The politics of early school leaving: how do the European Union and the Spanish educational authorities ‘frame’ the policy and formulate a ‘theory of change’

Abstract

The politics of early school leaving: how do the European Union and the Spanish educational authorities 'frame' the policy and formulate a 'theory of change' The final version of this paper was published in: Rambla, X. (2018) The politics of early school leaving: how do the European Union and the Spanish educational authorities 'frame' the policy and formulate a 'theory of change', Journal of European Integration 40 (1), 83-97 ABSTRACT.-The article analyses the interaction between the European Commission and a sample of educational authorities in Spain with regard to the policy against early school leaving. Although this member state scores the highest proportion of early school leavers, apparently it is not adopting some key recommendations issued by the Commission. In fact, while educational policy studies regret this "resistance", studies on EU policies suggest that the EU and the states normally negotiate the ambition and the evaluation of policies in complex ways. In this vein, the article draws on a method of discourse analysis to observe to what extent these educational authorities 'frame' the policy in the same terms and share a similar rationale or 'theory of change'. In brief, the findings point out that the EU, the Government of Spain and two significant regional governments retrieve a similar 'frame' but do not agree regarding the 'theory of change'. KEYWORDS.-Europeanisation. Early school leaving. Educational policy-making. Discursive institutionalism.

Assessing regional performance against early school leaving in Spain

“…Our results also seem to stress the importance of public funding. In this respect, the austerity-based policy implemented in many European countries, including Spain, could have been harmful in the fight against ESL (Donlevy et al, 2019;Rambla, 2018).…”

“…The former offered remedial courses to students at the last years of the compulsory education, and encouraged drop-out students to get back to education system through an alternative track named "initial vocational training programmes" (Programas de Cualificación Profesional Inicial, PCPI). This law also intended to coordinate central and regional policies against early school leaving but the crisis severely cut off the resources (Rambla, 2018). The LOMCE set out the reduction of early school leaving as one of the main objectives.…”

“…It is possible to obtain general information about the measures implemented, but there was neither systematization nor information at regional level. Some authors claimed that despite all Spanish educational authorities apparently convey the European Commission frame of tackling ESL policies, they have discrepancies with regard to the theory of change that are likely to affect policy implementation and outcomes (Donlevy et al, 2019;Rambla, 2018).…”

“…Early school leaving (ESL) 1 has been shown to have detrimental effects on wages, health, and social inclusion (Bridgeland, DiIulio, & Morrison, 2006;Brunello & Paola, 2014;Dickson & Harmon, 2011;Gitschthaler & Nairz-Wirth, 2018;Rumberger, 2011;Rumberger & Lim, 2008). The vast literature analysing the causes of ESL (Fernández Enguita, Mena Martínez, & Riviere Gómez, 2010;Rumberger & Lim, 2008) has hardly focussed on the role of regions (some exceptions are in Cabus, 2015;López Martínez, Marco Reverte, &Palacios Manzano, 2016, andRambla, 2018), although in some countries they have the highest level of responsibility regarding the implementation of educational policies and managing of the education budget.…”

Addressing the Early School Leaving Issue in Niger: An Improvement of Teachers’ Status from Contract to Permanent

“…Another study carried out by Rambla addressed the issue of early school leaving in Spain using the Discursive Institutionalism [26]. The author came up with the conclusion that while the European Union, the Government of Spain and two other states used the same frame, their perceptions of the theory of change were different.…”