This collection is an inside look at European Commission policy-making in education and the privatization of policy-making in the European Union. Along with contributions from leading academics in the field of educational policy and policy-sociology, this book also introduces the voices of policy consultants and policy-makers.

How is European Education Governed? Data is now the lifeblood of education governance. At the international level, organisations like the OECD steer education systems through their programmes of assessment and the European Commission’s project of creating the most successful knowledge economy in the world is driven by data collection, analysis and comparison. At the national level, policy-makers increasingly depend on data to show them where they are positioned, in relation to their competitors, and draw on data to justify policy directions. Within systems, schools and teachers have become proficient in data use, and interpret their priorities with reference to data. This book draws on a three-year comparative study of the influence of data on education systems in Europe, looking at the contrasting policy contexts of Denmark, England, Finland, Scotland and Sweden, and examining the use of data in these systems, in relation to steering by Europe, as well as policy mediation and ‘translation’ of data within systems. The authors draw on interviews with key policy actors in the European Commission and with national policy makers in all five systems, as well as on local case studies and a major comparative survey of the effects of data production and use on the work of teachers and headteachers. The research brought together international researchers from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds, including educationalists, political scientists and specialists in research and evaluation. The book offers new arguments relating to the use of Quality Assurance and Evaluation as a means of standardising and harmonising education policy and practice, while also drawing attention to significant variation in policy and practice across these systems. It should be of interest to researchers, post-graduate students and advanced undergraduate students in policy studies in education and more generally.

International comparisons of educational achievements have come to play a crucial role in understanding the educational field today. This book provides an in-depth analysis of the development of international large-scale assessments. The lives and achievements of transnational educational experts who paved the way for these assessments are discussed as well as the rise of institutions specialising in the making and managing of educational statistics such as the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievements (IEA) and the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) supported by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Emerging transnational policy spaces and their effect on national education policy are also problematised using the concept of ‘Europeanisation’ as a theoretical reference. By bringing together historical and contemporary comparisons using different methodological approaches the goal of this book is to contribute to a widened understanding of educational policy-making as an open-ended and complex process that cannot be reduced to a rational process of linear implementation, or a deduction of world models of education. Instead the result of this book shows that transnational policy flows in many directions in European education today and is being negotiated, translated, interpreted or even contested when recontextualised in different national and/or local arenas. This book addresses crucial questions on how the landscape and its borders of educational knowledge and policy-making have changed over time and place and how the map is currently redrawn in the contemporary globalised educational context. It provides important navigational knowledge for students, teachers and researchers as well as policy-makers at different levels.

A European Politics of Education proposes a sociology of education establishing connections between empirical data coming from European-scale comparative surveys, normative assumptions structuring actors’ representations and interpretative judgements, and a specific focus on Lifelong Learning policy areas. It invites readers to think about the place of standards, expertise and calculations in the European space from a common perspective, supported by a tradition of critical sociology and European political studies. The book: Addresses an important agenda: how the policies and politics of supranational Europe are making a European educational space Contains a response to the emergence of new epistemic governance and instruments at European level Contains contributions from the EU and the UK which give a comprehensive selection of perspectives and analysis of the field as it concerns Europe The complexity of the contemporary European education policy space is addressed here with new lines of inquiry as well as a reflexive outlook, on standardization, policy-making and actor engagement. Students and researchers of European policy studies, education policy analysts and theorists will all be particularly interested readers.

The range, speed and scale of Europeanizing effects in education, and their complexity, has produced a relatively new field of study. Using scholarship and research drawn from sociology, politics and education, this book examines the rise of international and transnational policy and the flow of data and people around Europe to study Europeanizing processes and situations in education. Each chapter creates a space for policy research on European education, involving a range of disciplines to develop empirical studies about European institutions, networks and processes; the interplay between policy-makers, stakeholders, experts, and researchers; and the space between the European and the national. The volume investigates the construction of European education, exploring the consideration of the role of think tanks and consultancies, international organizations, researcher mobilities, standards, indicators of higher education, and cultural metaphor. Bringing together international contributors from a variety of disciplines across Europe, the book will be of key value to academics, researchers and postgraduate students in the fields of education studies, politics and sociology.

This book analyses the transformation of European Education Policy from 1973 to 2020. In doing so, it offers a unique insight into the changes of European education from a predominantly national concern to a supranational policy framework, driven by an economic discourse concerning productivity and employability. The book shows that the idea of the “Europe of Knowledge” did not originate in the Lisbon Strategy of 2000, but rather was the result of a gradual development that started in the mid-1980s. This begun with the establishment of a specific problem definition of education as a solution for Europe’s lack of competitiveness, a definition that was incrementally constructed by the European Commission and the European business community. Highlighting significant and unexplored questions such as the role of European transnational business in education and the role of the “problem entrepreneur” in defining policy issues, this book will provide a comprehensive perspective on European Education Policy that will be of interest to all students of European Politics, Education Policy, and Public Policy.