In June 2024, His Majesty's Chief Inspector of Education announced a national thematic inspection of local authorities in Scotland. The focus of this thematic inspection was how local authorities support schools to improve. This inspection provides a timely opportunity to reflect on strengths, challenges, and opportunities for ensuring…

Spreading like wildfire, school autonomy with accountability (SAWA) policies have transformed education worldwide. Rooted in new public management, SAWA is a 'policy bundle' that links greater decision-making at the school level with standardization and monitoring practices like large-scale assessments and performance indicators. As with every…

The U.S. Department of Education's (ED) Office for Civil Rights (OCR) administers the Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC), which is a mandatory survey of all public schools and school districts in the 50 states, Washington, D.C., and the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico. To support school districts' timely submission of accurate data, OCR takes steps…

Purpose: Over the past decades, there has been an intensifying movement to privatize education in Western nations, with equal concern about the quality of education for all. This article adds to a global understanding of school inspections as a governance mechanism to promote educational quality in an entirely open K-12 educational marketplace.…

School autonomy with accountability (SAWA) reforms have developed in diverse forms in Northern Europe. Following processes of decentralization to the municipal and school levels, quality assurance and inspection became key to the test-based accountability agendas of Denmark and England respectively. With an abductive approach, we explore the…

Technology is transforming the way teachers teach and learn. This Spotlight explores innovative ways to leverage technology to enhance student engagement, personalize instruction, and prepare students for the future. From equitable access to technology and AI-powered tools to drone-based learning and adaptive learning platforms, these articles…

In US-based postsecondary education, first-year students commonly have their compositional ability consequentially assessed on the basis of standardized tests. As a result, students who score above certain thresholds on ACT, SAT, or AP exams often are placed into honors or remedial courses; receive credit remissions; and/or test out of general…

PUMP-CS (Preparing Urban Milwaukee Pathways in Computer Science) is a researcher-practitioner partnership (RPP) among Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS), Marquette University, the Learning Partnership, and the American Institutes for Research® (AIR®). The partnership's goal is to solidify and strengthen a preK-12 computer science pathway throughout…

This paper investigates datafication in schools through an analysis of the enactments of quality assurance and evaluation (QAE) policies in Brazil. In doing so, I question how data permeates and changes school environments, school actors' conduct and their imaginaries. QAE policies encompass large-scale assessments, indicators, rankings and other…

This study analyses how studies on disadvantaged schools, improvement and test-based accountability relate to each other. The analysis covers 69 studies on disadvantaged schools reported in prestigious educational journals and conducted in 1995-2015. Educational policies related to evaluation and accountability define the official goals of…

Large-scale performance assessment programs are a longstanding reform tool. However, standard setting can be a challenge for assessment programs that use primarily non-standardized assessments. The purpose of this paper is to extend this field of research by explaining the standard setting methodology applied to one more recent instantiation of a…

Over the last decade, in both the Netherlands and England, national policy-driven changes have increased schools' responsibility in initial teacher education. This research gathered teacher educators' stories of challenges experienced 'on the ground' in these school-university partnerships. The aim was to explore the reality of working within…

Country profiles are compiled from a variety of national and international sources and have been informed and validated by UNEVOC Centres in the country or other Technical Vocational Education and Training (TVET) national authorities. This profile discusses Singapore's: (1) TVET systems; (2) TVET strategy and key policy documents; (3) governance…

Country profiles are compiled from a variety of national and international sources and have been informed and validated by UNEVOC Centres in the country or other Technical Vocational Education and Training (TVET) national authorities. This profile discusses Lao P.D.R.'s: (1) TVET systems; (2) TVET strategy and key policy documents; (3) governance…

Country profiles are compiled from a variety of national and international sources and have been informed and validated by UNEVOC Centres in the country or other Technical Vocational Education and Training (TVET) national authorities. This profile discusses Mongolia's: (1) TVET system; (2) TVET strategy and key policy documents; (3) governance and…