difference, but after controlling for SES, the difference is negative. An awkward
implication that could be drawn is that those private school students would have been better off
in a public school (and their parents could have saved a great deal of money). But maybe, more
sensibly, what these results tell us are something about the relative success of public school
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institutions in different jurisdictions in eliminating the disparities between students that accrue
from SES differentials. These are fascinating and complex results that deserve further
investigation.
In summary, achievement data tell us that this set of alternative governance arrangements do
impact student achievement. However, they do so in a very small (and sometimes negative) waywhen the much more influential factor of socio-economic status is taken into account.
Figure 5: Difference in Mean Reading Scores Between Students Attending Private and
Public Schools
Part 3: The Contrasting Cases of Finland and South Korea
Of all the jurisdictions under comparison, it is Finland and South Korea that tend to attract most
comment. Both countries perform consistently well in international evaluations, particularly
PISA; South Korea and Finland ranked second and third in the world respectively on reading
scores in 2009. Both also achieved top five placings in Science and Mathematics. Within reading
scores, they formed a group of three countries with Hong-Kong China whose scores were not
statistically significantly different. Fundamentally, their performance is comparable.
It is worth considering these results more closely. One further indicator of system performance is
spread of results. PISA divides the tested student population into reading levels ranging from one
(the lowest) to six. Both jurisdictions show comparatively few children reading at low levels and
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comparatively greater numbers of children reading at higher levels. But whereas Finland has
more than twice the average percentage of students performing at the highest level in reading,
South Korea comes in only just above the OECD average. Finland also enjoys a relatively small
spread of scores, implying it experiences consistent success as well as better chances of, on at
least one measure, excellence. The characteristics of the systems in these jurisdictions contain
interesting similarities as well as differences. PISA in 2009 contained some categorised features
of education systems that it is worth exploring.
Both jurisdictions offer little parent choice
Both South Korea and Finland offer low or nonexistent levels of parent choice of school. In
South Korea, children are randomly assigned to both public and private schools. In Finland, few
private schools exist, and all are comprehensive, that is, granted little or no leeway over
student selection. An interesting adjunct to this is that, in both jurisdictions, private schools are
funded by the state. Nonetheless, we must return to earlier caveats about this information; a high
percentage of principals in Korea report local competition for enrolments, a fact which mayindicate a high level of academic competition between institutions despite a low level of choice.
Both jurisdictions are somewhat decentralised
Through the pressure of successive waves of population growth, South Korea devolved greater
degrees of responsibility to municipal authorities, consisting of sixteen provincial offices and
182 local boards. These entities take care of budget and general administration tasks. The
majority of control of schools in Finland sits with municipalities, of which there are 336.
However, we should be cautious of simple comparisons. The school-age population of South
Korea is approximately 7.5m, compared to approximately 800,000 for Finland. This makes thesmallest South Korean administrative entity approximately twenty times the size of one in
Finland. These entities have quite different spans of control. There also appears to be a subtle but
important distinction between the drivers of this decentralization. The Finnish system emphasises
localalmost village-levelcontrol of schooling. The historical drivers of Korean
decentralization are more around efficiency; simply that the system grew too large to be
efficiently managed centrally. One interpretation of this latter driver is that when examining the
decentralised Korean system, we are simply viewing a centralised system with distributed
administrative functions. Attitudes to assessment practices add further weight to this
interpretation.
Both countries treat curriculum and assessment very differently
The Finnish education system is characterised by something that would be all but an anathema to
many western economieszero state testing until the final secondary level assessment, and
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indeed very little official testing, period. In contrast, and in common with many developed Asian
economies, South Korea tests often and for many purposes, with tests occurring as early as
elementary school. Much effort is expended studying for the all-important CSAT university
entry exams, but with many (albeit non-standard) staging posts along the way.
The curriculum comparison is also revealing. Both jurisdictions ostensibly implement a nationalcurriculum document. But the on-the-ground approach could not be more different. The South
Korean national curriculum appears to be adhered to strongly, with centrally mandated subjects
and textbooks. This assessment should be qualified by reference to recent moves to decentralise
some aspects of the Korean curriculum to a school and teacher level (Kim, 2005). Nonetheless,
our qualitative assessment is a high degree of curriculum homogeneity, mostly enforced by the
high-stakes rule of the centrally-administered CSAT (Lee 2010; Suen and Wu 2006).
In contrast, the Finnish curriculum is implemented almost entirely at a municipality level, with
individual teachers enjoying a high degree of autonomy over curriculum subjects and choice of
texts. This point is worth exploring further. The OECD notes a positive relationship between lowschool transfer rates (the rate at which students are moved to different schools, most often due to
behavioural or other academic difficulties) and autonomy in setting curriculum and assessment
practices. In fact, autonomy over curriculum across the OECD seems to be a key and important
setting correlated with improved reading scores. When considering the percentage of variation
between countries in reading performance accounted for by school system features, PISA 2009
found that a difference of around 23 percent was attributable to autonomy for curriculum and
assessment. A difference of around 1 percent was attributable to responsibility for resource
allocation.
Teachers enjoy high professional standing, but there are differences
Finland in particular is often noted as having a carefully selected teaching workforce, qualified to
Masters level. South Korean teachers complete a four year programme of tertiary study, but this
does not make them much different to most other developed economies. Equally, teacher pay in
Finland is only slightly higher than the OECD average, whereas South Korean teachers are paid
at a level second only to Luxembourgoise educators (who are generally cited as a high outlier in
teacher pay discussions). What both countries do appear to have in common is a culture of
respect for the profession of teaching. This cultural x-factor is often cited as a missing
component in a number of mid-ranking education systems; that teachers are not placed on a par
with doctors or lawyers in the social hierarchy.
Both jurisdictions place high value on pre-primary education
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deprived, inner-city areas of the UK. A key setting was that academies were to have a sponsor or
group of sponsors; individuals or organisations who were to make a financial contribution to the
construction of the school, and have a hand in running them. This concept is very different to a
number of other governance reforms. At its core, it does not seek to reduce or enhance state
control, parent choice or decision-making, and from the outset seeks to apply reform to the
points where it is considered most necessary; failing schools in poor communities. What it does
seek to do is increase the influence of actors external to the education system since the
philanthropic initiatives of the industrial revolution. Academies are directly accountable to the
Department for Education, without the intervening layer of a local education authority. Another
intriguing element of the policy was that academies are wholly owned by company-type entities
(companies limited by guarantee with charitable status).
A relatively careful study of the comparative impacts of academy status on student achievement
has noted, after taking into account a large number of control variables (including pupil SES and
test scores on intake), a statistically significant impact on test scores for early academies (those
established before around 2007), but an insignificant impact for later adopters (possibly due to
establishment phase effects) (Machin and Vernoit, 2011). The study also notes a significant
effect of becoming an academy is an increase in the quality of student intake, as measured by
age-11 test scores, and a corresponding decrease in the quality of intake at neighbouring
schools. This in itself is not an insignificant point. Based on a meta-analysis of international
research findings, Hattie (2005: 401) notes an effect size of 0.50 of peers on student outcomes.
This effect size suggests that the presence of more able peers may positively influence less able
peers.
A strong story forms from the UK evidence, but apparently a story of variable impact. The
removal, insertion, and removal of a layer of control, devolution of authority, involvement of
altruistic private sector sponsors and construction of entirely new physical facilities to house
brand new schools does not seem to impact negatively on student achievement, but positive
impacts are variable, and tend to accrue to students from more advantaged backgrounds. SES as
a predictor of achievement comes to the fore once again. In fact, matching evidence from factors
known to improve student achievement with the range of commentary on academies, the most
telling, but frustratingly underexplored, indicator is from the National Audit Office in 2007
most academies have high quality leadership and governance and have improved teaching
and learning, drawing on the benefits of their new environments (National Audit Office, 2007).
It appears that the quality of leadership of governance mechanisms rather than the design ofthose mechanisms has the greatest impact on student achievement. Maybe academies have
managed to source higher-quality governance from business, NGOs and charities, and this has
enabled some improvement in student achievement. But this enabling must have been mediated
by practices in teaching and learning that followed on from that good leadership.
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Part 5: Successes and failures in schools; relationships between governance and
achievement
Another way of considering the inter-relationship between education governance and
achievement is to consider the success, or maybe even more usefully, failure, of schools. The
notion of the school as an entity that is a crucial element in any intervention logic recurs inconversations about education governance. More or less competition could be cited as good or
bad for education; but written into the terms of the debate is the idea that it is competition
between schools. Governance by parent committees is most often governance of schools. Is there
much evidence that this is actually a useful node of analysis? In fact, much evidence on
academic achievement focuses on the primacy of what happens in the classroom (and, indeed, on
the much more influential parent, family and socio-economic factors). PISA 2009 again tells us
that the greatest variation in performance is within, rather than between, individual institutions
and jurisdictions. In short, there is more difference between the worst and best students in any
country than between the average scores of the worst and best countries. Similarly, there is more
difference between the worst and best student in any school than between the worst and best
schools.
There is a strong empirical basis to the assertion made regularly in many of our comparator
jurisdictions that, despite middling rankings and sometimes huge disparities, our best
students are amongst the best in the world. In fact, this is not only true but potentially so true
as to be fairly pointless. The best Kyrgyzstan students are amongst the best in the world, but
unfortunately around a quarter of the others appear to lack basic functional literacy at age fifteen
(OECD, 2010). Nonetheless, there is considerable literature relying on schools as the unit of
analysis, and a substantial body of thought backing up the idea that a school can be successful
or failing. Accepting for the moment that this is a useful concept, and conceding that the PISA
data suggest that schools as institutions hold sway over around 45 percent of the variance in
student achievement, what does this mean for governance? Or to consider a different
propositiona lot is to be gained across the 30 percent variance in achievement that occurs
between schools. What role might governance have there?
Australia, in a similar way to federal companions Canada and the U.S., has delegated the bulk of
education policymaking to its component jurisdictions. Nonetheless, Australian schooling has
shown some general trends overall, not least a significant rise in the number of private schools,
with those entities accounting for around a third of enrolments. As well as private and
government schools, there is a proportion of Catholic schoolsessentially private schools run by
religiously affiliated trusts or boards.
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An analysis of the effectiveness of Australian schools in 2004 went some way to confirming the
hypothesis that the institution as a whole can in some way be responsible for the results of
individuals, despite those individuals experiencing different teachers and teaching. After
controlling for social intake, size, location, sector and achievement on intake, the authors found a
wide variation, both above and below an expected level of performance. This was particularly
noticeable at the lower levels of scores; some school scores show several standard deviations
both above and below the mean. (Lamb, Rumberger, Jesson, and Teese, 2004).
However, the links through to governance in this study were diffuse. Overall, around 90 percent
of variation in performance was ascribed to factors other than the school as an entity. Of the
remaining 10 percent, only small effects were noticeable for differences between Catholic,
Government and Independent schools. Parent choicea matter, it appears, of high public policy
value in Australiaseems at a macro level to be adding little to individual school performance.
We might hypothesize much better results from private schools in a system where choice is so
prevalent. This tends not to be the case. (Lamb, Rumberger, Jesson, and Teese, 2004)
Studies of the relationship between governance and failing schools tend to tell a different story.
There is actually a large body of work both on the subject of what makes a good school good,
and how to rescue a failing school. We do not propose to investigate it in depth here. Rather, it
is noteworthy that the bulk of advice on the matter deals with leadership and governance as a
central theme (Robinson 2011).
The UKs National Audit Office, relating well-trodden advice in turn from OFSTED and similar
entities, establishes a framework of common problems for poorly-performing schools. These
areineffective leadership, weak governance, poor standards of teaching, lack of external
support, and challenging circumstances. (National Audit Office, 2006) In 2006, it noted about 4percent of primary and 23 percent of secondary schools could be described as poorly
performing. To explore one aspect in a little more depth, the 2006 report noted the crucial role
of governors (volunteer parent governing committees) in challenging head teachers and senior
teaching staff in failing schools. It appears that an accountability role is important. The centrality
of leadership, and the role of the principal as a direction-setting change manager, is also
acknowledged. But the idea seems to have been most effectively expressed by the Iowa
Lighthouse inquiry into school board behaviour in districts with extreme differences in outcomes
(the study compared a small number of very good boards to a small number of very bad boards).
Effectiveness here was linked to what must seem obvious best practice. Not only was there a
focus on good governance, but this took the form of explicit recognition of the interface between
governance and teaching (The Iowa Association of School Boards, 2001).
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New Zealands Education Review Office also notes leadership as a key factor of successful
schools, but says little about governance. Its five point framework for successful schools is
A focus on the learner
Leadership in an inclusive culture
Effective teaching
Engagement with parents and communities
Coherent policies and practice in a cycle of continuous self review (ERO, 2011).
Four key points emerge from this discussion that align with messages throughout the chapter.
Schools have an impact, but not as much as teachers
Governance has an impact on schools, but only a diffuse impact on learners
A purposive approach to governance that seeks to make specific links between
governance practice and student outcomes is more likely to have a positive impact on
student outcomes
Although not properly investigated or explored, it is possible to hypothesise that strong or
innovative governance measures are most useful when rescuing failing institutions, but
have less impact on the high performers. However, a failure of governance often leads to
a failure of the institution.
Part 6: Lesson Drawing
Based on the forgoing survey and discussion of educational governance and student outcomes
across six jurisdictions, we now draw lessons for governance reformers.
Lesson 1: Avoid costly political battles
Transforming education systems requires massive political will that must be sustained over many
years. The history of educational reform is littered with examples of failed efforts. Largely, this
is because the grammar of schooling has been well-established, and has resulted in a variety of
somewhat arbitrary aspects of school systems being treated as essential elements (Tyack and
Tobin 1994). Reform efforts that have worked have tended to add new components to school
systems, usually leaving other aspects in place. The resulting incrementalism, or tinkering
around the edges, has meant that many features of schooling appear the same today as they did a
century ago (Tyack and Cuban 1995). Significantly, this kind of system-level resistance to
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change is not unique to the field of education. Incrementalism has long been recognized as a
predominate change dynamic in various areas of government activity and in corporations (Cyert
and March 1963, Lindblom 1959, Simon 1947; Wildavsky 1964). Getting beyond
incrementalism typically involves high levels of coordinated activity led by policy entrepreneurs
(Baumgartner and Jones 1993; Mintrom 2000). In light of this, effective change efforts often
involve engagement in local level experimentation, creation of whole new organizational entities
working alongside traditional forms, and efforts to build networks and political coalitions. When
considering education reforms, we suggest that efforts should be made to avoid costly political
battles. These can readily suck time and energy away from the focus of change itself. In practice,
this suggestion implies that creating coalitions of willing change agents and working around the
edges of traditional systems are likely to be the most fruitful ways forward. When sufficient
evidence is assembled to support arguments for change, and when prefigurative forms of change
have had a chance to flourish, the likelihood of securing major change will increase. While
teachers unions might be considered a powerful brake on reform, it is also worth considering
ways of presenting reform efforts that will not immediately buy a major fight. In fact, a numberof actions that would appear to promote the achievement of valued education outcomes also
involve raising the status of teaching as a profession. Distasteful as some might find it, first
exhausting those options is probably more effective than going directly into battle with the
education establishment. Governance reformers should ask: What changes in governance
arrangements are likely to generate valued education outcomes without provoking major political
battles?
Lesson 2: Use appropriate diagnostic tools
Systems of public education, to be judged as providing adequate return on investment, must
produce outcomes of high value to society. Agreement about what outcomes are most valued can
be illusive in pluralistic societies that exhibit diversity and multiculturalism. Yet, even in
societies exuding social and cultural homogeneity, conceptions of valued outcomes are subject to
on-going, incremental change. In the present age, continuous economic transformation is forcing
debate about what matters most in education (Florida 2004, Hirsch 2006, Murnane and Levy
1996, Robinson 2009). Kenneth Strike (1998: 211) has proposed that states and nations should
hold schools and students accountable using a high, but narrow bar. For example, all young
people, and all societies, benefit when high standards are set regarding the attainment of basic
literacy and numeracy. According to Strike, government should not, in the name of pluralism,
tolerate either student failure or school failure on these narrow measures. Meanwhile, holdingschools and students accountable for performance only in basic literacy and numeracy, leaves
considerable scope for school leaders and communities to decide what curricular elements matter
most to them, and how they should be taught. From a governance perspective, test results
represent vital indicators of system performance. Testing programs generate the information
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required to diagnose how well an education system is performing. Aside from giving a picture of
overall system performance, diagnostic tools are most useful when they can identify areas of the
system that are not performing well. We advocate use of appropriate diagnostic tools, such as
measures of student gain scores, because they can greatly assist in the allocation of resources
across a public school system. Implementation of sound testing systems should therefore precede
more comprehensive changes in education governance. Governance reforms and related efforts
to achieve greater control over public schools make sense only when clear evidence exists that
schools are performing poorly. No priority should be given to governance reforms affecting
schools currently producing good outcomes. Governance reformers should ask: What changes in
current governance arrangements are likely to generate better information on education outcomes
and assist in prioritizing areas for reform efforts?
Lesson 3: Recognise the power of leadership
Discussions of education governance typically circle around big questions of structural design
and control. While there is certainly value in exploring ways to achieve better structural design,we should not neglect the power of leadership to make things happen in change-resistant
environments. For example, Richard E. Neustadt (1960) made a classic argument that, given the
separation of powers in the United States system of government, the most important power of
presidents was the power to persuade. Subsequent studies of United States presidents in power
and presidents in the making (see, e.g. Wilson 1999; Caro 2002) illustrate how peoples ability to
span structural boundaries and master the rules of the game are crucial to achieving significant
change in a system that routinely stymies change efforts. Studies of agenda setting and policy
entrepreneurship (Kingdon 1984; Mintrom 2000) further confirm how effective leadership
efforts can make change happen, seemingly against the odds. This suggests that, for people
interested in securing better education outcomes, finding ways to effectively empower locally-
led change processes can be productive. Such efforts, carefully orchestrated, offer the promise of
creating new coalitions that could ultimately support ambitious efforts to better align governance
structures with the pursuit of valued educational outcomes. Some recent studies of leadership in
schools have explicitly explored how the practices of people in leadership positions, such as
school principals, can produce gains in student learning. These studies recognize that classroom
interactions are central to the production of valued educational outcomes. For example, Richard
Elmore (2004: 57) has proposed that [l]eadership is the guidance and direction ofinstructional
improvement. This is a deliberately deromanticized, focused, and instrumental definition. Such
a focused definition resonates with notions of leadership as the promotion of creative problem-solving within collectivities (Heifetz 1994; Weick 2001). Based upon a meta-analysis of prior
research, Viviane Robinson, Margie Hohepa, and Claire Lloyd (2009) identified five school-
level leadership practices that impact positively on student outcomes. These were: establishing
goals and expectations, effectively organising resources for the attainment of valued goals,
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planning and evaluating teaching and the curriculum, promoting and participating in teacher
professional development, and ensuring an orderly and supportive environment (see also
Robinson 2011). Among these, the practice that appeared to have the most impact on student
outcomes was promotion and participation in teacher learning and development. These findings
support arguments that value can be gained from efforts to distribute leadership throughout
schools. Such efforts empower teachers and promote learning conversations among stakeholders
(Lambert 2003; Robinson 2008; Spillane 2006). Effective school leaders also tend to build
inclusive relations with members of the broader school community. When managed carefully,
such efforts can scaffold student learning (Reihl 2000; Robinson, Hohepa, and Lloyd 2009).
Insights from such research on the power of leadership have led to the development of
programmes in New Zealand and elsewhere that train school principals to serve as effective
leaders. Governance reformers should ask: What changes in current governance arrangements
are likely to support school leadership that contributes to better education outcomes?
Lesson 4: Focus on classroom practicesIn the context of discussions of education governance, placing a focus on classroom practices
may seem misplaced. Yet, we have shown that valued education outcomes can be broadly
generated by national school systems displaying almost polar-opposite governance mechanisms
(i.e., Finland and South Korea). The focus on the classroom leads us to consider what elements
of a governance system matterand which dontfor promoting improvements in student
learning. Fundamentally, education outcomes are the products of the interactions that occur
between teachers and students. Anecdotally, most people who have attained success in their lives
can recount turning points that occurred through their engagement with specific teachers or
mentors (Ericsson, Prietula, Cokely 2007; Gardner 1993; Robinson 2009). More formally,
systematic observations of teachers in classrooms confirm that appropriate application of specific
practices can have profound effects on student learning. Consider, for example, the giving of
feedback to students. When carefully managed, and given in a constructive fashion, feedback can
strongly support progress in student learning (Hattie and Timperley 2007). Indeed, a meta-
analysis of evidence reveals that an array of classroom practices, appropriately applied, can have
much more influence on student learning than politically-charged factors such as class sizes and
the financial resources available to a school (Hattie 2005; 2009). Richard Elmores classic
discussion of backward mapping (1979) and his more recent considerations of school reform
(2004) confirm the importance of elevating classroom practices in discussions of education
governance. Governance reformers should ask: What changes to current governancearrangements are likely to have the most impact on improving classroom practices?
Lesson 5: Attend to student preparation
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The value students gain at any step in their education depends greatly on what they bring to it.
This raises several matters for consideration. On a somewhat negative note, we need to be
sensitive to the limits of what schools can do when working with students. Certainly, there is
plenty of evidence confirming that specific attributes of family and social settings affect
individual educational outcomes (Cuban 2003; Jencks and Phillips 1998). However, we verge
upon despair when these deficits are viewed as fixed and teachers treat them as insurmountable
barriers to student success. Deficit thinking assumes that factors like family poverty, instability
in housing and family relations, learning disabilities, and parents limited educational attainment
present obstacles to student learning (Garca and Guerra 2004; Valencia 1997). But too much
focus on student deficits can become an excuse for teachers to assume that any efforts to promote
learning will be a lost cause (Timperley 2005). Emerging evidence on effective teaching
strategies and the results of school efforts to engage families and communities as partners in
student learning suggest many deficits can be turned around (Sheldon and Epstein 2005; Van
Voorhis 2003). Schools and teachers need to figure out what they can do, and to employ teaching
practices that add value to students, even in the face of troubles that are beyond the control ofindividual teacher and schools. Longitudinal studies of students who experienced high-quality
early childhood education, and those that did not, clearly demonstrate the positive impact of
early interventions that improve student preparation for subsequent schooling. The most
powerful evidence to date has been summarized by James Heckman (2006). The clear message
here is that investments in high-quality early education serve to promote student performance in
subsequent years of schooling and well beyond. Additionally, evidence from the OCEDs PISA
studies confirm the pattern that education outcomes for students at age 15 are positively
influenced by their previous exposure to pre-school educational programmes. Governance
reformers should ask: What changes in current governance arrangements are likely to help give
students strong foundational experiences in life that will enhance their ability to make the mostof their subsequent educational opportunities?
Lesson 6: Attend to teacher preparation
After investigating characteristics of top-performing national school systems, Michael Barber
and Mona Mourshed (2007) concluded that the quality of an education system cannot exceed
the quality of its teachers and the only way to improve outcomes is to improve instruction.
Our discussion of the education systems in Finland and South Korea support these observations.
Strong empirical evidence offers further confirmation. For example, analyses of longitudinal data
from the Tennessee Valued-Added Assessment System offer clear evidence of the powerfuleffects that good teachers can have on student outcomes. S. Paul Wright, Sandra P. Horn, and
William L. Sanders (1997) reported that effective teachers appear to be effective with students of
all achievement levels, regardless of the amount of heterogeneity in their classrooms. In contrast,
if the teacher is ineffective, students will achieve inadequate progress academically, regardless of
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Avoid costly political battles, (2) Use appropriate diagnostic tools, (3) Recognize the power of
leadership, (4) Focus on classroom practices, (5) Attend to student preparation; and (6) Attend to
teacher preparation.
Political leaders everywhere face strong incentives to achieve greater returns on public
investments in education. Given this, it is tempting for many to seek radical changes ingovernance arrangements, with the intention of gaining greater control over what happens in
schools and in classrooms. While we can certainly see the merits in pursuing governance
reforms, we also recognize that such actions often create major political battles that deflect
attention from the core business of improving student outcomes. For this reason, we suggest that
would-be reformers should seek to achieve changes by both working with people in the current
system and by looking for ways to introduce changes that challenge the hegemony of traditional
schooling arrangements. With respect to working the inside track, a lot could be gained by
improving the information that administrators have regarding student performance, by getting
teachers to focus on outcomes for students, and by ensuring that students are appropriately
prepared for each level of education. Changes along these lines could be achieved through efforts
that recognize teachers as professionals and that involve getting resources to the places where
they can make significant differences to student outcomes. Evidence on major reform efforts
suggests that when political leaders take the risk of tying their reputations to achievement of
specific changes, those changes can happen rapidly (Barber 2008; Fullan 2011; Osborne 1988).
Of course, major risks accompany such a strategy. But if public leaders are not prepared to stake
their fortunes on creating major system improvements, then it is unlikely that anyone else will.
With respect to working outside the present system, we suggest that efforts to promote
experimentation in schooling can do a lot to inform practices within traditional schooling
systems. However, in such cases, effort must be made to ensure that experiments are effectivelyevaluated and that knowledge of their effects is adequately disseminated to others who could use
it.
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