Frustrated transfers: the attempt to introduce school vouchers system in Spain (1978-1982)

Abstract

This paper analyses the origin, development and fall of the ‘school voucher’ system in Spain. It was called the Ley de Financiación de la Enseñanza Obligatoria (Compulsory Education Financing Law) (LFEO), and this reform represented the first attempt at an international level to establish a school voucher model for a whole country. This article attempts to explain the importance of the new ideas that emerged from the Economics of Education and International Organisation to understand the origin of the proposed LFEO. It also focuses on its development and the parliamentary debate of the law. Finally, it explains how other foreign ideas began to compete to establish models of equal opportunities in education different from the one proposed. The paper provides a valuable insight into how educational transfers take place, and the importance of the role that local actors can play in the development and, in this case, the failure of such transfers.