The Renegotiation of the Large Scale Assessment’S Heritage on School Evaluation in Europe

IEA (PIRLS and TIMMS) and OECD-PISA results have entailed a political and media impact which paved the way to several reforms in the school system of many European countries, although they were introduced in different times and with different ways. The large scale assessment has received severe disapprovals for the theoretical and methodological system which characterizes this kind of assessment. Criticisms largely question the low attention of the up-bottom approach given by standard tests in school system analysis. A growing attention has been given to vertical and horizontal dimensions in the last years (Jansens e Eheren 2016; Eddy-Spicer 2017). The vertical dimension focuses on the decentralization of powers towards intermediate public or not-public organizations. The horizontal dimension refers to school managers and teachers’ powers in creating schools networks and peer relations among schools (Hargreaves 2010). National and supranational governing bodies, based on the increasing legitimacy of polycentrism in assessment measures, are adapting their approach to a decentralized decisional process, creating a link between the edge and the core system. This work aims at giving a review of the main assessment methods (self-evaluation, external evaluation and improvement) used in European school systems, while focusing on the heritage, the links and the redeployment of the methodological systems applied by both national and supranational organizations (Oecd 2017) including intermediate organizations and schools networks (Eheren et. al 2017). The analysis will reflect in particular on the complex and controversial evolution of the decentralization process and the developing polycentrism of European school institutions.