The role of the OECD in the construction of school autonomy with accountability as a global policy model

• In Event: International Organizations, Interdependency and the Rise of Global Metrology

Proposal

The OECD has played a critical role in the construction and diffusion of School Autonomy with Accountability (SAWA) as a global policy model. Over the last two decades, the OECD has increasingly turned to accountability, external assessments and school autonomy measures when providing countries with education guidance. The organization has succeeded in advancing the SAWA agenda through the stimulation of domestic policy debates as well as through the provision of policy advice. However, there is only a limited understanding of the process through which SAWA ideas arose and gained centrality within the OECD.
Our paper addresses this gap by examining the practices and forms of agency through which the OECD has developed and expanded SAWA as an instrument model of governing education. The paper speaks to the panel’s overarching theme by highlighting how the OECD generates policy solutions through cultivating interdependent and multiscalar relations both across its internal departments and committees, as well as with national OECD members. The paper also speaks to debates relating to global metrology by examining how the OECD has strategically tapped into its own education metrics in order to articulate the SAWA policy model. We argue that this dynamic is only one of the key mechanisms through which SAWA has been constructed as a desirable policy model, and we examine the under-studied relationship between data production and idea generation in IO governance practices.
The paper presents an empirical study that draws on documentary analysis of a large corpus of OECD-produced or commissioned documents (including policy papers, country reviews, PISA reports, etc.). This is complemented with a series of semi-structured interviews with OECD staff who have been engaged in the main research and training initiatives concerned with the SAWA agenda.
Data analysis is informed by instrument constituency theory (Béland & Howlett, 2016; Voß & Simons, 2014) in the sense that aims at re-politicizing the decisions behind the construction of SAWA as a policy model in the context of the OECD. Specifically, our analysis revolves around three main themes, namely
(a) the causal policy model: which rationales is SAWA expected to serve? Which are the core and the flexible components of SAWA? How have different OECD divisions negotiated the centrality of different SAWA components?
(b) knowledge production: which sources of evidence are behind the generation of SAWA as a policy solution? How is the interplay between expert knowledge and political priorities operating within the organization? How is the dialogue between OECD departments involved in the production of metrics and those more focused on the generation of policy ideas?
(c) interdependencies and recontextualization: What are the interdependencies between the OECD and local, regional, and national networks and/or organisations which enable SAWA to become embedded in local practices and specific institutional realities?

Authors

• Clara Fontdevila, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona

• Antoni Verger, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona

• Sotiria Grek, University of Edinburgh