Towards Shared Accountability: Rethinking the Locus and Scale of Assessment and Improvement in Education

Accountability has emerged as a central feature of educational governance worldwide.

However, the prevailing accountability approach in education, the so-called performance-based accountability (PBA), has led to adverse effects and discomfort among key stakeholders in the education sector.

PBA, with its focus on individual schools as primary account providers, intensifies competitive pressures, fosters institutional fragmentation, and often stigmatizes disadvantaged schools.

Recognizing these drawbacks, several governments are in the process of re-evaluating their accountability frameworks; this entails not only adjusting the measurement of performance outcomes but also giving greater attention to teaching-learning processes that were previously overlooked.Despite these efforts, ongoing reforms often overlook a crucial dimension: the scale at which accountability practices occur.

ACCOUNTED asserts that optimizing accountability requires not only a shift in focus but also a change in the locus of account-giving practice: from individual schools to broader school networks.

This recalibration of accountability, emphasizing shared responsibility among schools within a network, holds the key to fostering meaningful and cooperative relationships, initiating sustained improvement dynamics, and mobilizing additional educational resources at the local level.

The effective implementation of this approach necessitates a meticulous policy design that organizes accountability relations and practices within the context of school networks.

To bridge the gap between policy and practice, we propose testing and refining the 'shared accountability model' through a participatory design strategy involving real school actors.

This innovative approach, by fostering collaboration and awareness among schools within networks, holds the potential to bring about positive transformations across the entire educational system, with a specific emphasis on advancing the well-being of disadvantaged schools.