Xavier Rambla

The politics of school choice in two countries with large private‐dependent sectors (Spain and Chile): family strategies, collective action and lobbying

In many countries choice of school is an increasing concern for families and governments. In Spain and Chile, it is also associated with a long‐standing political cleavage on the regulation of large sectors of private‐dependent schools. This article analyses both the micro‐ and the macro‐politics of choice in these two countries, where low‐status 15‐year‐old students record a significant segregation. At the micro level, some evidence is provided that not only middle‐class skilful choosers but also the political representatives of private‐dependent schools manage to pursue their interests drawing on economic, social and cultural capital. At the macro level, evidence also shows that the lobbies defending private‐dependent schools can use and maintain these power resources. However, in some episodes collective action is an effective power resource for those who campaign in favour of a stricter regulation of these schools, but its influence is much difficult to maintain for longer periods.

Pedagogising poverty alleviation: a discourse analysis of educational and social policies in Argentina and Chile

For the past decades international organisations and governments have promoted and implemented analogous education policies on the grounds that education is the key factor to foster development and fight poverty. This article sets the context of these educational programmes and analyses their discourse on poverty in Argentina and Chile. Then, it shows how they institutionalise strict surveillance, institutional denigration of the poor and professional scepticism. In general, the conclusions underpin one hypothesis that leads the analysis: eventually, these targeted education policies ‘pedagogise’ poverty alleviation in that they aim to ‘instil flexible identities’ into the poor rather than open channels for social inclusion.

Meeting development goals: evidence from the Civil Society Education Fund

ABSTRACT In recent years, the Civil Society Education Fund has supported national education civil society coalitions (NECs) in low-income countries so that they put pressure on governments and donors to implement the Education for All agenda and the Millennium Development Goal on education. This article draws on literature on global governance as well as on an extensive evaluation of the CSEF to explore the actual contribution of this initiative to the activity of NECs. The article highlights the achievements and shortcomings of the CSEF and includes a set of practical recommendations on the role of global civil society in international development processes.

‘Soft power’, educational governance and political consensus in Brazil

This article analyses the ‘soft power’ that the Federal Government of Brazil has gained by designing and implementing a very ambitious Plan for the Development of Education. It draws on fieldwork carried out in the country in 2009 and 2010 in order to conduct a discourse analysis of the strategy deployed by the key political agents. The results show to what extent the Federal Government has used some catchwords to underpin a general consensus. It has also convinced the international organisations and civil society organisations that the ‘programme ontology’ of the programme (e.g. hypotheses on the beneficial impacts of multi-dimensional intervention) is reliable enough to wait for a decade until having a whole evaluation. However, since these agents eventually recall varied kinds of political mobilisation, some contradictions and tensions are already apparent. In general, the analysis unveils a complex interplay of national and supranational politics of education.

The New Other Catalans at School: Decreasing Unevenness but Increasing Isolation.

This study estimates the trends of school segregation in Catalonia (Spain) between 2001 and 2006. Currently, new immigration has reopened the debate about the ‘Other Catalans’ triggered by concern with the integration of the incoming population. An ‘intersectional approach’ to social divisions suggests that class and ethnic school segregation responds to strategic parental choice and informal policy arrangements. School segregation indices report a more even distribution in most localities, reinforced isolation of ‘foreign students’ in a few public schools in some large cities and a persistent divide between more comprehensive public schools and selective private‐dependent schools in a variety of towns. According to these findings, the analytical approach points at some clues to make sense of impact of distributive policies, the influence of policy contradictions and the success of mobilisation and lobbying political strategies.

A complex web of education policy borrowing and transfer: Education for All and the Plan for the Development of Education in Brazil

This article analyses how Education for All policies were transferred to Brazil and Latin America by means of ambitious educational strategic plans such as the Plan for the Development of Education and the National Education Plans – promoted by the Federal Government of Brazil, and the Latin American Educational Goals – promoted by the Organisation of Ibero American States (i.e. the international commonwealth of countries which belonged to the old Hispanic and Portuguese empires). The analysis highlights how a complex web of educational policy transfer and borrowing was fashioned by means of concatenate environmental, cognitive and relational mechanisms.

Planning, re-bordering and setting times: a comparative analysis of European and Latin American ‘education spaces’

The article compares educational regionalisation in Europe and Latin America. This analysis unveils the influence of three social phenomena in the two case studies, namely power, fields of activity and knowledge. Mostly, it focuses on the initiatives led by the European Union and the Organisation of Ibero-American States in order to implement large strategic, multi-government educational plans in each continent. The actions of international political players, the theories (or ‘ontologies’) embedded in these devices and the consequences for sub-national politics are observed.

Reproduction of educational inequalities in the 'above-age' phenomenon in Brazil

Brazili’s school system has a high above-age rate, that is, a high percentage (over 60%) of students whose age is above the school age expected for the school year they are enrolled in. In this article we look into the mechanisms responsible for above-age from a sociological perspetive, and inquire whether its causes are found both in the way social actions are structured and in the norms that make up the social structure. Our hypothesis is that the major cause for above-age is found in the cultural gap between the school system and the students’ disadvantaged social and financial backgroung, especially those with African descent. However, another cause observed derives from individual dicisions. Certainly, individuals with this social bacground decide to take up again the subjects they have not yet passed, but their academic results and their expectations for the future suffer from the dificulties awaiting along their schooling. Class and ethnic slant seem to aggravate due to students’ differing perceptions on the advantages and disadvantages in continuing with their studies. Our analysis, therefore, shows these circumstances considering social actions and structural conditions (cf. el modelo de Boudon, 1983; Goldthorpe, 1996).

Las complejas geografías de la política educativa: tres estudios de caso

El articulo estudia la politica global de la educacion, que se ha generado a partir de las interacciones entre los organismos internacionales, los gobiernos de los estados, una floreciente sociedad civil global, y un nuevo interes por convertir la educacion en un mercado de servicios. Dicha transformacion ha dado lugar a unos regimenes sociales de conocimiento y poder que influyen tanto en los agentes sociales activos en la escala local, como en los que operan con los gobiernos estatales o bien con los organismos internacionales. El argumento se basa en tres estudios de caso, a saber: las politicas de eleccion de escuela (especialmente, en Espana y Chile), el proceso de “europeizacion” y el papel de la educacion en varios proyectos de integracion latinoamericana.

The Limits of Compensatory Education in Spain: A Comparative Analysis of Some Autonomous Governments

Certainly, part of the problem would simply be the meaning of the adjective, since its geographical sense is so self-evident in our languages that it is difficult to figure out what it has been for Deweyan educators in Anglo-Saxon countries. However, the concept would also be difficult to translate because the intellectual and political tradition that identifies educational reform with the foundations of democracy and progressive change has been quite different and dramatically weaker during the twentieth century in Spain. So, an account of the related issues in the country instead focuses on the institutionalization of “compensatory education” after the dictatorship plus mention of the few and new proposals that aim to work beyond the scope of this strategy. More than 20 years ago the Compensation Royal Decree (1174/1983, April 27) used the term “compensatory education” in order to define the function of specialized teachers and schools who had to “aid the zones or demographic groups that need preferential educational attention due to their particular characteristics.” Then a small scholarship scheme for low-income students was also implemented. Later on, academic disadvantage due to cultural or social reasons became another kind of special education need when the Organic Act on the General Framework of the Educational System (1/1990, October 3) defined special pedagogic strategies as “treatment of diversity.” The Conservative governments that were in office between 1996 and 2004 reacted against the child-centered philosophy that had inspired the1990 Education Reform Act, and finally in 2002 passed the Organic Act on Educational Quality (10/2002, December 23), which aimed to instill the “culture of endeavour” into students. However, the Socialist party won the 2004 election and is at the moment of writing preparing a new reform that will modify these tenets. Since the early 1980s seven autonomous governments or “autonomies” (Comunitats Autonomes) have been in charge of their regional education systems, while the other ten received this responsibility in the late 1990s. So far, some of them have complemented the initial and general scheme for “compensation” with other strategies. Immigrant