Policy experimentation in complex education systems

Complexity is increasing in education – in governance arrangements, in the numbers of stakeholders and in the availability and use of evaluation and other accountability data. These changes call for moving away from a traditional policy cycle towards one which can evolve and adapt with our systems in order to govern them effectively. One tool of this new kind of governance is policy experimentation. This chapter suggests avenues to make experimentation a more effective instrument for policy making in a complex environment, and demonstrates that a tension exists between properly evaluating the effects of narrowly-focused experiments and translating these results into the broader network in which every stakeholder is embedded. It suggests that a good balance can be struck by experimenting at a suitable scale, and moving towards what is called ecosystem experimentation.