From market to network governance in Chile: collaboration and accountability in a changing system

• In Event: Educational governance in a comparative perspective: changing ways to coordinate school improvement

Proposal

Chile’s education system has been organized as a quasi-market for almost 40 years, featuring voucher programs, school choice, privatization, and high-stakes accountability (Valenzuela et al., 2013). The marketization of Chile’s education has had clear negative consequences, such as a loss in enrolment in public-municipal schools, a high level of segregation by social class, and inequitable learning outcomes (OECD, 2017). Collectively, these consequences have resulted in a public-municipal school sector that suffers a reputational disadvantage (Carrasco et al., 2017), with very restricted capacity and support from municipal departments of education (González et al., 2015).
To address these issues, a number of structural reforms have been passed recently, including Law No. 21.040 to transform the governance of public education. This law replaces the 346 municipal departments of education with 70 Local Public Education Services (SLEP) between 2018 and 2026.
This reform introduces a new system of local government with the expectation of enhancing the professional and administrative capacity of the middle tier of the system. To do so, it considers novel forms of local accountability through the new Local Committees and Councils representing different stakeholders (parents, teachers, universities, municipal and regional authorities). Moreover, SLEPs become responsible for the design and delivery of pedagogical and management support to schools, guaranteeing educational quality and equity in its territory. Finally, this law implies a new scenario for educational governance, introducing networking as one of its core principles with the aim of promoting collaboration instead of competition among schools, and harnessing territorial and local empowerment instead of hierarchical control.
This paper explores how the initial arguments for the New Public Education have had been understood and enacted by SLEP teams, drawing on data from in-depth interviews with four policymakers and 16 professionals from the first two SLEPs that initiated operation in 2018. Interviews took place in three rounds during 2018 (July and October) and 2019 (January). In addition, four working papers produced during the design and parliamentary discussion of the law were analyzed to complement what was discussed during the interviews.
Both interview transcripts and documents were subjected to a qualitative content analysis (Schrier, 2012). A coding frame was defined based on the research question, establishing concept-driven categories to summarize the material. Then, by coding the material with these concept-driven categories, other emerging data-driven categories were developed. From this process, key themes where identified which address the rationale for the introduction of the new public education system and its enactment by the two SLEP.
Findings indicate that participants locate the change of the governance structure of public education within a larger program of reform that aimed for creating a more inclusive school system. In that context, participants acknowledge the challenge of pushing schools and the system to collaborate within a competitive environment. This paper further explores issues of collaboration and accountability arising from this transition, inquiring into how the relationship between SLEPs and schools is mediated by previous governance arrangements with municipalities and the ministry.

Authors

• Carmen Montecinos, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso

• Alvaro González, Universidad Católica Silva Henríquez