Schools´ External Evaluation: An analysis through national and international evaluation reports

In the globalization context evaluation, has been recognized as a key tool in education policy reform. By borrowing and lending policies (Steiner-Khamsi, 2012) there is a mindset that implies to respond to the market logic (McNamara & O’Hara, 2009; Smith, 2014). Transnational institutions such as the United Nations (UN), the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA), the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), the European Union (EU) and other variety of “border-crossing institutions that exert enormous influence on States and citizens around the globe” (Sperling, 2009, p.2) are increasing uniformity in the educational policies (Schwandt, 2009) reflecting it on the evaluation politics. Different European national models for the Schools’ External Evaluation (SEE) aroused based on international evaluation systems (European Commission, EACEA, Eurydice, 2015). Nowadays there are thirty-one education systems in Europe that put their schools under the spotlight through external and internal evaluations, a number which still is increasing (Puhl & Crosier, 2015). In Portugal, the Law No. 31/2002 of December the 20th defined the Portuguese system of SEE which defends that this process is a formative instrument that evaluates the quality of the schools. The school evaluation process is assured by the Portuguese Inspectorate of Education and Science (IGEC) in collaboration with the Universities and it has, already, two evaluation cycles. These national and transnational recommendations are globally recognized and, consequently, create an impact on international and national structural policies, namely on the schools’ external evaluation system. To answer the research question, it was used a summative approach to content analysis (Krippendorff, 1990; Hsieh & Shannon, 2005; Bardin, 2013), based on reports’ unique perspectives and grounded in the actual data. The analytical process included the selection of the sample to be analysed that was developed by a computer literature search that had permitted to identify relevant sources using keywords in the OECD, the Eurydice, and the IGEC data base. In this research, it was only accepted reports there were published during the Portuguese SEE second cycle (2012-2017). The analysed documents were seven international reports (European Commission/EACEA/Eurydice, 2015; Santiago, et al., 2012; OECD, 2012; 2013; 2015a; 2015b; OECD, 2016), and three national reports from the IGEC (IGEC, 2013; IGEC 2015; IGEC, 2016). Considering the analysis of the national and the transnational organizations´ reports about schools’ evaluation, we can conclude that education has become a target of evaluation. According to the research, the international and national perspective is aligned with concepts that predetermine a future policy trajectory. As Ball (1997) argues, policy construction is influenced by the regulation that is exercised by transnational corporations. When comparing the coherence between the national and transnational discourses, the findings reflect the promise that Portugal assumed with the European Union on the Lisbon Council occurred in 2000 in which has accepted the commitment of helping the European Union in becoming “the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world” (European Parliament, 2000). Evaluation is becoming central in the education field (Steiner-Khamasi, 2012), and the focus on the quality concept, related to the SEE in the analysed documents, may reflect its relevance in both national and international education panorama. In Portugal, evaluation reports reveal that there is a concern about reaching a predetermined and globalized notion of education quality based on a specific profile of success, supported by the accountability that uses efficacy and efficiency to make the educational agents responsible for the schools’ external achievements.
This work is funded by CIEd – Research Centre on Education, projects UID/CED/1661/2013 and UID/CED/1661/2016, Institute of Education, University of Minho, through national funds of FCT/MCTES-PT. Joana Sousa - Ph.D. student in Educational Sciences at the Institute of Education at the University of Minho (Portugal) with a research studentship by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT - SFRH/BD/93389/2013).
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