Reconfiguration, Resolution or Rupture: A Comparative Analysis of SAWA Reforms in England and Denmark

• In Event: New directions in comparative education policy (Part 2): The translation and instrumentation of policy

Proposal

Accountability – in its various and sometimes hybrid forms – plays a key role in the development of education policies, the formation of education organizations, the planning of education systems, and the creation of education practices (Maroy and Pons, 2019; UNESCO, 2017). Globally, a particular salient and expanding mode of accountability has evolved in the context of decentralisation reforms which have ostensibly sought to improve educational quality through greater school control over its own development. School Autonomy With Accountability or SAWA (Verger, Fontdevila and Parcerisa, 2019) may be described as a neoliberal policy instrument; on the one hand, it transfers core managerial responsibilities to the school level, enabling school actors to make autonomous decisions based on the priorities, needs and interests of their student and parent communities, while, on the other hand, it implies that schools must be more accountable to these constituents, and wider local and national stakeholders, to ensure quality of educational provision and service delivery, compliance with national regulations, and provide performance data based on key indicators, benchmarks and goals. In this new social settlement, however, we have witnessed the individualization of accountability as school leaders and teachers have become increasingly responsible for student and school performance where “success” or “failure” is determined by mechanisms implemented by political actors in the upper echelons of the education system (Ydesen et al., 2022).
England and Denmark have both introduced SAWA reforms over the last 30 years. Since the 1990s, the Danish Folkeskole has undergone considerable neoliberal reform which has seen the implementation of market-oriented policies of free school choice alongside increased municipal control albeit subject to government spending ceilings and mandatory quality targets (Dovemark et al., 2018). By contrast, in England, the 1988 Education Reform Act introduced a quasi-market in education through the local management of schools, thereby limiting the role of local education authorities and establishing the conditions for the later development of semi-autonomous academies and multi-academy trusts. With a diminishing role for local education authorities, school accountability has been increasingly tied to national government mechanisms of control: performance league tables and high-stakes inspections (Ydesen et al. 2022). In both contexts, the development and enactment of SAWA-reforms is a moving target with the inspection system (England) and a new national testing system (Denmark) currently undergoing review.
Drawing on Deleuze and Guattari’s (1987) concept of assemblage (Salajan and Jules, 2023), this paper compares the evolution of SAWA reforms in England and Denmark. Using interview data from an international research project titled “Education Access under the Reign of Testing and Inclusion” and more recent policy documents and debates, we analyse how SAWA has developed through the assemblage of various discourses, instruments, technologies, artefacts, and actors in each context. With an understanding that various bodies within the educational assemblage can both augment and diminish certain individuals’ capacities to act, we explore teachers’ and school leaders’ potential to rupture the dominant political-economic-ideological imaginary and the implications for future developments of SAWA reforms and education policy and practice.

Authors

• Christian Ydesen, Aalborg University

• Alison Louise Milner, Aalborg University