In addition to the third edition of EUA's Autonomy Scorecard, which was published in March 2023, a series of country profiles were released between Autumn 2023 and Spring 2024. The comprehensive analysis of all indicators in these systems revealed that in some cases there was a need for a different categorisation of specific situations. While the…

France's secular political culture, Catholic heritage, and tumultuous relationship with Islam have had a significant impact on 21st-century interpretations, perceptions, and politicisations of religious education in French society. Since religious education is relegated to the French private school system, it is decentralised, complex, and vastly…

The first charter school law surfaced in Minnesota in 1991, and since then, 42 additional states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico have passed laws governing charter schools. Yet still today, the details within those state laws vary significantly, and seven states do not have a law at all. Legislation permitting charter schools was…

In England, as in many other countries, selective universities have been under pressure to show there are no financial barriers for high-potential students from less-advantaged backgrounds. For much of the twentieth century, there was a similarly lively debate about how to open up Britain's prestigious independent boarding schools to a wider…

This election factsheet highlights the following points: (1) Academies receive their funding directly from the government, rather than through local authorities like other state funded schools; (2) There are two types: converter academies (those previously with "good" or "outstanding" Ofsted grades that have converted to…

The conditions required for a reform of the educational finance system as the foundation of compulsory education are 1) devolution to schools and introduction of national standards in order to deal with "individual equality" while compensating for the insufficiency of "aspectual equality," and 2) dealing with educational needs…

The logic of political economy depends on a domestic metaphor, using the "oikos" or household as a model for the "polis." Historically, this metaphor has imagined citizens as the children of a paternal state. However during the 2008 housing crisis, this metaphor was turned upside down, depicting citizens as the parents of infantile state…

In the most recent Programme for International Student Assessment of science learning, the equivalent of six school years separate the achievement of 15-year-olds in Finland, the best-performing country, from their counterparts in Kyrgyzstan, a former Soviet republic. Still more than a school year lies between the neighboring countries Canada,…

The paper starts with a description of higher education in the United Kingdom and of reforms over the last 50 years. By reference to specified output measures, the performance of UK universities is judged to be good. The factors affecting this performance are postulated by comparing policies and approaches in the United Kingdom with those…