In Lithuania, a new competency-based curriculum has recently been introduced alongside a two-stage external state examination system. The intention was to replace high-stakes examinations, predominantly composed of closed- or short-answer items, with competency-based assessments that give students an opportunity to demonstrate their unique skills and performance. However, the newly developed examination system did not deliver the expected results. The number of examinations increased when examination parts were transferred to a digital format, the test design remained unchanged, and no performance assessment was introduced (Raudiene et al., 2025).

After the first year of implementing the new exam, marked by a high number of issues related to poor item quality, difficulty-level mismatches, and technical implementation, which raised public dissatisfaction and anger, we decided to analyze how the decision-making process was carried out and how far the current assessment system is from the competency-based assessment.

Focusing on competencies as learning outcomes assumes that checking whether students recall information is no longer the highest priority, while assessing what students can do with knowledge is (Darling-Hammond & Adamson, 2010; Elmer et al., 2019; Black & Wiliam, 1998). Assessing how students apply knowledge in new situations goes beyond traditional paper-and-pencil tests or their digital alternatives and involves direct interaction between the assessor and the assessed, which may not consistently yield quantitative feedback. This does not satisfy the bureaucratic apparatus that uses exam scores, indicators, and rankings for governance and accountability at all levels, from students and teachers to municipalities and states (Ball, 2003). Little is questioned about what this culture of measurement brings to education apart from competition, stratification, the distortion of basic pedagogical principles, and distrust in education (Biesta, 2010; Koretz, 2017; Au, 2009).

 Because of the lack of clear rules and a diverse array of actors, the development of education policy is complex (Shaw, 2019). Ball (1998) described it as a process of bricolage, borrowing and copying bits of ideas from elsewhere, interpreting theories and research, and reusing them as though they might work. Due to the high stakes associated with school examinations, university enrollment, school rankings, and follow-up consequences, assessment policy-making is considered extremely complex and multilayered, thus requiring a well-established theoretical approach.  

The Multiple Streams Framework (MSF) (Kingdon, 2014) offers a lens for understanding how certain proposals reach the political agenda and why some issues receive political attention at certain times while others do not. The MSF is a tool for analyzing nonlinear and non-rational political processes (Shaw, 2019; Stout & Stevens, 2000), including policy agenda-setting, identifying the necessary conditions for translating political agendas into concrete decisions, determining the timing of reform, and diagnosing policy failures.  

Kingdon (2014) suggests that policy development comprises three streams:

• The problem stream explains “how problems come to be recognized and how conditions come to be defined as problems” (Kingdon, 2014, p. 19), bringing stakeholders’ concerns to light.
• In the policy stream, people with specialized knowledge generate alternative proposals to address the problem. The proposals that win should meet criteria such as value alignment, societal support, financial capability, and political support.
• The political stream represents “swings of national mood” (Kingdon, 2014, p. 20) or the dominant view on the issue and the proposed responses to it. This stream is characterized by stakeholders' involvement in solving the problem.

These streams develop independently, but at critical moments all three conflate, opening a window of opportunity to introduce a new policy. Policy-making is enhanced by policy entrepreneurs who invest resources, such as expertise, political influence, and determination, to bring together all three streams to achieve policy change. 

For this study, we adopted a qualitative research design to examine how MSF could explain the process of assessment policy-making and the formation of assessment practices in Lithuania. Recognizing that educational assessment affects a large number of people from diverse social groups, including students, teachers, parents, headteachers, academics, municipal and national-level education managers, politicians, government officials, publishers, and others, we sought to reach representatives of all these groups and conducted 24 in-depth interviews. Among our participants were the highest-level government officials directly responsible for introducing new assessment policies, as well as other representatives who are publicly known for their positions on assessment policy. These interviews were conducted using the MS Teams platform between August and October 2025. Following MSF, we asked all our participants the same three questions: (1) how they perceived the critical problem in educational assessment; (2) what alternative solutions were on the table; and (3) what the political context was for implementing new policies. We asked for their reflections from their current positions, as some had already left their previous posts. To analyze the collected data, we used thematic analysis, which is known for reflecting reality and revealing its surface (Braun & Clark, 2006), making it a perfect match for Kingdon’s MSF. When conducting thematic analysis of the collected data, we followed a six-stage approach: familiarization with the data through careful reading and preparation for analysis, initial code generation that involves identifying segments in the raw data that can be assessed in a meaningful way (Boyatzis, 1998), searching for themes by grouping codes into potential themes, reviewing themes by revising them, and then defining themes by identifying the “essence of what each theme is about” (Braun & Clark, 2006, p. 22). Our interpretative work through the first five stages helped identify the recurring analytical patterns and start the final sixth stage of report writing. The MSF provided a structure for our narrative, as the identified themes were organized around three MSF streams - problems, policy, and politics. Alongside the policy entrepreneurs were named, and our evaluation focused on whether and how an open policy window was used

Our analysis identified critical turns that shaped assessment policymaking: Within the problem strand, the common concerns focused on: (1) misalignment between the expected learning outcomes and the examination system, and on failed promises to introduce competency-based assessment; (2) equity and fairness issues were repeatedly raised, especially regarding the assessment experiences of disadvantaged student groups; (3) the quality and consistency of exam design were discussed, with reference to a lack of expertise in test development. The policy strand revealed possible alternatives: (1) growing support for systemic change to university admission, proposing more pathways to the university and not limiting acceptance to examination results alone; (2) improving the effectiveness of the examination system by introducing assessment innovations such as comparative judgment, assessment moderation, performance-based and adaptive assessments, etc. The politics strand revealed that: (1) not only is strong political leadership and engagement by top government officials crucial, but that without sufficient parliamentary support, things might get complicated; (2) certain bureaucratic procedures and a lack of expertise among the permanent staff in the Ministries and Agencies might become weak spots leading to failure; (3) different stakeholder groups emphasized different aspects of the problem, requiring distinct solutions; for example, students are mostly concerned with how well they pass exams and university entrance; headteachers are disappointed with school rankings; administrative staff are preoccupied with the technical implementation; while government officials worry about how their decisions will affect future election results. This reminded us of a battle where all the fighters had different ideas of what their victory would be like. Finally, we conclude that although curriculum reform created a policy window for political change to align learning goals with assessment approaches, the lack of a shared view among policy entrepreneurs on how to achieve the desired goal left the window unopened.

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