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Box 2.1
Value Orientation Approaches to Education
“The same for all.”—An egalitarian leftist approach with strong centralization align-ment, often based on the reminiscences of the communist past.
“Quality for those who deserve it.”—An elitist, often conservative approach based on the ideologies and interests of the ruling elites, that typically promotes liberalization but not necessarily decentralization.
“Quality for those who can afford it.”—A free-market approach promoting decen-tralization and privatization that emphasizes the power of the clients of educational services.
“Quality for all.”—A democratic liberal approach promoting decentralization and liberalization, emphasizing choice and equity in education at the same time.
—Radó 2001a
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Figure 2.1
The Achievement of Fourth Grade Students in Reading Literacy in Selected European Countries
Source: PIRLS 2006.
However, if the measurement is disconnected from the curricular basis and based on the assessment of everyday practical competences, as it happens in the PISA surveys, a different picture emerges. According to the 2006 PISA survey, three eastern Balkan countries represent a clear regional pattern, while Croatia and Slovenia perform at the level of Central European countries.
This eastern Balkan pattern is even more striking when we look at the proportion of those 15-year-old students in the same PISA survey, who are performing at level one or lower (i.e., the proportion of functional illiterate students).
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0 200 300 400 500 600
Russia
Hungary Sweden Germany Netherlands
Bulgaria England Austria Slovakia Slovenia Poland PIRLS Average
Moldova Romania Macedonia
565 551 549 548 547 547 539 538 531 522 519
500 500 489
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Figure 2.2
Average Literacy Scores in Selected European Countries
Source: PISA 2006.
Figure 2.3
Percentage of Pupils with Reading Literacy Proficiency Level One and Lower in Selected European Countries
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0 200 300 400 500 600
Finland Ireland PolandSweden Netherlands
Estonia United Kingdom
GermanySloveniaAustria
Czech Rep.Hungary CroatiaSlovakia Greece Russian F
ed.
BulgariaSerbia Romania 547
517 508 507 507 501 495 495 494 490 483 482 477 466 460
440
402 401 396
10
0 20 30 40 50 60
Finland SwedenDenamrk Poland Slovenia
United Kingdom
GermanyHungaryAustria
Czech Rep.Portugal Russia Greece SlovakiaBulgaria SerbiaRomania 4.8
15.3 16.0 16.2 16.5 17.0
20.1 20.8 21.5
24.8 24.9 25.3
27.7 27.8
51.1 51.7 53.5
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It is important to note that performance indicators are proxies; they indicate certain quality-related problems but they are not identical to them. However, these signals are strong enough to urge policymakers to reconsider the traditional pattern of governing education. For example, some Central European countries (e.g., Germany, Austria, and Hungary) with much better PISA results went through a “PISA shock” when it turned out that their education curricula do not serve well the contemporary needs of the economy and social engagement. Since the beginning of this decade, most European countries invested large resources to foster the realignment of their education systems according to the lessons they learned from PISA. In most South Eastern European coun-tries, however, PISA results did not cause much bother. For example, most Bulgarian experts are, rather, paying attention to the more favorable PIRLS data, while the Serbian Ministry of Education just recently made the first steps to digest the signals that were sent already by a 2000 PISA survey.
The ‘Mystery’ of Bulgaria: Lessons
By performing well in PIRLS yet performing far below the European average on the PISA survey, Bulgaria does not fit well into the eastern Balkan performance pattern.
Explaining this difference might be instructive for other countries of the region and may have certain implications for the decentralization agenda, too.
Figure 2.4
Country Performance in Reading Literacy in PIRLS and PISA (2006)
415
395 435 455 475 495 515
485 495 505 515 525 535 545 555
Romania
Spain Norway
Bulgaria Slovakia Lithuania
Latvia
Italy Luxembourg Hungary Denmark Austria
UK-England Poland
UK-Scotland Slovenia
France
Netherlands Germany
Sweden Belgium-Flemish
PISA
PIRLS
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The two surveys each measure reading literacy using a different criteria and at a different age. Two possible interpretations of this huge difference of the performance of Bulgarian education system in the two assessment programs are: (1) inappropriate curricula (i.e., subject knowledge replicated in the curricula are not focused on the development of basic competencies), in addition to (2) a radical shift from classroom teaching to subject teaching, after which the development of reading comprehension of Bulgarian pupils stops. Keeping in mind the extreme difference between the perfor-mances in the two surveys, we may assume that both reasons are relevant for Bulgaria.
These problems definitely indicate serious quality problems that lead to poor overall average performance of the systems.
We further approach an the explanation of the Bulgarian performance pattern if we look at the equity indicators of the countries of the region.
Figure 2.5
Relationship between Student Performance in Reading Literacy and the PISA Index of Economic, Social, and Cultural Status (ESCS) 2006.
(Score Point Difference Associated with One Unit on the ESCS Scale)
These results show that the impact of the socio-economic and socio-cultural status of students on their learning in Bulgaria is huge (the highest in Europe), while other South Eastern European countries are closer to the European average in this respect.
A secondary analysis of the PISA results for Hungary and other Central European countries proves that this strong relationship between student background and
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0 20 30 40 50 60
Montenegro
Finland Romania Croatia Serbia Ireland Norway OECD Average
Poland United Kingdom
Hungary Slovakia Austria
Czech Rep.Bulgaria 24
29
32 32
36 38 38 38
42 43 45 45 46
51 55
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achievement is the characteristic of highly selective education systems; unfair institutionalized selection magnifies the detrimental impact of social disadvantages on learning (Radó 2009). In other words, while the poor performance of Bulgaria is partly caused by unequal distribution of (traditional subject knowledge) quality, in Romania and Serbia relatively poor quality is “distributed more equally.” As a result, while the appropriate decentralization agenda in Bulgaria should focus on professional accountability systems in order to identify and improve underperforming schools, the agenda for Romania and Serbia might pay less attention to professional accountability and much more on the conditions for school-based development of education (see Chapter 12).
Quality-related Rationales for Decentralization
• The narrow scope of quality in education. Due to the very centralized feature of the governance of education the only aspect of quality of educational services that is emphasized in South Eastern Europe is the compliance to central stan-dards. Other aspects, such as clients’ satisfaction with the services, are almost completely ignored. Due to demographic reasons (the decline of the number of children) and the surplus capacities in all of the education systems of the region, those schools that attract more pupils and successfully ensure the satisfaction of parents have a greater chance of survival. Even if one does not emphasize the imperative of any services, the “satisfaction of the client” and the pure survival interest will force greater responsiveness from schools regarding the expectations of the pupils’ parents. Here, it is important to keep in mind that effectiveness and client satisfaction are two distinct aspects of quality; parents and pupils are not necessarily the most satisfied with those schools that produce the best learning outcomes.
• The heterogeneity of the clientele. As will be seen in Chapter 11, curricula reform in Romania or the introduction of new standards in Croatia did not dramatically change the centralized feature of the governance of education. The source of seri-ous quality-related problems is the fact that the space within which schools can adjust to the very diverse needs of their students or respond to the characteristics of the social and cultural environment is very limited. We should not forget that the huge number of functionally illiterate 15-year-old students is not the failure of the students; it is the failure of the schools that are educating them. The in-ability of schools to adjust leads to huge numbers of students who fail, both in terms of traditional progression indicators (e.g., dropout rates) and in terms of outcomes of learning. In addition, it is not simply about less central standards
P A R T O N E : D E C E N T R A L I Z A T I O N I N E D U C A T I O N
and process regulations. The problem is that despite any efforts, strong central regulation instruments—being controlled by specialist—tend to be extremely elitist by transmitting the exclusive cultural code of the educated middle class.
The first condition of any inclusive education is allowing the latitude for schools and teachers to opt out of these expectations.
• Low motivation to change. One of the perceived obstacles in the region to the improvement of the quality of educational services is the very limited professional autonomy of teachers and schools. The limited space within which schools and teachers can consider the aims and goals of their own work and within which they are able to initiate changes for the sake of greater professional success, in many cases, causes informal deviation from the central regulations. It creates the feeling that high-quality work is not an expectation, what is needed is the relatively low added-value work of implementing centrally-set procedures. All these features of centralized systems seriously discourage teachers. International research proves that teachers are easily motivated by symbolic means and by greater professional responsibilities than by financial incentives. For example, several examples prove that differentiated payment schemes, if not matched with greater autonomy and responsibility, are overridden by egalitarian in-school compensation policies.
• Growing scale and complexity. The expansion of upper-secondary and tertiary education and the growing number of learning pathways that students can consider are making education systems increasingly complex. This complexity cannot be handled by rigid, centrally-set standards and direct central manage-ment anymore. In addition to this, the more choice is introduced and the more diversity is allowed in the school network (that is the direct impact of the previous item in this list of rationales), the more central authorities will lose control over educational services. In this respect, decentralization might be promoted in order to regain control. Maintaining strong central control is not simply a hopeless endeavor; it is also not desirable. Contemporary mainstream educational policies (i.e., the lifelong learning paradigm) emphasize learning instead of teaching and diverse learning pathways rather than rigid school structures. The essential point here is the need to reconsider curriculum policy, professional services, quality evaluation, and other governance instruments in order to enhance the capacity of the system to handle its own complexity.
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