Effects of quality assurance and evaluation on schools’ room for action

Abstract

<p>This chapter’s purpose is to explore the room for action which opens for schools with the emergence of quality assurance and evaluation policies. Other researchers have studied the relationship between schools and policy. For example, Tyack and Cuban (1995) have analysed policy reform and policy implementation in schools; Braun, Maguire & Ball (2010), Braun et al. (2011), and Maguire, Braun & Ball (2015) have examined policy enactment in schools; Ball and Maroy (2009) have focused on schools’ responses to internal and external conditions; and Falabella (2014) has investigated the effects of accountability policies within schools. Previous research indicates that the relationship between schools and policy is affected by a multitude of objective and subjective variables. Furthermore, “policy . . . cannot be reduced to an algorithm . . . and the school cannot be reduced to policy” (Ball et al. 2011: p. 637). Finally, there are “discretionary spaces” in schools “in and beyond policies”, that is, spaces policy does not reach because of actors’ agency (teachers’ good ideas or alternative solutions), chance, momentum, or the nature of the object or subject under the policy radar (Maguire, Braun & Ball 2015: p. 497). The topic is thus far from exhausted.<br /></p>