External and standardized assessments based on student results are a contested education policy among school actors. Movements of opposition have emerged in different countries, especially in those contexts with high-stakes accountability systems. However, this phenomenon has not been analyzed in soft accountability systems. The objective of this…

Neoliberal policy technologies are spreading across the globe. Most go unrecognised and unopposed, but in some cases, they have provoked reactions and movements that reject or resist them. In this article we focus on one such movement of resistance, consisting of a network of families (the 'opt out' movement) that is boycotting the Standard…

An increasing number of countries are adopting accountability systems in education that rely on the external evaluation of students' learning outcomes through standardized assessments. The international dissemination of this form of accountability, often known as test-based accountability, does not imply that exactly the same policy is adopted…

This paper analyses, from the perspective of the political sociology of policy instruments, the adoption and re-contextualisation of School Autonomy with Accountability (SAWA) reforms in Spain, with a particular focus on the region of Madrid. Over the last few decades, Madrid has adopted a wide range of education policies that have contributed to…

The aim of this article is to analyse the direct and indirect effects that PISA generates in the orientation of educational policies and reforms in Spain and the ways in which PISA data and results are used in political discourses, at both national and sub-national levels. The main hypothesis of the article is that PISA results have played a key…

This paper provides evidence on the sources of differences in inequality in educational scores and their evolution over time in four European countries. Using Programme for International Student Assessment data from the 2000 and the 2006 waves, the paper shows that inequality decreased in Germany and Spain (two "decentralised" schooling…