ABSTRACT
Over the past 40 years, Chile's education system has been coordinated through hierarchical market governance. This model, which includes a combination of decentralization, vertical accountability, parental choice and incentives for the participation of private providers, has resulted in structural weaknesses for the provision of public education. To address these weaknesses, the New Public Education System (NEP, Law No 21.040) was introduced in 2017, changing the governance structure for the provision of public education by combining two coordination mechanisms: managerialism and networking. This change aimed to increase the sector's capacity to offer high-quality learning opportunities to students, and consequently, increase citizens' trust in public education, which by 2014 enrolled just 36.8% of the school-age population. In this chapter, we first explain how hierarchical market governance operated in Chile. Next, analysing relevant legislation and drawing on interviews with policymakers, we outline how NEP introduced performance management and networking as new modes of coordination and how these potentially improve the capacity for, and trust in public education, within an accountability system that retains strong hierarchical and market components.
