Since 2000, girls' education has been an increasingly high-profile concern in international development policy. At the same time, there has been a trend towards the greater production and reliance on quantitative data, indicators and targets in national and international education policy. Scholars have raised concerns about the rise of…

Over the past decade, the OECD has gradually shifted its governing mechanism from promoting 'best practices' based on comparative data on pupils' cognitive skills to actively advocating for individual and collective well-being as an "alternative" and "ideal future." This article focuses on the OECD's use of 'techno-scientific…

Due to their common history, Finland and Sweden share many similarities. However, important differences have also developed in constitutional law, political culture and governance models. These differences have affected the implementation of international trends in the governance of higher education in the two countries. Both the Finnish and…

In the following article, we share our findings from the comparative analyses of 54 lifelong learning policy measures implemented in nine European countries, with a particular focus on their orientations, objectives, and solutions devised. Informed by the theoretical framework of Interpretive Policy Analysis (IPA), we have further reasoned on the…

Kosovo introduced two major curriculum reforms over the past 20 years -- in 2001 and 2011 -- each aiming to bring education closer to international trends. Simultaneously, Kosovo underwent major political, social, and cultural changes after the war in 1999, and the declaration of independence in 2008. This article relies on document analysis and…

This article investigates the failure of introducing comprehensive schooling in Austria, one of few 'conservative' outliers in the European post-war reform trend where early selection survived reform attempts in the 1970s. In particular, the focus is on the most recent attempt to postpone tracking from the age of 10-14 in the wake of Austria's…

This article focuses on the interplay between institutional arrangements, family strategies, and market devices in the transition to higher education (HE) in France with a view to documenting both persistent features of the French 'conservative' educational regime and recent changes, in particular those related to neo-liberal influences. Using a…

The global diffusion of outcome-based accountability in education is contested, with accounts of universal convergence being challenged by perspectives emphasising heterogeneity across different national or local contexts. This study uses data from PISA to explore, firstly, the spatial and temporal diffusion of accountability across OECD…

National higher education systems are undergoing profound changes, discussed in many but unrelated studies as outcomes of internationalisation dynamics and institutional isomorphism pressures. We propose to link these studies by emphasising the influence of both internationalisation and isomorphism on the formation of a global educational regime.…

In this study, a historical and international analysis of early childhood education in Turkey is made. More specifically, we explore the trend in pre-school enrolment, compare Turkey's enrolment rate with other countries, study whether access to pre-school is related to social class and gender, and investigate the impact of pre-school attendance…

In the present study we provide an interpretation of a general narrative of transnational governance of higher education. All the elements of the narrative--competition, ranking autonomy and accountability--are visibly present in contemporary higher education policy agenda. We examine these not as separate ideas and practices but as an interlinked…

While technical and vocational education and training (TVET) is re-emerging on the agenda of many development agencies and governments of developing countries alike, there remains a serious lack of theoretically grounded literature on how skills formation systems in developing countries change over time, and how these transformations are…

The concepts of differentiation and profiling are cornerstones in discussions about the organisation of contemporary higher education systems, following the trends of massification and global competition. This contribution provides a system-level description and comparison of the German and Dutch higher education systems regarding these topics,…

Drawing from a range of secondary data sources, this paper succinctly overviews patterns of access to good-quality education in Turkey over the last 15 years. It also maps the policy context within which issues of access, quality and equity are examined. As a result of effective supply and demand side strategies, enrolment ratios beyond the…

Using data collected by the Birth-to-Twenty child cohort study in urban South Africa, this paper describes the patterns of schooling of a population of children born in the Greater Johannesburg area in April to June 1990. This paper examines the patterns of initial enrolment in Grade 1, transitions through grades, and trends in primary school…