This paper presents part of the results deriving from the research Project “National and international evaluations as policies for improvement in Spanish education within the European context”, funded by Universidad Autónoma de Madrid in the context of its second competitive call for Multidisciplinary Research Projects. More specifically, we attempt to answer the following question: what uses do external evaluations have in relation to regulating, controlling and persuading? This question has been approached from the perspectives of the actors that belong to the different levels of the education system: state authorities and administration, regional authorities and administration, and finally schools and highschools.

This issue has been extensively studied in the literature, especially concerning policy-regulating processes from a supranational perspective (Carvalho, 2009, 2011; Monarca, 2015; Morgan, 2013; Teodoro and Jezine, 2012). For instance, Dale (2000, 2007) understands external evaluations as mechanisms that contribute to the configuration and implementation of a global education agenda. Similarly, authors such as as Grek (2009), Nóvoa (2010), Ozga (2009) and Popkewitz (2013) consider that evaluations are systems which provide numbers and data to rule and control the system. Ball (2003, 2013), for his part, frames the analysis of evaluations within the culture of performativity and the processes transforming education into merchandise. These interpretative frameworks help understand external evaluations as devices involved in changing the system through regulation, control or persuasion (McDonnell, 1994): they serve (1) for national governments to align their policies and syllabi with supposedly universal competencies; (2) for orienting practice towards the shaping of meanings on education and quality: (3) for the governments to control schools and teachers; (4) for focusing teachers’ endeavours, etc.

From a broader point of view, these interpretations are somehow encompassed in Barroso (2005). According to this author, we are being faced with new forms of regulating the education policies and practices that characterize the state’s reforming and restructuring processes. He puts forward a twofold reflection on these news forms of regulation: on the one hand, they have to do with the introduction of the logics of marketing and business in education. On the other, this model of bureaucratic-professional regulation does not allow for the adequate development of state education and thus, new forms of regulation are needed.

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