In the past decades, schools in developed nations have been experiencing the double challenge of increasingly decentralised structural arrangements coupled with strenthening accountability demands. Often this is described as a situation in which, as the rope lengthens, the noose tightens, or balancing the dilemma of autonomy and accountability (Wildy, 1998; Arcia, Macdonald, Patrinos & Porta, 2011). Some argue that large scale assessment regimes serve as instruments for educational reform. However, others believe that such regimes are the work of the devil, imposing constraints on the curriculum and leading to unethical exclusions of students.

This paper addresses the question: How can school systems use large scale data to centrally encourage and support school improvement, in a context of increasing decentralisation of authority?

It is proposed that the balance among variables such as authority to hire and fire teachers, responibility to formulate school budgets, and curriculum design and content relate in different ways to the level of student achievement, as measured internationally by PISA (Wößmann, Lüdemann, Schütz & West, 2007).  PISA provides comparable data on 15 year students for  41 countries including member countries of the OECD. However, it is not always obvious how accountability operates to stimulate school improvement or what accountability measures make a difference.

The paper reports the experiences of one educational authority in Western Australia that has taken seriously  the use of national assessment data, as well as international assessment and state-level exit examination data. Structures of support and pressure have been implemented now for 8 years, using 12 years of data.

This paper provides an example of how assessment regimes are used for accountability and also to drive improvement in student learning, and how this pressure is balanced with support within a context to evolving school level autonomy.

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