Understanding the Effects of Educational Governance in Chile and Uruguay

Abstract

This research analyzes the effects of educational governance on the quality of basic education in two Latin American countries. Educational governance is operationalized using four factors: decentralization, accountability, provision and financing, and incentives. Through the use of a mixed-methods approach—using statistical techniques and 60 semi-structured interviews with different key players in the education field—the study illuminates some mechanisms through which governance influences quality. The main findings are that, contra some assertions made by policy makers, institutional arrangements matter in a non-unidirectional way. However, the research shows that educational governance is not the main explanatory variable when explaining the quality of basic education. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.