Keywords

Standardization and accountability policies have been intensified through economic globalization and neoliberalization processes, passing from elements of democratic control to managerialist devices (Parcerisa & Verger, 2016). This discursive and practical change of direction underlies the competitive neoliberal rationality that emerged in the 1970s in the wake of the oil crisis (Laval & Dardot, 2013). Peck and Tickell (2002) explained how neoliberalism stemmed from two strategies: roll-back neoliberalism (discursive criticism exercised over the inefficiency of public management and the bureaucratic State) and roll-out neoliberalism (implementation of solutions to discursively constructed problems). Some of the decisions surrounding bureaucratization and the excessive state control of public services in the welfare state granted greater autonomy to public services and allowed non-state actors to participate in the management, direction, and ownership of these services. Thus, the welfare state adopted a strategic role by exercising “control from a distance” (Ball, 1993, p. 99) over the performance of services. As a result, managerialist accountability policies became devices enabling this control.

Several authors have studied standardization and accountability policies in post-bureaucratic societies. Neave (1988) defined how the evaluative state had emerged from the welfare state crisis as a government effort at rationalizing social policies. Power (2000) described the changes in how public services were governed by using standardization processes and accountability policies, which led to the explosion of the audit society. Rose (1999) pointed out that the societal transformation and changes under the rationale of competition had introduced constructs such as effectiveness, efficiency, and quality into the discursive corpus of public management, which resulted in a society governed by numbers. As for Ball (2003), he argued that accountability policies had create the processes of comparison, control, and even performative erosion that seek to produce changes in the subjects or institutions for managerial purposes.

This transformation in accountability policies has led to alterations in public governance, through which the welfare state accordingly emerged as a competitive state in a globalized, postmodern, and competitive society (Cerny, 1997) where political decision-making is not exclusive to Nation-States but is concomitant and in collaboration with other external agents. Ball and Junemann (2012) defined this political construction as a policy network.

In this context of performance and change, accountability policies become a legitimate object of state with the result being international policies that impact global education systems. Pasi Sahlberg (2012) defined the comprehensive reforms developed at the end of the 1980s and with greater intensity in the 1990s as the global education reform movement (GERM), which is characterized by standardized tests, performance pay, competitiveness, and privatization. The global nature of the movement has been imprinted on the transformations in national governance, the role of international bodies, and the confluence of other external actors who exercise a role of expertise in education policy.

For national governments, accountability policies have been implemented with a liberal and managerialist approach based primarily on the neoconservative policies developed since the beginning of the 1980s in order to promote competitiveness and freedom of choice of school as a strategy for developing an educational quasi-market.

In a comparative study of the cases of the United Kingdom, the United States, Wales, New Zealand, and Sweden, Whitty et al. (1998) analyzed how sections of GERM reforms had been introduced by the new right (i.e., conservative right-wing governments). Fernández-González and Monarca (2018) and Pulido-Montes (2020) are some of the researchers who have analyzed how social liberal governments had also introduced accountability policies; in the early 1990s, these governments understood that the third sector was strategic for improving public services, thus introducing New Public Management (NPM) and accountability policies.

The proliferation of these accountability policies on an international level has also been driven by international bodies such as the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) through the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), which tests 15-year-olds’ performance in instrumental subjects (mathematics, science, and language).

The OECD has become a soft power in international education policy. Kamens (2013) described the organization as something akin to a World Ministry of Education. Grek (2009) defined the role OECD performs as a governing by numbers device that is particularly relevant in formulating national education policies. Sellar and Lingard (2013) and Martínez-Usarralde (2021) described how OECD has played a decisive role in the global governance of education.

Verger and Parcerisa (2017) described the influence OECD has had through its assessment model, which has been integrated into national policies in various contexts. In a discursive analysis of the PISA tests and legitimization of the Spanish conservative party's educational reform, Fernández-González (2015) identified connections between the performance assessment discourse for decision-making and the Organic Law for the Improvement of Educational Quality. In a comparative analysis of privatization policies in England and Spain, Pulido-Montes (2020) identified records of the use of PISA results in party platforms to justify the educational reforms sought after by political groups.

In general terms, accountability policies are integrated within global political agendas. Accountability means providing justification for what has been done. This principle has been translated in the field of education policy as the use of assessments to inform decisions regarding students, schools, and staff. Present-day accountability in education is based on a managerial approach, as opposed to a democratic model of transparency. According to Biesta (2004) and in agreement with other researchers, this is the reason why changes in this accountability model point to decision-making based on efficiency and effectiveness and, as such, are linked to changes in the production model, the rise of neoliberalism, and New Public Management. Other current lines of research have been concerned with trying to integrate a democratic approach with accountability policies in order to combine the benefits of educational monitoring and managerial activity. This can be achieved with a focus on improving teaching at the school level, not by external control elements that pervert the meaning of accountability towards a model that results in the reproduction of inequalities or that segregates schools based on market mechanisms for good performance (O'Neill, 2013).

Accountability systems should include five components: objectives, assessments, instructions, resources, and rewards/sanctions. As Anderson (2005, p. 1) additionally argues, “In the field of education there are three main types of accountability system: (a) compliance with regulations, (b) adherence to professional norms, and (c) results driven”.

Of the many accountability policies, test-based accountability systems are the ones that are easily identifiable in global political agendas (Fuhrman & Elmore, 2004). This policy type is based on assessing and measuring student performance for decision-making and is built on models that measure the outputs of more complex processes. However, the degree of performativity of test-based accountability is related to the determinant nature of decision-making. In the case of education systems such as the USA or UK, negative results in performance assessments can lead to schools losing their self-governance or perhaps even to an intervention by external private agents.

How these assessments are interpreted and consequently used has had an impact on teachers; their practice views them as control elements, which often resulting in a process Tanner (2013) describes as teaching to the test. Other effects of test-based accountability on teaching staff are covered in studies such as Feng et al.’s (2009), which showed how teachers’ inter-school mobility correlates with student results; an exodus of teachers is found at schools with low results where stress levels are higher. According to Sims (2009), this has resulted in the lowest performing schools having higher percentages of novice teachers as opposed to experienced ones.

Popham (2000) warned that this type of policy improves neither the quality of educational establishments nor student performance as it does not take into account the diversities of gender, ethnicity, ability, or socio-economic level.

In general terms, studying accountability policies as part of GERM can simplify the different interpretations from this type of policy in the most diverse scenarios. Maroy and Pons (2019) explained how their study has been developed from a comparative perspective mainly in Anglo-Saxon education systems, thus opening up a prolific but certainly reductionist line of research due to the Anglo-Saxon model having mainly been analysed in contexts that have applied neoliberalization processes more profoundly. Maroy et al. (2019) identified that this model of accountability is mostly developed in the United Kingdom, Chile, the United States, and Australia through high-stakes testing, surveillance, monitoring of student and teacher performance, and teacher merit pay.

Maroy et al. (2019) argued no single globalization to exist, but rather multiple globalizations of each system; therefore an in-depth study of accountability and its trajectories over time is required. From a comparative perspective, both articles also analyzed the path dependence of policy choices and institutions prior to accountability, as well as how national actors in France and Quebec assemble formulations and translate them to international policies. In short, accountability policies in Quebec can be concluded to be part of traditional institutional processes rather than the French education system where they had been introduced in response to the influence of international agencies (i.e., EU and OECD). Maroy and Pons (2019) differentiated the accountability in Anglo-Saxon contexts, which seek competitiveness and strengthening of educational quasi-markets, from how it is interpreted in Quebec and France as an element for improving equity through quality.

Therefore, Mary et al. have distinguished this line of comparative analyses of accountability policies as devices to introduce endogenous privatization policiesFootnote 1 in public education, whether a comparative line based on an interpretative approach similar to bidirectional policy transfer (Waldow & Steiner-Khamsi, 2012) or the interpretation of neoliberalization processes as a mobile technology (Ong, 2007) that mutates, travels and is recontextualized in different scenarios and that adopts contingent forms (McCann & Ward, 2012). The contingencies are related to how the introduction of NPM policies in public education systems are assembled and stem from a series of contextual, historical, cultural, and economic variables. Verger et al. (2018) describe those international policies or the dissemination by international organizations of accountability policies do not impact the contexts in the same way, but depend on cultural, political, structural factors, etc. and they operate at different levels.

From this comparative interpretative approach, the education systems of the United Kingdom and Spain analyze accountability policies with a special emphasis on educational accountability for student performance.

The Interpretative Approach and Method

This contribution is based on approaching neoliberalism as a mobile technology (Ong, 2007) transcending the hegemonic approaches where it has been interpreted as an economic tsunami producing the same political results and social transformations. Clarke (2008, p. 135) analyzes the concept of neoliberalism from the hegemonic approach as a construct that “suffers from promiscuity (hanging out with various theoretical perspectives), omnipresence (treated as a universal or global phenomenon), and omnipotence (identified as the cause of a wide variety of social, political and economic changes).” Along the same lines of argument as McCann and Ward (2012), Clarke also emphasized the mobile nature of the processes of neoliberalism’s contextual assemblage, articulation, and translation.

At the same time, globalization is understood as a context of contexts (Verger et al., 2012) and for that reason has a vernacular character. In other words, not one single globalization but rather multiple globalizations occur. Following Maroy et al. (2017), three explanatory factors have been proposed for analyzing these vernacular globalization processes: the historical trajectory of accountability policies, the formulation of education policies through policy assemblage, and the translation of international policies by national actors.

To achieve this objective, a multi-dimensional comparative analysis (Bray & Thomas, 1995) has been conducted that includes the following units of analysis:

  1. 1.

    The geographical context. The geographical dimension is represented by the cases of the United Kingdom and Spain, taking into consideration their national character. These two countries have been selected because they represent the differentiated models and historical-political trajectories that have determined the processes of neoliberalization and globalization in Europe. This dimension includes an overview of the national education systems and the main policies that have been developed in each context since the 1980s, thus providing an understanding of the current state of education policy for each scenario.

  2. 2.

    Non-local demographic clustering. This is a dimension constituted by the entire education community affected by these policies (family, teachers, students, etc.). However, this dimension is transversal to the study.

  3. 3.

    National accountability policies. The national policy level is based on the textual analysis of national policy documents from Spain’s Ministry of Education and the United Kingdom’s Secretaries of State for Education. Policy documents related to accountability policies have been selected for this purpose.

The Educational Context of England

Cowen identified two historic dates in the formation of England’s educational system. One date is 1870, when the mass education system was created and the State’s power constituted a mixture of powers from the Central Local Authorities, the national system, and the Local Education Authorities (LEAs). The other date is 1944, when the Education Act was passed, which entailed the extension of the state high school level to comprise grammar schools (elitist schools), secondary modern schools, and technical schools.

Until the arrival of the New Right to power in the 1980s through Margaret Thatcher, the main discussion concerning education between the two main forces of government in twentieth-century England had revolved around comprehensive/meritocratic schools.

Transformations in the English education system since neoconservatism came to power in 1979 have resulted in gradual changes in schools’ administration levels, moving towards a model in which LEAs have currently been relegated to a subsidiary role in their competences for administrating and managing centres. The strategy to erode LEAs has been part of the new right’s attack on the welfare state.

Milestones for these mutations and NPM’s introduction to the English education system include the Education Reform Act (1988), which involved the recentralization of the curriculum to the State, staged assessments, the creation of new types of schools autonomous from the LEAs, and funding per enrolled student, as well as other policies that constructed the United Kingdom’s educational quasi-market, such as the publication of results and creation of a private inspection body (Chitty, 2009).

Far from being blocked, these reforms have found general consensus between the Conservatives and Labour Party, following the shift of the latter in the 1990s towards the Third Way. Tony Blair's New Labour conceived the economic and business sectors as strategic for improving educational quality in terms of performance and results.

The Labour Party began introducing an amalgamation of types of publicly funded autonomous schools in the United Kingdom called academy schools starting in 2000. This policy has been continued and expanded by the successive administrations, resulting in 70% of secondary schools and 30% of primary schools being of this type in 2017 (National Audit Office, 2018).

These changes preceded the Conservative-Liberal Democrat government’s arrival to power as led by David Cameron and Nick Clegg (2010–2015). From that moment onward, the mass privatization of the English education system was initiated by introducing new types of publicly funded autonomous schools (Converter AcademiesFootnote 2 and Free SchoolsFootnote 3). In short, the government’s aim has been to shape the entire British education system into academy-type schools. Accountability and results-related inspection have enhanced the transition from maintained schools to academies and been supported by reporting, results, and external decision-making.

The subsequent conservative governments of David Cameron (2015–2016), Theresa May (2016–2018), and Boris Johnson (2018-present) have continued the policies of transitioning-maintained schools to academy-type schools that are supported by evidence of performance results. Academicians such as Eyles and Machin (2019) predicted that schools in the United Kingdom will be almost entirely private by 2022.

Trajectory of Accountability Policies in England

In the United Kingdom’s transformation of its education system, NPM theories have played a fundamental role since the 1980s in developing an educational quasi-market, and accountability policies have been the mechanisms for implementing NPM policies. They have been highlighted as a particularity in the trajectory of accountability policies in the United Kingdom and as being part of the structural strategy of the State at a time of reform prior to the generalization of the GERM.

One important element to note is that the NPM agenda and accountability policies as devices of its practices, policies, and philosophies have been part of Conservatives’ and Labour Party’s political agendas since the 1980s.

The main accountability policies developed in the context of the United Kingdom by each stage of government are represented in Table 1.

Table 1 Accountability policies in the United Kingdom’s educational system
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As can be seen from Table 1, accountability policies in the UK education system include the agendas of different political parties; nevertheless, the objectives of the administrations differed in coherence with their idiosyncrasies.

In effect, the neoconservative Thatcher and Major governments sought to erode the power of LEAs and education officials, for which accountability policies played a key role. 1987 saw the introduction of teacher merit pay linked to student results. Subsequently, the curriculum was recentralized in 1988, with staged testing being introduced and made public for families to consult when selecting a school. Performance evaluation tests are part of the logic or discourse of school choice theory (Betts, 2005) and rational decision-making. In addition, the State professed its faith in results-based approaches for introducing competitiveness and improving quality in the UK education system.

The notoriety of the continuity of these reforms in the subsequent stages of the Labour Party government is rooted in the party’s shift towards a more social-liberal position. The belief that private management and financing could benefit public services in terms of improving quality meant that the Blair and Brown administrations questioned neither the staged assessment tests nor the publication of their results. The difference from previous administrations was that this evidence and the role of the private inspectorate (Ofsted) was to be used to improve the performance of failing schools. To this end, they deployed a series of reforms such as the Fresh Start Programme (1999), which enabled managers from successful centres to relocate to low-performance centres and implement their management models as examples of good practice. These policies were followed by other evidence—and results-based policies in the search for improved standards, such as Education Action Zones (1998), Excellence in Cities (1999), sponsor academies, and the creation of trust schools. Each and every one of these programmes focused on improving students’ academic results by means of advisory strategies from high-performance schools to low-performance schools.

Later governmental stages were marked by David Cameron’s compassionate conservatism project (Big Society), a theory that sought to move away from Thatcherite positions. Its main objective was to create a climate that would empower people and local communities, building a big society that would take power away from politicians and give it to the people. The policies deployed under the Cameron educational agenda were motivated by Big Society philosophy, the strengthening of audits and performance monitoring based on student results through organizations such as Regional Schools Commissioners and Ofsted, and empowering families to decide on opening free schools or converting maintained schools into academies. Not only did this keep the conversion of such secondary schools into academies going, but through the Academies Act (2010), the programme was extended to high-performance primary and secondary schools (converter academies). Therefore, the main objective of the two stages of the Cameron government (2010–2015/2015–2016) identified with the dismantling of the publicly funded public system. They used school reports and results to this end to make the transition to this type of school, as seen with the Education and Adoption Act (2016), in which low-performance schools were required to become academies.

Successive Theresa May (2016–2018) and Boris Johnson (2018-date) government agendas have included converting maintained schools into performance-based academies, just as in the previous stages.

In this way, how government has integrated into the pragmatic and discursive policies in the context of the UK can be seen through numbers, comparisons, audits, and results-based management in both the Conservative and Labour Parties’ political agendas. The significance of the UK case is the complementarity of accountability reforms and the continuity in the support of results for decision-making and education reform in the United Kingdom.

The Educational Context of Spain

After 40 years of dictatorship in Spain, the Spanish Constitution and its 27th Article was approved in 1978. Far from being quickly resolved, Article 27 was approved after a year of long and intense debates that had not occurred with the drafting and approval of the Constitution’s other articles. Studying the trajectory of Article 27 reveals a division of two Spains that understood the importance and relevance of education for a democratic Spain. The resolution of Article 27 was far from conflictive; instead it had articulated on a single level (Article 27.1) the right to an education and the freedom of teaching (Tiana, 2018). Under the Francoist dictatorship, Spain had constructed state schools based on the Catholic faith and had indiscriminately subsidized Catholic private schools. This had given rise to the current network of escuelas privadas-concertadas, which alongside state schools had create the structure of schooling institutions in the Spanish education system. Spanish escuelas concertadas are a type of Public–Private Partnership (PPP), born in 1985 as part of a strategy from the socialist party in government to give predominantly Catholic private schools a state character. This strategy consisted of implementing a series of obligations in an attempt to make private centres function in practically the same manner as Spanish state schools.

Concurrently, the Spanish Constitution brought about the development of the Autonomous Communities (CCAA) system, with their own competences. The transfer of educational power to the 17 CCAAs was done in phases and in accordance with the historical, political, and cultural factors of each territory of the Spanish State. The culmination of the process of transferring educational competences to the CCAAs was completed in 2000.

Decentralization of the regions and educational competences has led to a system of educational systems (Bonal et al., 2005) in which the political tone of each CCAA has determined the balance towards the introduction of policies characteristic of NPM as exemplified by the cases of Catalonia (Parcerisa, 2016; Verger et al., 2018) and Andalusia (Luengo & Saura, 2016; Molina-Pérez & Luengo, 2020). The introduction of endogenous and exogenous privatization reforms and PPPs promoting the creation of an educational quasi-market is exemplified in the cases of Madrid (Fernández-González, 2020; Prieto & Villamor, 2013) and Valencia (Pulido-Montes, 2016; Pulido-Montes & Lázaro, 2017), and the continuity of state regulatory prescriptions is shown in the case of Extremadura (Pulido-Montes, 2020).

At present, the organic law that articulates and regulates the Spanish education system is the Organic Law for the Improvement of Educational Quality. It was introduced by the Partido Popular and has been paralyzed on the most socially debated and contested questions by the left-wing coalition government in power in Spain since 2020. Of all the education laws in the history of Spanish democracy, LOMCE is the one to which most recent studies have been devoted. Among these, several have analyzed the phenomenon of privatization in and of education since that reform (Saura & Luengo, 2014). Others have focused on analyzing the introduction of NPM philosophy through accountability, assessment, publication of results, competitiveness, and managerialism (Bernal-Agudo & Vázquez-Toledo, 2013), and still others have highlighted how PISA tests have been a tool for legitimizing LOMCE and introducing GERM mechanisms into the Spanish education system (Fernández-González, 2015).

The paralysis of the most controversial elements of LOMCE has given way to the left-wing government coalition’s (PSOE-Unidas/Podemos) construction of a new law: Organic Law of Modification of the Organic Law on Education (LOMLOE). Currently under discussion in the Spanish government, this bill has been preceded by more than seven organic laws during the Spanish democratic period.

Trajectory of Accountability Policies in Spain

NPM accountability policies (e.g., centre autonomy, external assessment, and accountability) had not materialized in Spain until the education reforms of 2006 (Organic Law on Education) and 2013 (LOMCE). What differentiates the direction of these reforms from preceding ones in terms of accountability introduced into the Spanish context is the openly neoliberal turnaround, especially with regard to LOMCE, which seeks to introduce mechanisms for developing an educational quasi-market. However, as can be seen in Table 2, other reforms have been introduced that have presented typical NPM theories up to the present day.

Table 2 Accountability policies in the Spanish education system (1979–2019)
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The legacy of the Francoist education system (i.e., low educational investment, lack of professionalization of management and teaching bodies, and a massively subsidized network of Catholic private schools) has posed a challenge to democratic political formations as they strive to develop a universal education system constructed around quality (Pulido-Montes, 2020).

The fourth and last short-lived government of the socialist Felipe González (1993–1996) saw itself influenced by and involved in the social democratic crisis (Hillebrand, 2016); that is precisely the stage when the introduction of the modernization of public services rhetoric and discourse characteristic from the social liberal left can be identified. One of the policies that signified this turnaround was the Organic Law on the Participation, Evaluation, and Governance of Educational Institutions, which was widely contested by the educational community and even said to have been one of the milestones in the covert privatization of education in Spain (Barcia, 1995). Aguilar-Hernández (2002) conducted a discursive analysis of LOPEG in which he discovered the professionalization of the managerial figure as a government control element over school performance who is required to participate in the external and internal evaluation of the educational centre.

José María Aznar had carried out the same exercise as Thatcher and Blair in their parties: the repositioning of the conservative party towards the centre-right spectrum. Lavezzolo and Orriols defined this political repositioning strategy as the most appropriate and effective strategy for the governance of the country. De Puelles-Benítez (2005) established connections between the Spanish conservative party and the British conservative party in relation to the development of their educational policies. The same author analyzed eight years in government of the Partido Popular and its educational policies concluding that had implemented reforms typical of neoliberalism and neoconservatism. The primary objective of the Partido Popular (PP) had been to increase schools’ freedom of choice. To this end, they introduced a series of reforms, the most important of which in relation to accountability included the introduction of business improvement plans adapted to schools and the publication of reports on schools that could be consulted by voting families. These policies connected with the intention to develop an educational quasi-market based on empowering families, eroding school participatory associations (Consejo Escolar), and liberalizing the conditions for providing conciertos educativos.

The second phase of the PP government (2000–2004) gave rise to the Organic Law on Educational Quality and was widely contested by teachers, students, and progressive families (Digón-Regueiro, 2003). The law was scarcely applied as the Socialists blocked it when they came to power in 2004.

PSOE’s return to power occurred with José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero. The political and ideological agenda Zapatero developed in 2000 alongside Spanish socialist thinkers organized in a group called Nueva Vía had attempted to move away from social liberal policies. As a guide at the centre of these ideas was Petitt’s (2007) theory of civic republicanism which sought to strengthen democracy through complete citizen participation in political, social, and cultural life. The education agenda over the course of Zapatero’s government (2004–2011) sought to focus on equity and attention to diversity. However, the Organic Law on Education was not unaffected by the transformations or GERM. This was reason results-based diagnostic assessment tests were first introduced to improve student performance in the Spanish educational system. Highlighting the context in which these types of accountability policies were introduced among other strategies is important as it is a context marked by the shared European agenda for the reduction of school failure as well as the rise of PISA tests and their impact on national education policies. The socialist administration had tried to limit the perverse effects of the diagnostic assessment tests in order to instrumentalize them and introduce a culture of competitiveness and market dynamics in school choice. Consequently, they prohibited the publication of results, taking into account the possible resignifications of these policies in the various CCAAs.

Not until Mariano Rajoy’s PP government were accountability policies able to become part of an NPM-style performative strategy for developing evidence and results-based competitiveness. By means of LOMCE, the PP introduced diagnostic tests for 3rd and 6th grades in primary school and the reválidas in the 4th year of Compulsory Secondary Education and 2nd year of the bachillerato, with the intention to publicize their results in order to develop market dynamics. These policies were widely contested by the CCAA, with many rebelling against their implementation (Pulido-Montes, 2020). These mechanisms formed part of the PP strategy to promote the network of escuelas concertadas through provisions in the law on the concession of conciertos according to demand, the extension of their duration (2 more years), their allocation in the vocational training stage, and to gender-segregated centres. LOMCE has been evaluated as equivalent to Education Reform Act in the UK education system (De Puelles-Benítez, 2016).

After the vote of no confidence in the government of Mariano Rajoy on June 1, 2018 by Pedro Sánchez's PSOE, the policies described above were quickly brought to a halt.

With the formation of the left-wing coalition government (PSOE/Unidas-Podemos), the Organic Law of Modification of the Organic Law on Education was approved on November 19, 2020 in an attempt to return to how things had been in 2006, a situation where the evaluation of the education system would be carried out on a sample basis and be exempt from publishing and creating results-based classifications. The law importantly specifies that what is described above must be complied with across all AACCs without exception. This clarification in the aforementioned law is important when one considers that in AACCs such as the Community of Madrid, the publication of results has been carried out by different government administrations subject to the governance that they enjoy in relation to educational competences (Prieto & Villamor, 2013).

Comparative Conclusions

Results-based policies have been maintained and reinforced by the two traditional UK parties in power (Labour Party and the Conservatives), albeit in the pursuit of different objectives, and now form part of the political-educational structure of the UK. The main differences in the policies developed in the UK education system is that left-wing governments in power have introduced accountability policies in response to international trends and the role of bodies such as the OECD and the EU.

The Spanish left for its part introduced these policies with a focus on equity, thus forming part of their discursive strategy. However, the Spanish conservative party, especially after LOMCE, placed accountability policies and NPM at the heart of their reforms and in line with the policies deployed by the Thatcher administration (De Puelles-Benítez, 2016).

Of particular interest in the context of the UK is how accountability policies have constantly emerged in educational system reforms performatively as accountability policies: The publication of results and reporting have been used to dismantle the network of schools governed by LEAs and since 2010 to transition to academy schools with the arrival of the Conservative-Liberal Democratic coalition government.

In the context of Spain, alternation has prevailed in the interpretation of accountability policies. On one hand, conservative governments have tried to use audit and accountability policies to develop a system based on competitiveness and to strengthen the network of escuelas concertadas. On the other hand, leftist governments have agreed to soften the perverse effects of these policies by prohibiting the publication of assessment results.

In summary, assessment culture bearing a performative character has been integrated in the UK’s education system by both Conservative and Labour governments since the 1980s as a device for reforming the English education system. Meanwhile, assessment culture was introduced much later in Spain in 2000, and the main governments in power have not converged as had happened in the United Kingdom with regard to the functionalities of accountability policies.

In the same thread as Maroy et al.’s (2019) analysis and trajectory of accountability policies in France, the Spanish case is comparable to the French case in that left-wing governments understand these policies as a tool for quality improvement. However, the conservative governments in Spain have interpreted accountability from a managerialist and performative perspective in order to introduce quasi-market dynamics into the educational system typical of the UK’s neoconservatism. In this manner, contingency in the application of accountability policies is marked by the historical, cultural, political, and ideological traditions of individual contexts. Spain identifies with a mixed model in the application of accountability policies that alternate between utilitarian interpretations and the perspectives of these policies, as opposed to the UK model, which we consider neoliberal in how it has implemented accountability policies.

In general terms, the accountability policies applied in the United Kingdom have sought to erode autonomy and public governance and to encourage the emulation of a market system in which families are consumers of a good measured in terms of efficiency. This is in opposition to the accountability policies applied in Spain’s education system, which have been halfway between publishing results as a means of measuring the efficiency of student performance and using diagnoses to resolve educational inequalities. Nevertheless, the managerialist approach has permeated the implementation of both policies, although with a greater market-driven results component in the United Kingdom. This is in contrast to the Spanish model for improving educational quality. Accountability policies have also shown performative effects on schools, teachers, and students in both scenarios.