López Rupérez, F. (2021). La gobernanza de los sistemas educativos. Fundamentos y orientaciones [The governance of educational systems: Foundations and orientations]. (Ismael Sanz Labrador)

Authors

Ismael Sanz Labrador

DOI

10.22550/2174-0909.2995

Commentarios | Comments

López Rupérez, F. (2021).

Resumen

La gobernanza de los sistemas educativos. Fundamentos y orientaciones is a very necessary and opportune book in these years in which we have seen how evidence-based educational policies are gaining ground in the countries of the developed world. Francisco López Rupérez’s book is an important contribution to help ensure that this trend of incorporating the conclusions from rigorous, scientific studies into decision making will also, with all of its force, reach the steps taken in education in Spain. ,

The conclusions of La gobernanza de los sistemas educativos. Fundamentos y orientaciones are very relevant. In particular, chapter 8 of the book includes the reflections of Olibie (2013) on the curriculum: ,

In 2020, I had the chance to edit the issue of Papeles de Economía Española on “Human capital in the digital economy” and in the introduction to it, I noted that ,

Human capital and technological progress are two fundamental and interrelated factors that are at the core of economic development, as two of the 2019 winners of the Nobel Prize in Economics, Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo, recently observed in Good economics for hard times (2019): ,

To face the major challenge that automation and robotisation pose for the educational system, it is important that the people responsible for educational policies in Spain are aware of the digitalisation process of the economy in which we are immersed. It is vital that the leaders of the Ministry of Education and the education ministries of Spain’s Autonomous Regions have training, competences, and skills at the level that the challenge we are facing demands. As Francisco López Rupérez states, ,

Ultimately, “it is not acceptable to demand things from the lower levels of the educational system that the higher levels are not in a position to offer” (p. 198). ,

José García Montalvo, from the Universidad Pompeu Fabra, stated in 2013 in the State School Council’s journal Participación Educativa, then chaired by López Rupérez himself, that the educational measures implemented must be based on empirical evidence and not on prejudices or justifications that are taken for granted before applying them at scale. Research-based educational interventions that have a scientific basis using rigorous methodologies. As I myself added in the introduction to the issue of Papeles de Economía Española, it is a matter of evaluations based on experimental design with controlled and randomised or pseudo-experimental tests using, for example, instrumental variables, difference in differences, regression discontinuity, or counter-factual analysis. Identifying effects of education that take into account the endogenous character of training and the existence of variables that are not always observable, such as cultural factors, or the spirit and resolve that each individual displays to improve his or her educational level. Initiatives such as the Education Endowment Fund in the United Kingdom provide a good example of the advances that have occurred in some countries in the implementation of educational reforms evaluated using quantitative methodology. This provides scientific evidence about what works and what does not work in the field of educational interventions. A solid foundation for identifying, testing, and then applying at scale measures and programmes that make a real lasting difference in the educational achievements and results of children and young people. On this particular line, La gobernanza de los sistemas educativos. Fundamentos y orientaciones explicitly backs the adoption of a scientifically-in-spired approach, that brings us close to the “science of policies” (p. 198). ,

“If you can’t measure it, it doesn’t exist,” as they say in the English-speaking world. Measuring educational systems is not without its problems, but it has a virtue that few would question. But the worst thing of all would be if we did not have proven evidence for the educational measures that mean that students acquire better knowledge and competences. Without the evaluations, we would not be able to identify the good practices that have led students from some countries to know more. It is a matter of improving education by providing robust data with which to take better decisions. In this regard, chapter 6 of the book, “Modelos para una gobernanza educativa” [“Models for educational governance”], describes the features that high-performance educational systems share. “All of them adopted a scientifically inspired approach to defining and implementing the policies, and they gave a greater importance to the role of people and knowledge” (p. 199). ,

Indeed, López Rupérez identifies the practices in questions of educational governance that successful educational systems implement, concentrating on Portugal, Finland, and Singapore. It is revealing the manner in which Portugal has used benchmarking, which involves “comparing themselves with other organisations that, starting in this case from worse positions, have been able to advance significantly; in order then to try to work out how they did it” (p. 166). In fact, the excellent development of the educational system in Portugal until very recently is a good “rebuff” for Spain given that ,

The conclusion with which he ends the book is a brilliant coda to La gobernanza de los sistemas educativos. Fundamentos y orientaciones, and is indispensable for anyone who is interested in educational policies. López Rupérez recalls the words of the 19th-century Franco-Dutch writer, Joris-Karl Huysmans “Reality does not forgive those who scorn it; it takes revenge by shattering their dreams, trampling them and flinging the shards onto a mud heap.” ,

Banerjee, A. V., & Duflo, E. (2019). Good economics for hard times. Public Affairs. ,

García Montalvo, J. (2013). Evaluación de la eficacia de la políticas educativas y transparencia: la importancia de los experimentos aleatoriza- dos [Evaluating the effectiveness of education policies and transparency: the importance of randomised experiments]. Participación educativa, 2 (3), 75-82. ,

OECD (2019). Employment Outlook. OECD. ,

Olibie, E. (2013). Emergent global curriculum trends: Implications for teachers as facilitators of curriculum change. Journal of Education and Practice, 4 (5), 161-167. ,

Sanz, I. (2020). El capital humano en la economía digital [Human capital in the digital economy]. Papeles de Economía Española, 166, 1-5. ,

Ismael Sanz Labrador ■ ,,,

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Citación recomendada | Recommended citation

Labrador, I. S. (2023) . López Rupérez, F. (2021). La gobernanza de los sistemas educativos. Fundamentos y orientaciones [The governance of educational systems: Foundations and orientations]. (Ismael Sanz Labrador). Revista Española de Pedagogía(1). https://doi.org/10.22550/2174-0909.2995