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Deborah Nusche
Policy AnalystEducation and Training Policy Division
OECD Directorate for Education
OECD Reviews of Evaluation and Assessment in Education: SWEDEN
Implementing policies in a decentralised context… some reflections
Stockholm – 7 December 2011
From OECD’s Education at a Glance:
• Decentralisation is a widespread trend across OECD countries
• In about two-thirds of OECD countries, most schooling decisions in lower secondary education are taken at the local or school level (2007)
• Between 1998 and 2007, decisions in lower secondary education became more decentralised or remained highly decentralised in 19 out of 24 countries
Source: OECD (2008), Education at a Glance 2008: OECD Indicators, OECD, Paris.
Some international context
From the OECD/CERI’s project on Governing Complex Education Systems (www.oecd.org/edu/ceri/gces):
• Increasing complexity of education systems
• The new models of governance are designed to handle this complexity
• But: they reduce the capacity of governments to set priorities and steer the system
• At the same time: Education ministries remain responsible for ensuring quality and equity of education nationally
Some international context
• Late 1980s/ early 1990s decentralisation process transferred decision-making power to municipalities
• Further distribution of responsibilities within municipalities, with large autonomy delegated to school districts and individual schools
• Strong tradition of teacher autonomy in the classroom
• Introduction of school choice and independent schools
OECD Review: Governance context in Sweden
There are large variations in local evaluation and assessment practices
These variations can be both a strength and a challenge
Strengths:
• Diversity of approaches allows for innovation and system evolution.
• Ownership and responsibility for evaluation and assessment can generate commitment, professionalism and dynamism.
• Many examples of good practices
– Stockholm: well established system of local system evaluation
– Malmö: use of school leaders for peer evaluation
– Haninge: annual qualitative reports to report on priority topics.
OECD Review:Impact on evaluation and assessment policies
There are large variations in local evaluation and assessment practices
These variations can be both a strength and a challenge
Challenges:
• Not all school owners and schools are systematic in their evaluation activities.
• Concerns about those school owners and schools that have less capacity or commitment for implementing quality management approaches.
• School practices in student assessment, teacher appraisal and school self-evaluation are variable and often depend on the leadership of individual principals and teachers.
• The potential for system learning is not fully exploited.
OECD Review:Impact on evaluation and assessment policies
What are the policy options to improve evaluation and assessment in a decentralised context?
OECD Review: Steering elements in a decentralised system
• Student assessment: Learning progressions, assessment criteria and exemplars to support student assessment
• Teacher appraisal: Teaching standards as a basis for teacher appraisal processes
• School evaluation: Shared quality indicators for school evaluation
A clear set of reference points for common orientation across Sweden
OECD Review: Steering elements in a decentralised system
• Teacher capacity for student assessment (national tests, own tests, formative assessment)
• School leader capacity for teacher appraisal and school self-evaluation (coach and guide staff, use data for improvement)
• School owner capacity for school and local system evaluation (understand and make decisions based on school data)
Capacity building for evaluation and assessment at all levels
OECD Review: Steering elements in a decentralised system
• Share and spread good practice to facilitate system learning and improvement
• Support networking within and across municipalities
• Learn from practice based expertise
• Improve mobilisation of existing information across the system
• Knowledge sharing and dissemination of good practice
Networking, collaboration and sharing of good practice
OECD Review: Steering elements in a decentralised system
• Ensure improvement of teaching and learning is at the heart of evaluation and assessment
• Support culture of evaluation focussed on evaluating teaching practice and its relationship to student outcomes
Leadership for evaluation and assessment focused on teaching and learning quality
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