What can we learn about global education from

historical and global policy studies of the OECD?

University of Granada
6 November 2019, 16:30 - 20:00
Professor Christian Ydesen
E-mail: cyd@hum.aau.dk
 - Programme of the seminar -

16:30 - 17:15 Lecture: A Global Education Space – the Role of IOs

17:15 - 17:30 Break
17:30 - 18:15 Lecture: The Global History of the OECD in Education
18:15 - 18:45 Break
18:45 - 19:30 Lecture: School Accountability – Historical perspectives
19:30 - 20:00 Discussion, questions, comments, dialogue
 - Ou tlin e o f th e lectu re -

A global governing complex – how can we understand it?

A global education space - where does it come from?
Research traditions and questions of impact
The basic impact model
A methodological model
Members of the PISA4U programme at the OECD headquarters in Paris to
r e c e i v e t h e i r c e r t i f i c a t e s f r o m A n d r e a s S c h l e i c h e r, D i r e c t o r f o r E d u c a t i o n
and Skills at the OECD, October 2017 (copyright: ©OECD)
 The contours of a global
governing complex in education
Global education is characterized by various types of international organisations (IOs), edu-
businesses, and powerful nation states continuously shaping education systems across the globe via
networks, programmes and initiatives in general and comparisons, benchmarking and standards in
particular.
A key feature is that variables, assumptions, concepts, categories, logarithms and modes of counting,
constituting the backbone of seemingly objective education data, form a powerful governing complex.
The governing complex in education leaves a big role for IOs – in collaboration with funders, partners
and stakeholders - to set the standards of what good education is worldwide.
The implication is that the governing complex revolving around IOs has a significant impact on the
legitimation of knowledge, education curriculum, and even our understanding of the very purpose of
education.
 Why a global governing complex ?
An empirical–analytical orientation:
‘A whole comprehending in its compass a number of
parts, esp. (in later use) of interconnected parts or
involved particulars; a complex or complicated
whole’ (Oxford English Dictionary Online).
 the term allows for the interconnectedness and
complexities of an organized structure made up of
parts – that is, organizations, agents, technologies,
discourses, and materialities.
A critical–analytical orientation:
‘A related group of repressed or partly repressed
emotionally significant ideas which cause
psychic conflict leading to abnormal mental
states or behaviour’ (Oxford English Dictionary
Online).
This understanding of complex feeds our
understanding of the sometimes paradoxical and
even perverse workings and outcomes of the
global governing complex in education.
Such workings and outcomes result from the
competing agendas associated with different
stakeholders, political priorities, and discursive
struggles often characteristic of education
policies, especially when critically studied across
local, regional, national, transnational, and
global perspectives.
 - A Global Education Space -
National education systems no longer display differences of nature but rather differences of
degree  major education reforms are justified with reference to global or transnational
indicators.
The point is not that national education systems become uniform, but rather that data express a
normative world view that is embodied in the very system of indicators.
The global education space:
1. frames and shapes the public discourse and the ways decision-makers think about and deal
with societal problems;
2. affects educational access, performance and benefits of different people groups; and
3. impacts the conditions under which education may be realized in different national contexts.
 Antecedents and preconditions of a global
education space
The founding of comparative education as a research field

The establishment of international networks and organisations working in the field of

education

The ascent of applied psychology, psychometrics and statistics

These precedents conflated into a trajectory that was fostered and promoted by policies
during the Cold War and became vividly dominant from the 1990s onwards.
 - R esearch traditions -
Beyond methodological nationalism and state-centrism
International Relations – “Global governors” (authority and latitude)
Histoire croisée - emphasis on ‘(...) resistances, inertias, modifications – in trajectory, form,
and content – and new combinations that can both result from and develop themselves in the
process of crossing’
Comparative education – borrowing; transfer, translation and transformation
The spatial turn - the transnational movement of ideas, knowledge and practices
Prosopography - the investigation of collective biographies understood as networks and
organisations (clusters)  epistemic communities
 - Qu estio n s o f Imp act -

How are ideas and initiatives transmitted in practice from one venue to another?
Which distribution channels are used?
How are ideas and initiatives made acceptable to the different populations?
What are the effects of moving ideas and initiatives?
Are ideas and initiatives transferred, domesticated and made available for the construction of
meaning nationally, regionally, locally?
The Basic Impact Model : Idea -
Initiative -Intervention -Impact
Source: Leeuw, Frans & Vaessen, Jos (2009), Impact Evaluations and
Development. NONIE Guidance on Impact Evaluation, Washington DC:
NONIE—The Network of Networks on Impact Evaluation.
Späth, Brigitte (2004), Current State of the Art in Impact Assessment,
Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation.
International
organization
Idea

Initiative
Intervention

Impact
Member state
 - A methodological model -

Reciprocity, crossings,
transformations,
conflicting narratives,
uneven power
structures and
unintended impact

Source: Christensen, I.L. & Ydesen C.: “Routes of Knowledge: Toward a methodological framework for
tracing the historical impact of international organizations” European Education, 47, 3, 2015, pp. 274-288.
 - A ssessin g imp act -

The growth of ILSA and changes in discourse, policy, curriculum and teaching, capacity
building, research, global and donor responses
Sverker Lindblad, Daniel Pettersson, & Thomas S. Popkewitz. (2015). International comparisons of school results:
A Systematic Review of Research on Large Scale Assessments in Education.
https://doi.org/10.13140/RG.2.2.23176.01286

Changes in discourse, concept and practice

Christensen, I.L. & Ydesen C.: “Routes of Knowledge: Toward a methodological framework for tracing the historical
impact of international organizations” European Education, 47, 3, 2015, pp. 274-288.
BREAK
 - Ou tlin e o f th e lectu re -

• Brief introduction of the research project behind the talk

• What does history of education have to offer policy studies?

• Main theme: Struggles over the role and purpose of education

• Some conclusions

• Understanding the global governance complex

Project ‘The Global History of the OECD in Education’

The project aims to understand the workings,

mechanisms, range, and impact of the OECD’s work in
education from a historical and comparative perspective
that includes both member and non-member states.

Essentially, the project raises the question, what can we

learn about global education from historical and global
policy studies of the OECD?

Upcoming book on Palgrave ‘The OECD’s Historical Rise

in Education: The Formation of a Global Governing
Complex’ (expected publication: February 2020)
 Empirical data

The project brings together researchers from five

continents and draws on interviews with key agents, as
well as archival sources.

Using OCR recognition, the project has built a searchable

database of historical documents collected in the
UNESCO and OECD archives in Paris as well as the
American, Australian, Danish national archives

Picture (top): The inner courtyard, OECD HQ, Paris

Picture (bottom): Archival work, OECD HQ, Paris
 Writing history with contemporary
relevance
Historical sequences containing the seeds of a merger between education, governance and
economics  quantifiable methods (indicators, metrics, numbers and data), accountability
systems (the visibility and comparability of education stakeholders’ performance), and the very
purposes of education (human resources and economic growth).
Two opposing views:
• learning from history is highly problematic - the past is irreversibly gone and can never again be
invoked.
• Every significant political phenomenon lives in history and requires historically grounded analysis
for its explanation.
Time and experience as something extending across the past, the present and the future
 history becomes a reservoir of communalities like for instance organisations populated
by human beings with lived experiences of timeless themes such as love, power,
competition, recognition, problem-solving and the passing on of legacies.
Contingencies shape historical change and impose both temporal and explanatory order on
events.
Pictures: Leopold von Ranke (1795-1896), Charles Tilly (1929-2008)
 What does h isto ry o f ed u cation have to offer?
Increased awareness of the precursors of contemporary programs and developments.
Example: The International Education Indicators project (INES) as a precursor to the PISA.
Knowledge about the trajectories and path-dependencies coming from the past, which often
define spaces of new opportunities.
Example: Education officially came on the OEEC/OECD agenda right after the “Sputnik chock” but
the distinct approach to education adopted by the organization had much earlier roots.
It also enables us to focus on continuities and ruptures as an analytical lens.
Example: The OECD has been consistent in linking education with economic concerns, but it was
not until the United States threatened to withdraw financial support for CERI in the early 1980s that
intense work on the development of standardized indicators was launched.
 Matthieu Leimgruber and Matthias Schmelzer
The OECD and the International Political Economy Since 1948

Firstly, the history of the OECD is better understood if one analyses it as the organization’s
continuous endeavour to reinvent itself after it had lost its original purpose at the end of the
Marshall Plan.
Secondly, during much of its history, the OECD was not (or not primarily) a think tank but served
other important functions (e.g. an ”economic NATO”).
And finally, the OECD is characterized by its survival strategies in competition with other
international organizations, by its fundamental (geo)political and identity-defining role, by formal
and informal hierarchies, by restricted spaces within the organization, and by internal rivalries,
both between countries and between its different directorates.
OE C D an d ed u catio n : a b rief h isto rical o verview
The OEEC European Productivity Agency formed the background of the OECD’s educational
programs in the 1960s (The programme for Educational Investment and Planning (EIP) & The
Mediterranean Regional Project (MRP))
Centre for Educational Research and Innovation (CERI) (1968); Education committee (1970)
1970s: focus on the labour market, equal access and life-long learning (A Keynesian
understanding: state investment in education improves the quality of human capital)
1980s: focus on youth unemployment; “A Nation at Risk: Imperatives for Educational Reform”
(1983)  the International Indicators of Educational Systems (INES) project (1988) (A neoliberal
approach  recommend ‘‘positive adjustment policies’’ relying on market solutions
1990s: international comparisons take centre stage; Education at a glance (1992)
2000s: Programme for International Student Assessment
Struggles over the role and purpose of education

OECD Conference on Economic growth and Investment

in Education, Brookings Institution, Washington,
October 1961
 The 1961 conference
“May I say that, in this context, the fight for education is too
important to be left solely to the educators.”
Walter W. Heller, Chair of the US Council of Economic Advisers

”Vigorous economic growth in the world of tomorrow will

depend largely upon an adequate supply of trained
scientists, engineers and technicians.”
OEEC, Forecasting Manpower Needs For The Age Of Science (Paris:
OEEC Publications, 1960)

OEEC director, Alexander King, described these activities

as an “essential prerequisite to the elaboration of sound
educational programmes.” In order to secure soundness in
the educational programmes “(…) the work should be
based on quantitative measurements and relationship
between the main "inputs" into the educational system.”
 Systems analysis
”If in a school system for example, one decided to increase
ability to read by a specified amount a successful study could
show which of several possible systems was ‘best’, that is,
cost the least“ (p. 3)

”(…) almost the only hope of providing systematically a better

basis for intelligent choices in education“ (p. 56)

”’systems analysis’, which can be described as: an enquiry to

aid decision-makers to chose a course of action [...]“ (CERI,
1972, p. 23).

Picture: Front page of “Kershaw, Joseph A. and Roland N. McKean.

Systems Analysis and Education. Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation,
1959”
 The shifting purposes of
statistics in education
A shift from manpower planning (forecasting)  rates of
return (investment) – human capital theory
The Social Indicator Development Programme, in the
1970s, for which the Education Committee established the
Working Group on Educational Statistics and Indicators
From input indicators to output indicators (Systems
Analysis and optimization)
The value of education: a continuum between intrinsic
value and utilitarian value

Picture: 1970 CERI meeting on statistics in Education

 T h e OE C D amb itio n in E d u catio n
“Our aim is not simply to have stimulating talks but to clarify ideas which can shape policy and
action, ideas with the power to make a beneficial difference in the course of human events”
Philip Hall Coombs, head of the US delegation, and chair of the 1961 conference

The challenge for the OECD’s educational agenda was “(…) to obtain a fresh view of the tasks of the
educational system seen from the standpoints of economic growth and to obtain the cooperation of
the educational sector”
Raymond Lyons “The OECD Mediterranean Regional Project”, The American Economist 8, no. 2 (1964)

The planning activities we initiated, clearly had a political content. The OECD message was
firstly that planning is important. Secondly, that education is important for economic and
societal development, and that educational policy must be pursued according to such
objectives.
Kjell Eide “30 years of educational collaboration in the OECD” 1990
 The g eo p o litics o f education policy
 1957: The Sputnik shock  US National Defence Education Act
 A 1964 British dispatch described the OECD-DAC as ‘[an] essential organ in which, untrammelled by
hysterical speeches from the Afro-Asian bloc or subversive manoeuvres from behind the Iron and
Bamboo curtains, the Western Powers can study the real substance of aid problems in all objectivity
and think out a coordinated line to take at New York and Geneva’
 1984 meeting of the CERI board of directors: The US delegate was said to have put a great deal of
pressure, and in very direct language, for OECD to engage itself in a project collecting and analysing
statistical education ‘inputs and outcomes’ – information on curricular standards, costs and sources
of finance, learning achievements on common subject matter, employment trends, and the like. The
reaction among the staff of CERI was one of shock, and deep suspicion. Those whom I interviewed
believed it was unprofessional to try and quantify such indicators, and that it would oversimplify and
misrepresent OECD systems, and that it would be rejected by the twenty-four member states whose
common interests they were charged to serve. (Heynemann, 1993)
 Organizational rivalries
UNESCO – OECD formal agreement in 1963
“OECD imitates systematically our work. The situation is very
serious, [a] ‘life or death struggle’.
In 1975, the International Standard Classification of
Education (ISCED) was created by UNESCO  revised in
1997 by UNESCO, OECD and Eurostat
In the late 1970s, efforts were launched to harmonize OECD,
UNESCO and SOEC (Statistical Office of the European
Communities) approaches to educational statistics. The work
continued well into the 1980s
In the 1980s, the US identified UNESCO’s data as
problematic  the OECD and IEA were to assume leading
roles in developing comparative statistics on education 
restructuring of UNESCO Statistics in 1999
Picture: Note entitled “UNESCO/OECD Relations”, written by Mr. Hans-Heinz Krill de Capello of the
UNESCO external relations office, 330.2 A 01 OECD 18 Part I, May 1965–April 1966, UNESCO
Archive, Paris
 Some thought -provoking
reflections from 1990
At the 10th anniversary of CERI, I said in an address that the OECD
in the education field has shown a remarkable ability in consistently
raising the right questions. But I had to add that the Organisation also
usually came up with the wrong answers. There is, in the present
situation, a strong possibility that in the 1990s, the OECD will both
raise the wrong questions and provide the wrong answers in the field
of education.
Teaching based on collaboration between pupils, encouragement of
initiative, and unconventional pedagogical forms is in focus, replacing
the calls for more discipline, competition, strict evaluation and
concentration on academic disciplines. Especially the environmental
problems, which open up for a project-oriented approach to a series
of school subjects, is in the forefront. Even in the United Kingdom,
there is much talk about the schools developing the "entrepreneurial
spirit", and not the traditional passive reception of factual knowledge.

Picture: Kjell Eide (1925-2011). Eide headed the OECD’s work on education
planning and he served as the first board chairman of CERI.
 C o n clu sio n s
Beginning as the OEEC in 1948,
the OECD gradually took over the
leading role in setting new agendas
for education globally from other
IOs with the culmination so far
being the launch of PISA in 2000.

The OECD – and its predecessor

the OEEC – absorbed and
facilitated a fellowship of like-
mindedness consisting of social
scientists, statisticians and
economists occupied with
optimization based on systems
analysis looking at input/output
factors of education systems
Picture: Donald Methuen FLEMING,
Chair/President & Minister of Finance,
Canada - KRISTENSEN Thorkil, OECD
Secretary General
 Conclusions
Education policy became interesting for the OECD because
of its assumed importance for economic growth and
development.
This notion of education as an important factor in achieving
economic prosperity – an economistic and highly utilitarian
perspective leaving little room for the intrinsic value of
education – meant that the OECD educational agenda often
implied a reshuffling in the power dynamics among ministries
in the member-states.
Picture:1970 CERI meeting on statistics in Education
 Conclusions
The professional background and outlook of key agents (the
crafters of globalization) makes a big difference in terms of
how global education is shaped
Ideological component: Remember that the D in OECD
stands for development. A notion of development is
necessarily based on the premise that something is better or
more advanced than something else. This kind of judgment
requires values and normativity by default. In this sense, the
OECD’s work in education can be viewed as an ideology
establishing a Western hierarchical understanding of
development stages categorizing the world into developed
countries, developing countries, and even wrongly developed
countries.

Picture: European Productivity Agency (EPA) - Consultative Council

(15/06/1954) (copyright: ©OEEC)
 Conclusions
The OECD is not a monolith wielding unlimited power and
authority.
Using the OECD as an instrument, other powerful agents
also work through it and/or take up and promote agendas,
sometimes even alternative or competing agendas.
For instance, the United Nations system – and, in the field
of education, UNESCO, with Sustainable Development
Goal 4 – has launched an extremely powerful agenda, and
the OECD has had to adopt and connect with this agenda
in its own work (OECD, n.d.).
In this sense, the OECD is not alone in forming a
governing complex.

Picture: Danish written examination in public school, May 2019

 U nderstan d in g th e g lo b al governing complex
A historical trajectory going back to World War II and shaped during the bipolar world order of the Cold
War, which laid the foundation for the crucial role for numbers, data, and indicators that makes
comparisons and context reduction easier
Distinct ideological components of capitalist economics pursuing development, economic growth based
on human resources and the provision of the right kind of labour for the labour market
Underlying assumptions about the universality and general applicability of education programmes and
practices
Inherent values about education being a utilitarian endeavour serving other societal needs
These aspects are all too often overlooked in political discourse about education, and they need to be
critically studied across local, regional, national, transnational, and global perspectives.
We need to research policies, practices, programmes, and instruments as well as looking at organizations,
agents, technologies, discourses, and materialities to 1) determine the trajectories springing from them
and their combinability with other governing complexes and political agendas, 2) reflect on their
implications in terms of the human condition, and 3) not least, to reflect on the very future of education as
an institution in society.
BREAK
 The structure of the lecture

Historical research on school accountability

Defining and operationalizing accountability

Learning from historical accountability practices – 360° stakeholders (the Danish case)

Historical experiences with contemporary relevance

 H istorical research on school accountability

Initial observations:
1. Accountability measures and practices change the ways and means by which societies
approach their educational systems
2. Accountability is a broad concept consisting of multiple layers and numerous relevant
perspectives dependent on the number and position of stakeholders in the equation
(relational perspective).
Research paths:
1. Reveal the historical roots of contemporary test-based accountability regimes in order
to understand the workings and logics of these regimes
2. Analyse historical accountability practices in order to learn from them
 D efining and operationalizing accountability
(…) a political and legal concept. It denotes the responsibility of an organization or individual
(i.e., an agent) to perform within the specified boundaries set by some higher political authority
(i.e., a principal) and to report to and justify one´s actions to this authority.
Ryan, K. E., & Feller, I. (2009). Evaluation, accountability and performance measurement in national education systems
– Trends, methods, and issues. In K. E. Ryan & J. B. Cousins (Eds.), The Sage International Handbook of Educational
Evaluation (pp. 171–189). Los Angeles: Sage.

Who is accountable to whom, for what purposes, for whose benefit, by which means and with
which consequences?
Burke, J. C. (2005). The many faces of accountability. In J. C. Burke (Ed.), Achieving accountability in higher education
– balancing public, academic and market demands
(pp. 1–24). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Learning fro m h isto rical accountability practices
– th e case o f D en mark
On this occasion, the board wishes to express that it finds the value of these tests highly
doubtful. They give no reliable impression of the proficiency level reached in the public school
system, in some cases they even generate a distorted picture of the school’s standard, and add
to this that they are used to assess the matters of both the school system and particular
schools, of course that has never been the intention, but it is impossible to avoid. The board
must therefore recommend that the ministerial tests be terminated.
Letter from the Danish teachers’ union to the Ministry of Education dated 27 May 1947
 Introducing the 360 ° stakeholders

The Crown
The Church
Government authorities (the executive)
The local councils (municipalities)
School management
The teachers
The parents
The children
International organisations
 The C rown and the C hurch

‘The bishops shall continually conduct close inspection with all schools in the diocese entrusted
to them and be obliged to investigate the conditions of these schools, both through inspection
visits as on any other occasion. They are also entitled to receive all relevant intelligence from
the county school directorates and the parish school commissions.
Moreover, they should oversee that the school system is promoted in accordance with my
gracious guidelines and that encountered obstacles are cleared. So should they on their
inspections examine the youth and file reports about how they have found the youth in each
school taught to Our Danish Chancellery.’
1814 Education Act
 The State (Government A uthorities)

‘Since the Ministry wants to form an estimate over the proficiency of the public school in written
Danish, a common and simultaneous test in the subject mentioned is to be held at the listed
public schools in the cities and in the country- side for this purpose.’
Ministry of Education circular 1915

‘(...) The ministerial tests were once introduced to inspect the children’s attainment levels in the
subjects at the time of leaving the public school. These tests are the authorities’ control of the
effects of teaching as a regular statement of whether the school has reached the goal put up for
it.’
Reader R.H. Pedersen 1931

Standardised tests were considered scientific, comparable and empirical (except by the Folk
High School Movement)
 The labour market and the
business world
At least since the interwar years an incessant critique has been
levelled by both the private and public sectors proclaiming that
children did not learn enough.
‘It is quite natural that society and the funding authorities ask the
question of the school: What are we getting for the money that is
given to public education? Which values does the school give back
to society, and are the results of the school justifiable that the
business world might be rightly served with them?’
Headmaster Georg Julius Arvin 1929
‘From time to time, the business world criticizes the school’s
teaching; attacks which especially criticise arithmetic and
orthography results; a critique which the school cannot
persuasively ignore or leave unanswered – time and time again.
With measurements as described here [standardised attainment
tests] the school will surely obtain a means that will demonstrate
such attacks usually are baseless and built on very special cases.’
Teacher Johannes Søegaard 1941
 The School Authorities I
‘December 16, 1880, Haraldsted school
In a few subjects, particularly book reading, Haraldsted has improved since last year’s inspection.
But it (i.e. the school) has far too many defects and on so many important points that this condition
can no longer be tolerated. The inspector held the prospect of an upcoming inspection and
recommended, in the presence of the school commission and the parish council, the teacher to work
with the greatest possible diligence in the inadequate subjects, emphasizing the inevitable
consequence continued standstill or deterioration would have for Rasmussen’s teacher position.
Grade: 3’
Dean Frederik Andersen

School attendance was closely monitored and teachers were required to send statements of
school attendance to the municipal council every other month (1899 education act)
 The School A uthorities II
The county school inspector “is the School Directorate’s educational advisor. It is his task to supervise
and be consultative for the schools belonging under the jurisdiction of the directorate” (1933 Act of
Inspectorate, §18).
Many teachers feared the county school inspector, “as an inspector, as a critic of teachers and a whip of
new methods.” (minutes from a meeting held in Parliament on behalf of the Ministry of Education,
October 2, 1935 )
The position of county school inspector thus called for “tactfulness and human understanding. He must
balance between encouragement and caution […]. He should not be one-track minded and not give
direction, but kind supervision.” (Ibid.)
The school director in Nuuk used tests as a useful technology both to counteract teacher assessment
inflation and to strengthen his own position regarding both disgruntled teachers and the Ministry for
Greenland in Copenhagen  organisational accountability  Test-based accountability measures
helped preserve the school directorate’s autonomy
 The Teachers I
‘The immediate superior of the schoolteacher, of whom he is
completely dependent and obliged to obey, is the parish vicar
and those of the parish peasants who are parish council
members. […] Starting with the vicar – is he competent to
handle this control? I could mention several damaging
consequences of this control, for example that it deteriorates
the required respect for the teacher among the peasants […].
But it would lead too far to name all the damaging
consequences inflicted by the unfortunate local control; […] I
just believe that this control system should be organized in a
different way.’
Teacher Daniel Rugaard 1849
‘The vicars in relation to the educational system are usually a
kind of their own, because they, with very few exceptions, are
so used to the traditional lane that they are unable to move to
neither right nor left, or as far as their influence goes, will allow
anyone to move.’
Nikolaj Frederik Severin Grundtvig 1856
 The Teachers II
’The school is unable to distinguish adequately between
abilities and energy in the pupils. It needs a tool to support
the immediate observation, and in this regard, a system of
intelligence tests will undoubtedly be very valuable.’
Teacher Henning Meyer 1929

Teacher freedom of method -1941 circular (abolished in

2003?)

Teachers often viewed testing as an external technology

that would potentially undermine their professional
expertise, a threat they sought to counter by alternately
teaching to the tests and/or complaining about them.
 L e t t e r f r o m t h e F r e d e r i k s h å b t e a c h e r s ’ c o u n c i l t o t h e s c h o o l
directorate in Nuuk dated 15 May 1970

It is with great regret that from the School Directorate we receive the information that only 4 pupils out of
20 recommended from a school the size of Frederikshåb have been accepted for a one-year school stay in
Denmark aiming at the lower secondary school. We do not find it in accordance with the wishes of the
Danish people and its knowledge about Greenland that qualified pupils are held at a lower level of
education than they are entitled to, according to their abilities, because the Danish state cannot afford to
educate them. This takes place in a time during which education is recognised as a good investment for
society. (...) It is also tantamount to ignoring our pedagogical work and knowledge. (...) It is a violation
against these children’s future prospects and a mockery of our work to send us a list with 4 names and
leave it to us to break the news to the 16 homes, which have all expressed their interest in the scheme,
that there was not money to educate their children. (...) Who is going to argue the case of these children?
(...) Must everything happen in the press before something happens? We expect this case to be
considered without delay, or we will have to seek a political indication of whether discrimination in
Greenland in areas well within the economical frame of possibility is openly acknowledged.
 The Parents

Until 1970 parents could be fined for not sending their children to school

Parents as the prolonged arm of the welfare state (normalization – the good parent)

’Parents (...) must have complete and proper knowledge about their child’s attainment level,
both to understand the child and in order to have a foundation for planning the child’s future
(...). It is the users who have the greatest interest in exams.’
School Director H.A. Svane 1941
 The Parents
In Danish educational history, parents played a role vis-à-vis test-based accountability
practices on at least three levels:
 Parents wanted to know about their child’s proficiency levels in different subjects
 Test results also could be used to persuade parents that measures taken in response
to their child’s abilities were appropriate
 Teachers and schools used test results in response to parents’ various complaints
While test-based accountability might serve a purpose of providing knowledge to parents for
making informed decisions, test results might also be used to ‘push’ parents in the ‘right’
direction or even to stifle parental complaints.
 The Children
He must not with strokes and knocks severely harm the children; but he should in a permissive
way seek to correct their errors. If someone is found lazy in learning, he must keep such a one
sitting longer in school than the rest (…). If his admonitions and permissive punishment of
children, keeping them longer in school than the others, does not help, he must inform their
parents who should then, in his presence, with a rod punish their child according to his offence.
But for blatant ungodliness, swearing, lying, backtalk and deliberate insubordination, committed
by children in school, they should immediately be punished with the rod in the presence of the
others (…).
Instructions for deans and schoolmasters in the rural regions in Denmark [Instruks for degne og
skolemestre på landet i Danmark] 1739
 The C hildren
Tests were used to hold children accountable for their
abilities and proficiency levels (academic performance).

An annual examination carried significant importance for

the individual pupil’s promotion to the next grade (and for
seating in the classroom) until 1958.

Sorting of children into normal and remedial education

based on intelligence testing from the late interwar years.

Thoroughness and a comprehensive view was

transformed into an attraction to quantification (great
contrast between the 1970s and the 2000s)
 Historical experiences with contemporary
relevance I

• Diverging interests are omnipresent in test-based accountability practices.

• A strong sense of international inspiration, competition and comparison is conducive to

promoting test-based accountability practices.

• Critiques concerning the educational system’s proficiency standards are a recurring feature in
understanding the introduction of test-based accountability measures.

• Hierarchy between evaluation technologies (forms of knowledge) – organizational component

(position and power).
 Historical experiences with contemporary
relevance II
Test-based accountability measures is inevitably connected with notions of efficiency  link
between educational success and economic prosperity

The cold war shapes our contemporary education policy

Accountability measures tend to be a conservative element in education, confirming existing

knowledge and practices.

Accountability measures can work to create knowledge but also can be used to stifle different
opinions and complaints.

While IOs compete, they play an important role in setting the standards (Global Testing
Culture) – Neoliberalism (inter-state competition) – data driven policy development
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