Globally, vocational education and training (VET) is considered important for ensuring the supply of skilled labour to the economy and economic competitiveness but also for helping the next generation with the transition to working life and integration into society. However, despite this importance, there are no international comparative studies…

This paper identifies and analyses the legitimation strategies used by the OECD as it expanded its role in global educational governance. Whilst the literature recognises the mainly discursive sources of legitimacy which the OECD derives from its testing regime, especially PISA, what remains unexplored is how exactly it has created the legitimacy…

The purpose of this article is to reexamine the decision-making process on Portugal's entry into PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment). The analysis indicates that the decision, which was not unanimous among the government members with responsibilities in the education field, was made in a context of normative emulation, with the…

Global policy transfer has become increasingly popular in recent years, and one recent example of such policy transfer is the England-China Teacher Exchange, which was initiated in 2014 with the explicit aim of raising attainment in maths in English primary schools by trialling concepts used in Shanghai schools, Shanghai rising to the top of the…

This paper discusses the emergence of the new global educational governance characterized by 1) global educational reform movement, 2) the active participation of the international organizations in global educational policy making, and 3) the emerging performative culture. Against this background, this article contextualizes the East Asian…

This paper examines competency-based educational policy-making in a global context. Specifically, it explores how the thinking around competency, spearheaded by international organisations and experts, has led to the development and deployment of a particular notion of global competency. Drawing on critical policy research, I examine three…

This paper examines the problem of modernization of the national education model, based on the program documents "Mangilik El" and "Rukhani Zhangyru," the project "New humanitarian knowledge: 100 new textbooks in the Kazakh language," "Daryn" programs, etc., aimed at the spiritual development of the nation.…

The present paper aims to analyze the trajectory of the Walt Whitman Rostow's modernization theory (1960), the theoretical foundation of the Alliance for Progress, as well as the unfolding of this theory in what Afonso [1] names as the Evaluative State in education. This paper draws upon the works of Afonso [1]; Dale [12]; Gaio [9]; Latham [4];…

This article explains how the Program for International Student Initiative for Development (PISA-D) initiative aims to make PISA more accessible to middle- and low-income countries. A key component of PISA-D is building capacity in the participating countries for managing large-scale student learning assessments and using the results to support…

The accession of Eastern European countries to the European Union increased family wealth and the returns to schooling. I analyze the change in student achievement due to the EU accession of Eastern Europe building on a panel of six PISA waves covering more than 1 million students in 32 countries. Using a difference-in-differences approach, I find…

This article examines a particular type of public-private partnership (PPP) that is rarely studied in comparative educational policy studies: one in which a government funds privately run international schools. The aim of this PPP is to enrich and thereby improve the regular curriculum or to the quality of education in "public schools."…

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development is initiating the International Early Learning Study, a cross-national assessment of early learning outcomes involving the testing of 5-year-old children in participating countries. The authors use this colloquium to inform members of the early childhood community about this project and to…

It is now five years since the introduction of the current National Curriculum for English in England; it is just over 50 years since the Dartmouth Conference drew together American and English educationalists. This paper reports on a hermeneutic study that presents voices from the field of English teaching in England. It asks questions of today's…

The aim of this article is to examine how transnational concepts within educational policies influence national curricula in the reconceptualisation of educational policy into concrete curriculum texts. Based on a critical discourse analysis and the concepts of recontextualisation, convergence and divergence, a third wave of European policy…

Background: This paper analyses the role of, and approach to, policy referencing and borrowing in Hong Kong's recent reforms that culminated in the creation of its New Academic Structure and the Hong Kong Diploma of Secondary Education. Main argument: It argues that Hong Kong has gone further than most jurisdictions not just in responding to…