DE LOS ASPECTOS ECONÓMICOS Y SOCIALES

The sources of the data used to answer the research questions are briefly mentioned earlier. This section demonstrates the ways of collection and presents examples of the data collected.

The English representation of school autonomy in East Asia

EPB is likely to be initiated in order to promote and legitimate new policy reforms. Thus, one way of collecting the data to answer the first research question is to identify the key official texts related to significant changes of school autonomy. The terms such as ‘autonomy’, ‘accountability’, ‘competition’, ‘decentralisation’, ‘Academies’ and ‘Free Schools’ were employed as keywords to narrow down the searching scope. In addition, specific East Asian societies (namely Hong Kong, Singapore, Shanghai and China), ‘East’ (or Far East) and ‘Asia’ were used as another group of keywords. The data were sought on: (1) the UK Government website (https://www.gov.uk/) which stores all policy papers, announcements, publications, statistics and consultations; and (2) the websites of various mainstream mass media in England, such as the BBC, Times Educational

Supplement, The Telegraph and The Guardian. From the official documents, their

key sources of evidence were then identified and gathered. Examples are shown in Table 3.3.

Table 3.3. Examples of the data for analysing the English representation Nature of the

documents

Documents

Policy papers - White Paper: Higher standards, better schools for all: More choice for parents and pupils (Department for Education and

Skills, 2005)

- White Paper – The Importance of Teaching (DfE, 2010) - National Curriculum (DfE, 2013)

81 Announcements

(speeches and press release)

Speeches:

- Michael Gove’s speech to the Policy Exchange on free schools (Gove, 2011a)

- Education Minister Elizabeth Truss speaks about delivering world-class schools (Truss, 2014a)

- The fruits of autonomy (Gibb, 2014) Press release:

- More than one million children now taught in academies (DfE, 2014, July 9)

- Hundreds of ‘coasting’ schools to be transformed (DfE, 2015,

June 30)

Government- commissioned reports

- Could Do Better: Using International Comparisons to Refine

the National Curriculum in England (Oates, 2010)

- The Framework for the National Curriculum. A report by the

Expert Panel for the National Curriculum Review (DfE, 2011)

Politicians’ statements published in and reported by mass media

- Pisa slip should put a rocket under our world-class ambitions and drive us to win the education space race (Gove, 2010,

December 17)

- My revolution for culture in classroom (Gove, 2010, December 28)

- British schools need a Chinese lesson (Truss, 2014, March 4) Key sources of evidence for official documents and politicians’ statements

- 2007 McKinsey report: How the World’s Best Performing

School Systems Come Out Up (Barber & Mourshed, 2007)

- OECD 2010 PISA report: PISA 2009 Results: What Students

Know and Can Do – Student Performance in Reading, Mathematics and Science (Volume I) (OECD, 2010a)

- Policy Exchange report: A Rising Tide: The Competitive

Benefits of Free Schools (Porter & Simons, 2015)

‘Reality’ of school autonomy in East Asia perceived within domestic contexts

In addressing the second research question, the existing literature examining the historical and current development of school autonomy in East Asia was reviewed, through which part of the key policy papers were identified. The

keywords, such as ‘autonomy’, ‘school-based management’ and ‘decentralisation’, were also employed to search policy papers on governments’ websites of selected East Asian societies. The analysis of these papers provides an understanding of the rationales and motives of decentralisation reforms, the operation of central

regulation frameworks, and the power and responsibility of schools described at the policy level. Governments’ websites and examples of policy papers are respectively

shown in Table 3.4 and 3.5:

Table 3.4. Governments’ websites of Hong Kong, Singapore and Shanghai (China) Country/region Websites

Hong Kong Government Record Service

http://www.grs.gov.hk/ws/english/home.htm

Education Bureau http://www.edb.gov.hk/en/index.html

Singapore National Archives of Singapore: http://www.nas.gov.sg/

Ministry of Education http://www.moe.gov.sg/

Shanghai (China)

Shanghai Municipal Education Commission

http://www.shmec.gov.cn/

People’s Republic of China, Ministry of Education

http://www.moe.gov.cn/publicfiles/business/htmlfiles/moe/moe_27 92/index.html

Table 3.5. Examples of the data for examining the ‘reality’ perceived in Hong Kong, Singapore and Shanghai (China)

Country/region Documents

Hong Kong - Codes of Aid for secondary schools (Hong Kong Government, 1994)

- Report of the Bills Committee on Education (Amendment) Bill

2002 (Legislative Council, 2004)

Singapore - Singapore learning, creating and communicating: A

curriculum review (Singapore Ministry of Education, 1997)

- The school excellence model: A Guide (Singapore Ministry of Education, 2000)

Shanghai (China)

- Regulation on primary and secondary school teachers’

continuing professional development (Chinese Ministry of

Education, 1999)

- Shanghai’s Middle and Long Term Education Reform and

Development Plan (2010–2020) (Shanghai Municipal

Education Commission, 2010)

In addition to policy papers which provide a portrayal of official intention, the data derived from interviews is also gathered to interrogate how policy was

interpreted and operationalised within schools. There are 29 interviews conducted from November 2012 to May 2013; during this period, I was in Shanghai for two months, Hong Kong three months and Singapore six weeks. Each interview lasted approximately one hour. The places for interview were chosen by interviewees, mainly in their office rooms; four of them were interviewed through emails and

83 telephone.

The choice of interviewees was expedient; all of them were approached through personal contacts – introduced by my supervisor, colleagues and friends. Nonetheless, in each society, I managed to make the sample cover the main types of schools and took diversity into consideration. Moreover, school leaders were

selected because, apart from being responsible for school daily operation, they have also been active in various policy advisories and/or principal representative bodies that are part of the broader policy community; and other interviewees were selected as they are specialists in, and have commented publicly on aspects of, school governance.

More specifically, in Hong Kong, I interviewed four principals from aided schools and two principals from direct subsidy schools. Due to the accessibility problem in Singapore, I formally interviewed one principal12 and informally ‘interviewed’ four principals; all of them were from government schools (two were principals of autonomous government schools). In Shanghai, six principals from government schools and one head of department from a private school were

interviewed13. On top of these, I interviewed nine academics, one policy-maker and one senior education journalist. The descriptive summary of the composition of interviewees is provided in Appendix 3.