External Evaluation Tests as Focal Points of Educational Policy and its Location in Spain

This article shows the change that has taken place within the western countries' education policies in the last decades. This change sponsored by the big international and supranational organizations takes as a benchmark education quality closely related to students' academic achievement. Schools, as a consequence of their extension, had to be adapted, not without difficulty, to a situation which has turned them into a convergence point of those education policies which claim to evaluate the education system by means of external standardized tests in their national, international as well as local application. The tendency of education standardization based on quality and achievement is far from being diluted within the current education framework and seems to be strengthened not only by the big international organizations' pressure on national education policies but also due to the fact that education administration have to respond to the more and more demanding society. This society calls for high levels of education quality, which should ensure the optimum results of its new generations' training processes. Consequently, it should guarantee their full integration into the social framework they belong to.