Doctoral Researchers

The influence of policy information on policy change in the German school education sector

Evidence-based policy instruments have increasingly been introduced to the German education sector, triggered by the so-called TIMMA and PISA shock in 1997 and 2000. In 2006, the Federal States committed to participate in the Comprehensive Strategy for Educational Monitoring, including (1) international student assessments, (2) comparative assessments of the achievement of the education standards in the so-called National Assessment Study, (3) comprehensive VERA tests as well as (4) joint reporting of the Länder and the Federal Government. These tools are cost and time consuming and the question arises, if they fulfill their intended purpose.

The rather negative rhetoric concerning the use of such policy knowledge in the literature does not recognize the fact that a lot of change already occurred on a policy, organizational and structural level. Examples are the changed role of the school supervising authorities from controlling to advisory bodies or the new cooperation between administration and research/academia. In Bavaria, for instance, new instruments of external and internal school evaluation have been established. Moreover, individual pilot projects are conducted by the states and revealed problems could partially be solved. Examples include professionalization measures for English teachers in the state of Brandenburg as a reaction to the Ländervergleich 2009 (state comparison 2009) or the decrease of in the number of school repeaters in Rhineland-Palatine since PISA-E 2000. Finally, almost all the States do have quality agencies and monitoring reports by now.

Using an explorative and mainly qualitative approach, my first contribution will be a systematization of the changes in school education policies in the states of Bavaria, Saxony, Brandenburg and (Schleswig-Holstein) between 2003 and 2013. Next, I will investigate if evaluation information had an influence on those new developments. Most research on the use of information refers to use as a dependent variable and examines what factors foster use, for example timeliness or quality of reports. Conceptualizing the use of information as an independent variable, I seek to answer the question which information was included and excluded and how the information got into the policy process. Therefore, I will conduct interviews in state-level ministries of education and their subordinate authorities (agency level).