Ácidos grasos

This chapter concentrates on key policy tensions. Its list of tensions is not exhaustive. Through its five sections it analyses some critical issues of educational change as policy change. There are two sides to the coin –

sometimes policy tensions act as vehicles for adequate policy adjustments and educational change, sometimes they block rational policymaking and implementation and inhibit educational change. In this chapter we will discuss three key policy tensions: foreign donors’ policies versus the reality of national education policy; policymakers’ policies versus the change initiatives of schools; and policy versus politics in partner country contexts in South Eastern Europe.

EDUCATIONAL CHANGE –

BARRIERS AND

CONSTRAINTS IN ETF

PARTNER COUNTRIES

Education systems in Eastern European countries are much criticised for failing to address societal needs. As a result, education systems are under pressure to break with the past and explore new learning avenues.

Governments in partner countries face serious pressure from inside and outside their education systems.

Outside trends affecting the need for change include globalisation, the growing importance of knowledge in society and economy, innovations related to ICT, and a general emphasis on the role of the market economy. They demand change in key components of the education system, its resources, functions, processes and services. Pressure also comes from the world of work where new occupational profiles are becoming increasingly complex and demanding. Growing social inequality and increasing migration play a role too. These are multifaceted processes with economic, social, political and cultural implications for education. Education has to respond to the need to educate individuals so that they are able to cope with the changing nature of their

communities and the increasingly important demand for key competences.

Education systems are also challenged from within. In most countries, the

distribution of education functions remains with the central government. Curriculum, textbooks, teachers, funding and facilities are often still under the firm control of the ministries. At the same time the central government sets policy and provides management functions – such as payment of salaries and pre-service and in-service instruction. There is limited capacity to focus on education quality or on improving students’ performance. Overloaded curricula prioritise factual knowledge. Acquisition and assessment of this knowledge mostly takes the shape of passive learning. Textbooks are centrally selected and often in short supply. Enrolment trends affect the daily school processes – teachers are coping with overloaded classrooms in the major cities, in rural areas schools are closing class by class. Salaries for school staff are

questionable, education provision is not evenly distributed across the country, and financial challenges are pressing. Yet, equal access to education is seen as one of the basic human rights.

The image of the education system is also weakening in the outside world. Results from international student assessment studies are often poor. In response to the need to provide a new basis for policy

dialogue defining and implementing education goals, the OECD PISA82 assessment has been conducted regularly since 2000. PISA studies revealed wide differences in the extent to which countries succeed in enabling young adults to access, manage, integrate, evaluate and reflect on written information in order to develop their potential and further expand their horizons. Most partner country results were disappointing, showing that the performance of 15 year-olds is lagging considerably behind that of other countries, sometimes by the equivalent of several years of schooling and sometimes despite considerable investment in education. The results have also highlighted

significant variations in the performance of schools within one and the same country and raised concerns about equity in the distribution of learning opportunities (OECD, 2004).

There are universal expectations that education systems will move from

schooling to continuing lifelong education, from input-based curricula to learning outcomes, from teaching and delivery of curriculum content to learning as an interactive process involving both teachers and learners. All these trends bring different opportunities and challenges for education systems. Since the beginning of the 1990s, multiple waves of reforms in education have rolled across the partner countries and many governments have set education priorities that are consistent with the above challenges. Important steps have been taken to strengthen governance and implementation capacities, to commit resources to be able to respond to the needs and aspirations of both individuals and the larger society. Most countries have developed strategic documents, improved legislation, and renovated curriculum systems.

In spite of two decades of educational change, the impression remains that the implemented reforms have yielded only limited changes of attitude and that education systems remain largely

unchanged. While it might still be too early to expect significant changes to happen, it is time to ring early warning bells. Reform has not changed enough practice in education, therefore the effects of these reforms are unknown and outcomes – when measured as student performance – remain unclear.

The political climate often makes it difficult for governments to exercise effective leadership and achieve consensus in issues related to education. In many countries, there is no natural political majority. The results of recent elections in some countries in the South Eastern European region make this very clear83. These circumstances require policymakers to navigate in a very difficult terrain, which usually involves a multitude of

stakeholders, both inside and outside the education system. The list of stakeholders in education is very long, including the parliamentary education commission, heads of department in the ministry, legislative bodies, teachers unions, different associations of parents, teachers, students, etc. Often stakeholders have opposing interests. Change in education is a particularly complex issue. It has different consequences for different institutions inside the system; it means different things to different stakeholders. The interest of the stakeholders also changes over time – from full support and involvement to full neglect.

The question as to how different stakeholders have treated the issue of educational change in their positions is important. In a complex environment,

82 PISA seeks to measure how well young people, aged 15 and therefore approaching the end of compulsory

schooling, are ready to meet the challenges of today’s knowledge societies. The assessment is forward-looking, focusing on young people’s ability to use their knowledge and skills to meet real-life challenges, rather than merely on the extent to which they have mastered a specific school curriculum.

83 As an example, in the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia 2006 parliamentarian elections the

VMRO-DPMNE obtained about 33%, the coalition of its centre-left political opponent, SDSM, 24%. The majority of Albanian votes were given to the DUI - PDP coalition which received 12.12%, while the Democratic Party of Albanians won 7.5% of the votes. In Serbia, in the January 2007 elections, the Democratic Party won 64 seats out of 250, followed by the coalition between the Democratic Party of Serbia and New Serbia with 47 seats, G17 Plus with 19, the Serbian Socialist Party with 16 and the coalition led by the Liberal Democratic Party with 15 seats. Parties representing minorities won seven seats all together.

stakeholders at different levels often have to make decisions quickly against an already complex political and managerial background. The reality is that the ministries of education do not operate the system neither on their own, or in isolation from other interested parties. When communication among the various

stakeholders is well-organised, policies can be better adjusted and the expectations for change in the system of education will become more realistic. However,

sometimes there is very little interaction (or none at all) in the web of complex

relationships among stakeholders and policy tensions are created as part of the ongoing process of education reform. Often in education innovation agendas we find long-lasting and all inclusive reforms, which are a complex mixture of changing laws and structures, new curriculum frameworks, new assessments standards, etc. We also observe that the chain of educational change looks quite simple – one set of actors defines the problem, a completely different set of actors

implements the chosen policy, and it is not clear if evaluation takes place at all. Sometimes we also find that in a short period of time the focus within one country shifts radically – moving from secondary education reform to higher education reform, from curriculum reform to decentralisation reform.

In this chapter we identify three key policy tensions which accompany educational change. They grow within the policy process and concern the relationship between groups of stakeholders that are affected differently by educational change. As key policy tensions we identify the following:

International agendas versus national policy

The first tension is the relationship between foreign donor polices and the national context. Educational change can only be successful and sustainable if policy development, formulation and implementation are firmly rooted in broad ownership and fit within institutional structures that will enable the

democratic participation of a country’s

stakeholders in the policy process. Institutional structures and capacities as implicitly

imagined by international donors often do not exist in partner countries.

Policymakers and schools The second tension is found in the

relationship between national policymakers and schools (Grootings and Nielsen (eds.), 2005). It seems that in this relationship most policies are somehow lost. The schools’ contextual settings (such as school leadership, school culture, and teachers’ attitudes, beliefs, and concerns) influence the implementation of change and are of paramount importance if innovation initiatives are to have the intended impact on student achievement84. Sharing values and commitment is often a real challenge.

Political environment and education policymaking

The third tension is found in the interface between the political environment and education policymaking. How much do we know about the political environment in the partner countries and how it impacts educational change? Whether new policies are implemented or resisted depends in good part on the relationship between the political elite and the public administration.

INTERNATIONAL AGENDAS