Systèmes d’accountability basés sur la performance : types, logiques instrumentales et effets sur l’efficacité et l’équité scolaires des systèmes éducatifs d’Europe et du Canada. Une étude comparative à partir des données PISA 2012

In the last decades accountability, has become a centerpiece of the renewed governance of the education systems. Under the influence of New Public Management, the introduction of performance-based accountability systems (PBAS) is considered a political solution to the supposed crisis affecting education systems. While PBAS are aimed at improving student performance and at closing the achievement gap, there is little evidence that PBAS have a positive impact on school effectiveness and equity in education systems. This international comparative quantitative study aims to provide some insights into the relationship between PBAS, effectiveness and equity (equal opportunities of results, equality of outcomes and equality of basic skills) in the European and Canadian education systems. It uses a broad but operational acceptance of the concept of accountability that takes into account the result-based regulation tools that are put in place at the school level in order to steer the system. The study is based on a secondary analysis of OECD PISA 2012 data. It is based on a sample of 59 education systems and use multivariate analyses (principal component analysis, cluster analysis, ANOVA, simple and multiple regressions) to characterize the PBAS in the education systems of Europe and Canada on one side, and to analyse their impact on effectiveness and equity in these education systems on the other. Three instrumental logics emerge from the results, which underpin PBAS: 1) a logic that rests on monitoring and evaluating the actors’s performance at the school level; 2) a logic that relies on direct incentives for teachers; 3) a logic that rests on school performance comparisons and involves internal mechanisms aimed at improving school results. Underpinned by distinct regulation tools, these logics are articulated within empirical types of PBAS which allow us to differentiate between the education systems of Europe and Canada: 1) an accountability of lesser intensity, 2) an accountability focused mainly on evaluation and performance monitoring, 3) an accountability articulating performance monitoring, external comparison/internal improvement of school performance, 4) a high intensity accountability favoring incentives for teachers.  Nevertheless, we find little evidence that PBAS have a significant influence on effectiveness and equity in education systems. The effects of PBAS, if any, are in most cases weak and are cancelled out when other key factors are taken into account (public spending in education, variation in student socioeconomic backgrounds, horizontal and vertical stratification of education systems). However, incentives for teachers and PBAS that favor this type of device seem to be significantly linked to lower effectiveness levels, and to higher inequalities in outcomes and basic skill levels. In the end, our results suggest that PBAS do not provide the effectiveness and equity in education systems they promise.

Keyphrases: Accountability, PISA 2012, Accountability systems, Empirical typology, Effectiveness and equity in education, International quantitative study, Comparative education, Europe and Canada