Here we have one more longer example:
School education in Chile
The market-oriented
education reforms of the 1980s entailed the decentralisation of public school
management responsibilities to municipalities and the introduction of a
nationwide voucher programme. The former involved the transfer of the
administration and infrastructure of all the country’s public primary and
secondary schools to municipalities. The latter is characterised by a per
student public subsidy for schools which are part of the voucher system
(municipal and the majority of private schools) and parents’ free choice of
schools. The introduction of the voucher programme has led a great number of
private schools to enter the school system with a growing share of the student
population (59.1% in 2011, with 51.8% of students enrolled in private schools
which are part of the voucher programme). Attendance of different school types
greatly depends on family income levels. Students from the most disadvantaged
families attend municipal schools in largest numbers even if from 1990 they
have increasingly attended subsidised private schools. Student learning
outcomes in Chile are considerably below the OECD average but there has been
considerable progress in the last decade. In 2009, achievement levels of
Chilean students in the OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment
(PISA) were at the far end within the OECD area in the assessed areas of
reading literacy, mathematics and science. However, Chile performed above any
other Latin American country which took part in PISA (Argentina, Brazil,
Colombia, Mexico, Panama, Peru and Uruguay) in all assessed areas except
mathematics (where its performance is similar to that of Mexico and Uruguay).
Trend analyses of PISA results have also shown some encouraging improvement in
student learning outcomes. In addition, research shows that student results
differ considerably across the socio- economic background of students and the
type of school attended.
Taken from: OECD Review Teacher Evaluation Chile 2013
