Quality of steering in primary education:Governance capacities of school boards dealing with student decline

The governance capacities of 34 school boards in primary education were studied by means of repeated questionnaires and interviews. All of these school boards have to deal with demographic student decline. The focus was on their capacities for data-based decision making and their social capital. Although school boards have a lot of information available in their organisations, they do not use all of this information systematically. School boards in general are very content with their internal social capital and mainly differ in their external social capital. The addition of information about learning gains (provided by the researchers) did not influence the capacities in dealing with data in 17 school boards, compared to a control group of 6 school boards. Eleven school boards participated in a simulation game (organised by the researchers). Their participation did not influence their perception of social capital, compared to a control group of 6 school boards. So although school boards value the information about learning gains and the simulation, short term effects were not found. This may be due to the relatively short time period between the interventions and the second interview/questionnaire