Examining the OECD’s role as a global policy influencer of school funding debates

• In Event: Knowledge mobilization practices and problems from the global to the local level

Proposal

The government funding of schooling is exemplary of David Easton’s (1953) framing of policy as ‘an authoritative allocation of values’. Funding decides, in the crudest of terms, ‘who gets what’, and is, therefore, a fundamental articulation of the values of government (Gerrard, Savage and O’Connor 2017). In recent decades, trends towards private- and market-based funding models internationally have opened new opportunities for a multitude of actors in the funding of schools, including philanthropies, corporations and via increased parental contributions. Alongside these changes have been growing fiscal constraints, particularly since the global financial crisis, which have driven an increased interest in ensuring spending practices are cost-effective means for achieving improvement in schools. These factors have placed increased scrutiny on government spending on schools (OECD 2017).

While debates about school funding are typically dominated by national and subnational politics and contingencies, recent debates have become increasingly ‘global’ in nature, particularly as policy learning and borrowing between systems intensifies (Lingard 2010) and governments seek international data about ‘what works’ to improve schooling outcomes (Lewis 2017). As is the case in many domains of schooling policy, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has expanded its work in an attempt to influence policies relating to school funding. In 2013, it launched a major ongoing project, the ‘Review of Policies to Improve the Effectiveness of Resource Use in Schools’, which seeks to ‘help countries exchange best practices and learn from one another, and to gather and disseminate evidence of what works in school resource policies’ (OECD 2017, p. 3).

This paper examines the OECD’s role in seeking to influence global debates about school funding. In doing so, it presents theoretical and conceptual analysis of OECD policy documents and initiatives relating to school funding reform, with a particular focus on developments since the global financial crisis. The analysis is informed by the interpretive policy research tradition, which seeks to understand meaning-making practices at work in policy (Schwartz-Shea & Yanow, 2012). We also draw upon the concept of policy problematisation (Bacchi 2009, 2012; Li 2007) to examine: a) how school funding has been ‘made problematic’ by the OECD; b) how certain policy responses have been framed as ‘solutions’ to such problems; and c) the potential effects of such problem/solution dynamics.

Our primary argument is that the OECD has evolved to assume a major role in school funding debates, to the extent that it is now a dominant global player in influencing policy. We argue the OECD is steering global conversations about funding in new directions in three main ways by: 1. Shifting conversations away from historically dominant questions about whether ‘more money’ improves outcomes, to a different set of questions about impact and ‘what schools do’ with money (i.e. a ‘what works’ approach); 2. Advocating for needs-based funding models, based on a rearticulated version of equity as an economic good; 3. Warning against the potential negative impacts of trends towards private and market-based models of school funding and provision.

Authors

• Glenn Savage, University of Melbourne

• Elisa Di Gregorio, University of Melbourne