Professor Lucian Ciolan
University of Bucharest, Bucharest, Romania
University of Bucharest, Bucharest, Romania
1. Aim and coverage
The aim of this paper is to analyse, in the current turbulent context, some key aspects of the policymaking process in education, from several perspectives:
- Coherence and logic of the process (identify and respect usual stages, encourage critical reflection grounding interventions in clear needs / problems);
- Engagement towards an evidence-based approach (use of scientific research, data analysis);
- Policy capacity of the central governance of education (prioritization, employment of a complex mix of policy tools, effective regulatory mechanisms, monitoring and evaluation systems);
- Adherence to the democratic “backbone” of the policy process (consultation, public debate, co-creation with stakeholders).
Our geographical focus will be mainly on the so-called younger democracies of Central and Eastern Europe, as countries trying, after the collapse of communism in late 80’s/ early 90’s, to build up democratic ecosystems for decision-making, engaging simultaneously in large-scale educational reforms. We cannot make any generalization here, but there are definitely common trends and approaches that deserve attention and reflection.
Taking a process perspective, double “lenses” will be used: recent historical evolutions of the policy process (last approximately 30 years now), but also current situation of the policymaking process in a new, dynamic, and very challenging context, marked by unprecedented evolutions.
2. Context and key messages
More than 30 years after the collapse of communism in Central and Eastern Europe, a visible struggle is present when it comes to the maturity of democratic values and mechanisms, and therefore, to the capacity of central governances to deliver a coherent strategic steering and quality policymaking in doing public issues management, including education.
There are at least two inter-linked causes for this situation:
- a new type of authoritarianismemerged and gained terrain in many countries of the area, disbalancing the fragile symmetry of power and expertise in the decision-making process: too much manifestation of direct and abrupt power, too less consideration of knowledge and expertise.
- a restrained appetite for scienceand data in grounding decisions; there is both a scarcity of data, as there is no high demand for it, but also a certain inability to use data for generating meaningful action.
If we add to these factors a high level of politicization of administrative bodies, especially of those having power and influence over decisions, then we have the picture of a fragile and unstable policy ecosystem, which fails to ensure significant progress and sustainable reforms in education.
When looking to the policy process in education, and to the behaviour of central governances, there are some illustrative trends, persistent in many systems.
- Overregulation, leading to a heavy functioning and to unpredictability, due to frequent changes in the regulatory frameworks, that are seen as ”privileged” instruments for policy intervention.
- Scarcity of policy tools mix, which is somehow contradictory to the recent proliferation of policy tools at the disposal of decision-makers (Schneider & Ingram, 1990; Salamon, 2011, Howlett, 2023). This is a key indicator of poor capacity for policy making.
- Focus on structures/ structural elements, not on processes transformation when initiating educational change. Framework curriculum, allocation of hours and disciplines, textbooks, teachers workload, structure of final / national exams etc. keep educational change on the ”tip of the iceberg”, dealing with structural elements with limited impact on the quality of learning. The policy process itself is depleted by any meta-reflection for own fine-tunning and improvement. The very fabric of the systems remains, therefore superficially touched or not at all.
The educational policy cycle is altered, and instead of a systematic and coherent process, is frequently leads tolegislative fixation(from policy problem identification and definition directly to intervention design, by issuing / revising regulatory frameworks) oradministrative fixation(from problem definition to regulation and then implementation of activities by ”forced empowerment” of individual or institutional grassroots stakeholders, without ensuring capacity, transferring power and resources, create motivation and understanding.
Recent turbulent times served frequently to justify ”urgencies” and keep skipping logic and knowledge based processes.
In the last part of my reflection, I will try to bring into discussion some pathways to break this unproductive habit of ”mixing metaphors” to cover poor capacity, or even worst, a corrupt behaviour of central governances, preferring to stay in the warm area of power and imposing, instead of practicing real (but time and energy consuming) authentic democracy: empowerment of professional agencies, externalization / contracting out, ex-ante and ex-post impact assessment with public reports, re-distribution of power etc.