Global Education Governance and Data:A bureaucratic, technocratic or

democratic relation?

M. CartonCIES, March 2014

CIES programme: counting words

• Politics: 2• Governance: 4• Data: 13• Assessment: 19• GLOBAL: 64• TVET: 2 ; Training (teachers) 4 ;

Skills: 4

Which Global Governance for Education?

• Health Global Governance, Diplomacy since 20 years (e.g. Geneva Graduate Institute); Science, Water : what about education?

• OECD-PISA = key institution-instruments for development of global ed. reform package: decentralization, « choice » via market mechanisms, centralisation of goal setting, assessments…

• From multipurpose socialisation (inc. democratic) to workforce preparation

• From state-controlled, nation referenced education governance to world market and civil society based one

• From low productivity bureaucracy to high efficiency technocracy

• Paradoxes (cf. H-D Meyer) of PISA:– new norm setter + governance regime

« seller » (PISA for Dev.), supported by disempowered states

– different policy interpretations when using the same «  neutral » results (e.g. the USA 2013 report reading by the Administration and by M. Carnoy +)

Education Governance via Data: global and democratic?

• Is such a model leading to uniformity and control, or to diversification and innovation?

• Are the data collected based on transparent key assumptions and categorizations, underpinnig the quantification and measurement processes being used?

• For example, which definition of Growth lies at the back of the OECD PIAAC?

From Quantification to Measurement to Data: to be (or not) democratic?

• Quantification = passing from words (quality) to numbers (quantity) based on comparisons and equivalence conventions

• Transformation into numbers based on conventions = political and technical act: –May we/can we compare: women and men?

Inequalities?–May we/can we translate notion of quality

educational outcomes into numbers by defining equivalence words-numbers, allowing for statistics, indicators, comparisons and ranking?

• Transformation into numbers based on conventions = socially and cognitively creative dimensions = reflect diversity and transformation of the world > no reification of measure– More than 60 conventions define literacy (UIL)

variety of measurement’s results: problem?– Is “intelligence” a qualitative characteristic or what

is only measured by IQ? Both?– How to measure other learning outcomes than

literacy and numeracy?– How to include out of school population, early

school-drop outs, NFET?

Statistics: the old « new » data revolution?

• Scientific proof instrument since 19th century, using probabilistic calculations

• Governance instrument for 20 centuries: Status, Statista, Staatskunde, Statistics ≡ State instrument– Results-based approach = what must be delivered process: VfM, NPM, Theory of Change…

– Evidence-based approaches = what works outcomes: experimental medecine, RCT, impact evaluation…

– Results + Evidence-based approaches

= focus on individuals

= protection from politics

= bureaucratic (R), technocratic (E) ?

• Convention setting cannot be technocratic (experts-consultants market)

• Democracy cannot be replaced by world consultations (e.g. post 2015)

Questions• Should education policies be evidence-based ( ≡

quantitative data mostly) or informed (≡ quantitative + qualitative)?

• What is today’s politics of Global Education Governance?

• What are the education stakeholders, « North and South », involved and not involved in the emergence of a new world education regime?

• More specifically what are the roles of the « civil society » and of the experts + consultants corporation?

• > research projects