The scale of school governance within educational systems is in the spotlight. Following the shortcomings of school autonomy and test-based accountability policies (Buerger et al., 2023; Emler et al., 2019), various regional and national governments are reforming their school governance structures to broaden the scale and encourage collaboration. These emerging approaches aim to shift autonomy and external evaluation away from isolated schools and towards new, mid-range educational institutions designed to supervise, coordinate, and support networks of schools (e.g., Ehren et al., 2017; Honig et al., 2010). These policies vary in design, ranging from local to national levels and systemic to targeted reforms.. The Barcelona City Council has adopted this new school governance approach. Since mid-2024, it has been piloting a policy that groups six schools in a deprived area of the city under a new administrative structure called the “Educational Zone” (EZ). This EZ is led by a professional team from different pedagogical and administrative support services. The policy goal is to enhance educational success by transfering certain administrative responsibilities from the schools to this EZ institution, as well as offering pedagogical support to schools and developing a shared educational project that guides the actions of all schools in the zone and establishes the common objectives for all schools. This study aims to evaluate the effects of this policy at different levels. The research draws upon a realist evaluation approach (Pawson, 2013), organized in two stages. In the first stage, in-depth, semi-structured interviews were conducted with policy designers to extract the core assumptions of the intervention, the expected outcomes, and the causal chains intended to achieve them (Manzano, 2016). Subsequently, the second stage follows a sequential mixed-methods approach (Draucker et al., 2020) that unfolds in two steps. The first step involves a survey administered to school actors in the targeted educational zone—i.e., the treatment group—and a second zone with similar social characteristics, used as a control group. The second step includes conducting in-depth interviews with school actors, aiming to unpack and explain the mechanisms behind the impacts of the policy identified–but also the reasons why the policy has not produced expected outcomes in certain areas. Although the program is still in its early stages and three years of implementation remain, the study identifies a set of potentialities and limitations that provide early evidence on this new school governance approach.

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