This article aims to understand how new accountability instruments in the context of the French-speaking Belgian educational system are appropriated by schools. After having characterised the specific nature of those instruments in the context of a traditionally highly decentralised system involved in a significant process of centralisation, we identify their effects through the case study of three schools. Using a new institutionalist lens, the analyses show that these instruments refer, in the French-speaking Belgian context, to a specific demand from the political environment of schools: developing and framing a common educational landscape, rather than to a logic of teacher evaluation. The data also indicate a reaffirmation, against this specific political demand, of three traditional ways of functioning tied up to the requests made by local educational communities. Thus, the analyses show a conflict between inherited institutions highly embedded in local contexts and the political signal associated with the new accountability instruments aiming to institutionalise common norms at the system level.
What shapes the flypaper effect? The role of the political environment in the budget process
