School Policy Reform in Europe: Exploring Transnational Alignments, National Particularities and Contestations (Educational Governance Research, 22) 3031354338, 9783031354335

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Educational Governance Research 22

John Benedicto Krejsler Lejf Moos   Editors

School Policy Reform in Europe Exploring Transnational Alignments, National Particularities and Contestations

Educational Governance Research Volume 22

Series Editors Lejf Moos , Aarhus University, Copenhagen, NV, Denmark Stephen Carney , Roskilde University, Roskilde, Denmark Editorial Board Members Stephen J. Ball, Institute of Education, University of London, London, UK Lucas Cone, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark Neil Dempster, Institute for Educational Research, Griffith University,  Mt Gravatt, QLD, Australia Maren Elfert , King’s College London, Sch of Education, London, UK Olof Johansson, Centre for Principal Development, Umeå University,  Umeå, Sweden Klaus Kasper Kofod, Department of Education, Aarhus University, Copenhagen NV, Denmark John B. Krejsler , Danish School of Education (DPU), Aarhus University,  Copenhagen, Denmark Cathryn Magno, University of Fribourg, Fribourg, Switzerland Romuald Normand, Research Unit CNRS SAGE, University of Strasbourg Strasbourg, France Marcelo Parreira do Amaral, Institute of Education, Universität Münster,  Münster, Germany Jan Merok Paulsen, Teacher Education, Oslo Metropolitan University,  Oslo, Norway Nelli Piattoeva, Faculty of Education & Culture, Tampere University,  Tampere, Finland Barbara Schulte, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria James P. Spillane, School of Education & Social Policy, Northwestern University,  Evanston, USA Gita Steiner-Khamsi, Teachers College, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA Daniel Tröhler, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria Michael Uljens , Faculty of Education, Åbo Akademi University, Vaasa, Finland Antoni Verger, Autonomous University of Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain Florian Waldow, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany

This series presents recent insights in educational governance gained from research that focuses on the interplay between educational institutions and societies and markets. Education is not an isolated sector. Educational institutions at all levels are embedded in and connected to international, national and local societies and markets. One needs to understand governance relations and the changes that occur if one is to understand the frameworks, expectations, practice, room for manoeuvre, and the relations between professionals, public, policy makers and market place actors. The aim of this series is to address issues related to structures and discourses by which authority is exercised in an accessible manner. It will present findings on a variety of types of educational governance: public, political and administrative, as well as private, market place and self-governance. International and multidisciplinary in scope, the series will cover the subject area from both a worldwide and local perspective and will describe educational governance as it is practised in all parts of the world and in all sectors: state, market, and NGOs. The series: – Covers a broad range of topics and power domains – Positions itself in a field between politics and management / leadership – Provides a platform for the vivid field of educational governance research – Looks into ways in which authority is transformed within chains of educational governance – Uncovers relations between state, private sector and market place influences on education, professionals and students. Indexing: This series is indexed in Scopus. Please contact Astrid Noordermeer at [email protected] if you wish to discuss a book proposal.

John Benedicto Krejsler  •  Lejf Moos Editors

School Policy Reform in Europe Exploring Transnational Alignments, National Particularities and Contestations

Editors John Benedicto Krejsler Danish School of Education Aarhus University Copenhagen, Denmark

Lejf Moos Danish School of Education Aarhus University Copenhagen, Denmark

ISSN 2365-9548     ISSN 2365-9556 (electronic) Educational Governance Research ISBN 978-3-031-35433-5    ISBN 978-3-031-35434-2 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-35434-2 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Contents

Part I Introduction 1

Introduction: School Policy Reform in Europe Between Transnational Alignment and National Contestation��������������������������    3 John Benedicto Krejsler and Lejf Moos

Part II National Cases: Northwestern Europe 2

Danish School Policy: Remaining Nordic While Going Transnational��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   27 John Benedicto Krejsler

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England: Neo-Liberalism, Regulation and Populism in the Educational Reform Laboratory ������������������������������������������������   47 David Hall

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School Reform Policy and Governance in Germany Between National and Transnational Expectations: With Outlooks on Austria and Switzerland ��������������������������������������������������������������������   71 Bettina-Maria Gördel and Stephan Gerhard Huber

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Transnational Forces in Dutch Educational Policies and Practices��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������   93 Theo Wubbels and Jan van Tartwijk

Part III National Cases: Southern Europe 6

French Education Policies and the PISA Paradigm: The Strong Republican State Absorbing External Influences ������������  117 Romuald Normand

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Changing School Policies in Italy: From Welfare Equity Model to the New Public Management Instrumentations��������������������  139 Paolo Landri v

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Multi-scalar Interactions and Educational Reform: The Trajectory of School Policy in Catalonia Within the Spanish State��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  159 Antoni Verger, Edgar Quilabert, and Mauro C. Moschetti

Part IV National Cases: Central & Eastern Europe and the Western Balkans 9

School Policy and Reforms in Poland in the Light of Decentralisation: Between Democratisation and Centralisation������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  187 Joanna Madalińska-Michalak

10 Czech  School Reforms: Between East and West ����������������������������������  213 Petr Novotný, Dominik Dvořák, and Michaela Dvořáková 11 Education  Policies and Reforms in Slovenia and Croatia: Shared History, Diverging Paths������������������������������������������������������������  237 Eva Klemenčič Mirazchiyski, Urška Štremfel, Nikša Alfirević, and Ljiljana Najev Čačija Part V Discussions 12 Ever-Morphing  Relations Between the Global, Supranational and the National in Schooling Policy: A Reflection on Some European Cases����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  263 Bob Lingard 13 Europe as the Exterior Interiorized in the Infrastructures of Policy����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  281 Thomas S. Popkewitz 14 Discussion:  The Importance of Context in European School Policy Reforms ����������������������������������������������������������������������������  303 Lejf Moos and John Benedicto Krejsler

Part I

Introduction

Chapter 1

Introduction: School Policy Reform in Europe Between Transnational Alignment and National Contestation John Benedicto Krejsler

and Lejf Moos

Abstract This chapter introduces to how school policy reform in Europe increasingly aligns national school and education policies to proliferating transnational collaborations. This takes place mostly via transnational collaborations like the OECD and the EU, and for higher education the Bologna process. But even the IEA contributes by means of influential surveys, knowledge production and methodological development. The chapter explains this alignment as processes of de-contextualization, when policymakers broker consensus in transnational agencies, up against the ensuing processes of re-contextualization when this de-contextualized consensus has to be re-contextualized in different national contexts. This alignment in terms of common standards, social technologies and qualification frameworks aims at facilitating mobility of students, workers and business as well as fostering a European identity among citizens from Europe’s patchwork of small and medium-size countries, representing different languages, cultures and societal contexts. As emphasized in the chapter, these processes of policy transfer, exchange and mutual inspiration are equally rife with national contestation as transnational norms meet with national traditions. With reference to the book’s eleven country chapters (ten EU countries, representing Northwestern, Southern, Central & Eastern Europe + Western Balkans, as well as England) the introduction points to the diversity of contestations that transnational policy also produces when it meets particular national contexts, ranging from progressive reform pedagogy and Bildung resistance to positivist and economistic approaches to education over increasing focus upon ‘national values’ to recent outright nationalist resentment to transnational and multilateral encroachment upon national sovereignty. The chapter  also points to national school policy and practice as increasingly framed by digitalization and commercialization.

J. B. Krejsler (*) · L. Moos Danish School of Education, Aarhus University, Copenhagen, Denmark e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. B. Krejsler, L. Moos (eds.), School Policy Reform in Europe, Educational Governance Research 22, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-35434-2_1

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Keywords  European education policy · School policy · Transnational policy · National school · Comparative education

I ntroduction to the Challenges of School Policy Reform in Europe The guiding idea of this edited collection is to present a compiled panorama of national school policies across Europe, showing the interaction between transnational education policy collaboration and the reception of that collaboration in national school policies. Our panorama spans eleven national cases – ten EU member states and England1 – and the regions within which they are located in the various corners of Europe. Since the 1990s, national school and education policies across Europe have moved from being largely national undertakings to becoming increasingly mediated by collaborations within transnational bodies like the OECD, the EU, the IEA (International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement), and for higher education  – including teacher education  - the Bologna process. This phenomenon has taken the form of alignment into a largely  Anglo-American- or transatlantic-­dominated global education regime, operationalized by means of a complex mix of policy advice, standards, performance indicators, influential surveys, and knowledge production. This collaborative process was first institutionalized in the post-second world war period in the form of economic collaboration, but later transformed by human capital and the knowledge economy discourse to increasingly include school and education, from the 1990s in particular (Hultqvist et  al., 2018; Krejsler, 2020; Lingard, 2014, 2021; Popkewitz, 2015; Popkewitz, 2020; Rizvi & Lingard, 2010). In this process, a proliferation of common standards, social technologies, and qualification frameworks have aimed to facilitate the mobility of students, workers, and businesses as well as fostering a European identity among citizens from Europe’s patchwork of small and medium-sized countries, which in turn represent a patchwork of languages, cultures, and societal contexts (Hörner et al., 2015; Lawn & Grek, 2012; Nóvoa & Lawn, 2002). The processes of digesting transnational standards, performance indicators and benchmarks into something that makes sense as an alignment applicable in different national contexts have provoked a range of contestations from national stakeholders and the diverse traditions they represent. One could mention a number of key issues, like ongoing struggles between conflicting conceptions of education and pedagogy,

 England is part of the United Kingdom. But education is one of the areas where devolvement of decision-making between the four nations of the UK (England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland) comes out clearly in the form of different paths taken. We have chosen England as the dominant part of the UK that became a leading proponent globally and in transnational organizations of neoliberal and new public management reforms of education and the public sector, which contrasts with the more welfare oriented model taken by Scotland. 1

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Anglo-American curriculum discourse versus continental didactics approaches, or international versus national(ist) values as guidelines for school and so forth (Hopmann, 2015; Uljens & Ylimaki, 2017). This is hardly surprising, as school in particular and education in its own right represent in large measure the quintessential institutions for nation-building, national identity, and socialization. And as the transnational turn has been carried for many reasons by the overwhelming dominance of Anglo-American language and norms, national contestation has – not surprisingly  – been a regular counterpart to recent decades of school and education policy reforms (Krejsler & Moos, 2021a). The national cases show, furthermore, the far-reaching impact of neoliberal reforms in the public sector, in commercialization, and in digitalization that have run in parallel with the transnational turn in education, encouraged by the priorities and policy advice of the OECD and the EU (Ball, 2012; Snricek, 2017; Williamson, 2013, 2017; Wyatt-Smith et al., 2021). Within the most recent decade, changes affecting school and education priorities also include an increasing focus on ‘national values,’ immigration, and populism (Bergmann, 2018; Judis, 2016), often explained in large measures as reactions to the increased precariousness of living conditions as a result of uneven globalization (Appadurai, 2006; Piketty, 2014; Rizvi et al., 2022; Standing, 2011). When transnational collaboration and its consequences encounter particular national contexts, responses thus emerge that range from Bildung-oriented traditions and progressive reform pedagogy resistance to positivist and economistic approaches to education, over increasing focus on ‘national values,’ to recent outright nationalist resentment toward transnational and multilateral encroachment on national sovereignty (Blossing et al., 2016; Mondon & Winther, 2020; Rizvi et al., 2022). It is worth mentioning that as a general rule (with the EU as a partial exception) the transnational agencies are not allowed by international and national legislation to issue legal acts, or regulations, or budgets binding national governments. That kind of hard governance is left to national agencies. The transnational agencies are only allowed to make use of soft forms of governance like advice, comparisons, and other social technologies. But often those discourses are transformed into hard governance in the national systems. The OECD has thus been very active in influencing policymakers and politicians at all levels to look at the relations between central and decentralized leadership in education, which has resulted in many governments developing legally binding structures, budgets, and procedures that allowed/coerced local and municipal decision-makers to get involved in many educational matters. One of those technologies has been the contract form (Meyer & Benavot, 2013; Moos & Krejsler, 2021). Against the background of these diverse challenges, the chapters in this book collectively demonstrate how school and education policy reforms across Europe reflect what is politically and educationally possible within widely differing national contexts, representing a fascinating patchwork of particularities, molded by dramatic and conflicting histories (Hörner et al., 2015). In addition, the chapters represent European cases of a more comprehensive global education policy regime. Whereas transnational policy in the European cases have been molded by the EU, the OECD and the Bologna process in particular, the global south, however, has

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been shaped more thoroughly by UNESCO and the World Bank. Nonetheless, an interesting caveat consists in the fact that transnational organizations increasingly converge in terms of standards, social technologies and, subsequently, policy advice (Elfert & Ydesen, 2024; Ydesen, 2019). Even the European Bologna process and EU standards have increasingly become objects of European soft power export of education ideas, standards and systems. The latter is seen most explicitly in the EU-funded Tuning Educational Structures in Europe (2000) that subsequently transformed into ongoing collaborative projects in Tuning America Latina (2004), Tuning Africa (2011) as well as Tuning Russia and China projects (Krejsler, 2019b).

 ow Postwar Economic Transnational Collaboration Came H to Include Education To understand how the diversity of European national school policies came to increasingly converge, one must understand, in particular, the genealogy of transatlantic collaboration around economic development, which started in the wake of the second world war and gradually came to include education (Pépin, 2006). Thus, the postwar collaboration among Western European countries initially concentrated on rebuilding a ravaged Europe from the ruins of the war and in the newly emerging context of the cold war. Consequently, the framing of collaboration focused on economic growth and mutual security. The efforts to rebuild Western Europe took off with the American-led Marshall Plan and its institutionalization into the Organization for European Economic Cooperation (OEEC) in 1948, which was in 1961 to transform into the OECD. In 1949 the American-led North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was established as the security umbrella that would enable stable economic collaboration and development in Western Europe to unfold. In 1952, the European Coal and Steel Community was established, which would eventually develop into the European Union (1993), also with a clear focus upon economic growth and development (Krejsler, 2018; Ydesen, 2019). In a European context, school and education at all levels remained, with a few exceptions, an exclusively national matter up until around the 1990s. Until then the only transnational organization that had any durable and measurable interest in education was UNESCO (established in 1945 as part of the United Nations) and – from an economic development perspective –the World Bank (established in 1944). Both these organizations, however, while having some influence in post-socialist Central & Eastern European and Western Balkans countries, otherwise dealt more with developing countries (Elfert, 2013; Elfert & Ydesen, 2024). The IEA (International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement), established in 1958 as an outgrowth of the UNESCO Hamburg office, did start developing international comparative surveys in the late 1950s and gradually developed  – among other achievements  – what would from 2001 become PIRLS (Progress in Reading Literacy Study) and from 1995 TIMSS (Trends in Mathematics and Science Study)

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to measure literacy, numeracy, and science knowledge and skills among fourth- and eighth-grade students in an increasing number of industrialized countries, initially mainly in Western Europe (Landsheere, 1997). From the 1990s onwards, the OECD in particular became a key player in producing policy advice, statistics, and social technologies that would render member states comparable not only in economic development, but also in education. And within this framework the OECD in particular managed to generate an increasingly important discursive link between economic development and education. The OECD’s interest in education in terms of human capital development thus led, already in 1968, to establishment of the Center for Educational Research and Innovation (CERI) (Henry et al., 2001; Ydesen, 2019). In the 1980s, the interest in supplying sufficiently skilled manpower to national economies spurred increasing interest in education. This took place as market-oriented, neoliberal economic discourse was on the rise with the Republican Reagan administration in the US (1981–1989) and the Conservative Margaret Thatcher government in the UK (1979–1991). The OECD became a central arena in this period for developing and mediating the emerging neoliberal discourse. New public management reforms in the public sectors in member states flourished, praising public solutions that drew their inspiration from the private sector. These reforms staged public services in market conditions as organizations competing with one another to ensure efficiency in the use of limited public resources under strict accountability to consumers as defined by the state (Hood, 1995; Sahlin-Andersson, 2001). The idea gained ground that national economies would prosper if nations could learn from comparative surveys that could identify whose education systems were of the highest quality and were most efficient. This idea was further propelled by the OECD’s work on indicators in education in the 1980s, which resulted in PISA, the annual flagship publication Education at a Glance, and other initiatives. Around the 1990s, the ideas of human capital, knowledge economy, and lifelong learning discourses had matured within the OECD, and later the EU, to such an extent that practical consequences at a larger scale began to unfold. Around the millennium shift education policy discourse at a transnational level boomed as the PISA surveys were launched in parallel to IEA’s TIMSS and PIRLS surveys, as part of the OECD’s work on larger indicators in education that had begun in the 1980s. In 1996, the OECD published its iconic report Knowledge Economies; in 2001 it finally established an independent Directorate of Education (Henry et al., 2001; OECD., 1996; Ydesen, 2019). In an EU context, education falls under the principle of subsidiarity (the Maastricht treaty of 1992), which means that competence is formally allocated to the national level. The Maastricht treaty, however, brought about a breakthrough for EU influence on national education agendas by means of a particular discursive maneuver that paved the way for the EU Commission to maintain a coordinating role between member states on national education policy issues (EC., 1992; Pépin, 2006). Subsequently, from 2000 and onwards, the EU Lisbon agenda thus gradually integrated school and education ever more into the agendas of the European Union (Hopmann, 2008; Krejsler et al., 2014, 2017; Meyer & Benavot, 2013; Nóvoa & Lawn, 2002; Popkewitz, 2012). In addition the Bologna Process, with its focus on

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establishing a European higher education area, was established and was subsequently to converge increasingly with the EU Lisbon agenda (Brøgger, 2018; Krejsler, 2018). In recent years the EU has become more explicitly involved in education with the adoption in 2009 of a strategic framework for European collaboration on education as part of the Europe 2020 strategy (EC., 2010). The European Education and Training Monitor has become an annual flagship publication rivaling OECD’s Education at a Glance in delivering comparative data on school and education in Europe. Currently, the European Commission and the European Parliament are discussing the ‘Construction of a more inclusive and cohesive European Education Area (EEA)’ and the additional ‘Supporting the digital transformation of society,’ which looks like cautious steps toward including education and the digitalization thereof into the European Single Market (Union, European, 2021), which is further supported by the European Parliament (Parliament, European, 2021).

 ransnational and Neoliberal Technologies to Reforming T School, Education, and the Public Sector Linking education to economic concerns thus paved the way for making education a transnational concern, as the game-changing EU Lisbon Declaration of 2000 underlines in expressing its vision ‘to make Europe the most dynamic and competitive among global knowledge economies by 2010’ (Ec., 2000). The European Commission, the OECD and the Bologna process were to become key agents in merging policy discourse about economic growth and education (Lawn & Grek, 2012; Nóvoa & Lawn, 2002; Pépin, 2006; Ydesen, 2019). In summary, the development and institutionalization of transnational collaborations in Europe generated a growing consensus centering on accumulating increasing numbers of social technologies that have disseminated deeply into school policies all over Europe, albeit following different national trajectories. The social technologies that now frame how we think, talk about, and organize school policy include international comparative surveys (PISA, TALIS, TIMSS, PIRLS, ICCS and so forth), annual comparative statistics compilations (like Education at a Glance and European Education and Training Monitor, the Eurydice network), the European Qualification Framework (EQF), which each member state copy-pastes into National Qualification Frameworks (NQF) standards, and ideas of best practices and how to identify them. The vocabulary we use to talk about school and education is increasingly a shared one with a focus on concepts like ‘lifelong learning,’ ‘employability,’ ‘competences’ and so forth (Krejsler, 2018, 2020; Lawn & Grek, 2012). By means of a proliferating panoply of soft-power technologies that take the open method of coordination (OMC) and similar formats as the over-arching approach, policy processes in transnational forums produce an expanding supply of policy advice, comparative surveys, and statistics that in turn facilitate the

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production of lifelong learning and employable subjects. The OMC acquires its smooth efficiency by gradually advancing consensus in continuous policy processes among participating countries rather than by voting decisions (Brøgger, 2018; Gornitzka, 2006; Krejsler, 2018; Krejsler et al., 2014). The guiding telos is to ensure that Europe becomes ‘the most dynamic and competitive region among global knowledge economies,’ as stipulated in the Lisbon Agenda (EC., 2000), or develops into ‘smart, inclusive and sustainable’ economies (EC., 2010) in the context of what is called the competition or ‘workfare’ state (Cerny & Evans, 1999; Jessop, 2004). Policy, market, and education players became increasingly integrated into these new forms of collaboration, which are profoundly reconfiguring how school and education policy can be enacted as part and parcel of the above-mentioned development toward more comprehensive convergence in European school and education policy. This transformation of school and education into what is seen as a key asset in boosting human capital in the competition state of global knowledge economies builds largely on the core logics of neoliberal governance, which, according to Christopher Hood (1991) and others, are contestability, user choice, transparency, and incentive structures, much in line with economy marketplace logics. Accordingly, new public management is often characterized by social technologies exemplifying three themes (Dunleavy et al., 2005): first, there is the disintegration of public sectors into semi-autonomous units at national, regional, local, and institutional levels; second, each administrative level involves private companies and consultancies that compete for contracts with public institutions (OECD, 2016); and third, a system of incentives ensures that pecuniary rewards are based on performance that complies with centralized expectations of accountability. In relation to school and education we see contracts between ministries and national agencies, local authorities, individual school boards, leaderships, teachers, and students/parents. In most cases, a degree of self-evaluation is built into the contract to encourage a form of self-governance that aligns with institutional values and norms. Such governance contracts require measurable goals and standards that are checkable by reliable measurements of results/outcomes. They represent models of public governance in which the higher level defines the framework of resources, the values, and the indicators, whereas the lower levels comply with and implement expectations and indicators (Ball, 2017; Moos, 2021; Moos & Krejsler, 2021).

Digitalization of Education and Edubusiness Transnational agencies are increasingly developing and recommending the use of digital tools in education, in tight collaboration with global enterprises, and many national governments are eager to follow the advice to use digital technologies (Wyatt-Smith et al., 2021). The Covid-19 crisis intensified this development, with school closures being replaced by online teaching from home. Online teaching is tested, adjusted, and improved at a time when many students feel isolated and are longing for the opening of ‘normal school’ and access to face-to-face contact with

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friends and teachers and other aspects of the physical school community (Meinck et  al., 2022). Digitalization is accompanied by a mushrooming of online digital learning platforms and associated algorithms, which are becoming a fast-growing industry. Under the cover of platformization, research is increasingly tracing how digital platforms are producing and sustaining  – often covertly  – distinct educational approaches and interpretations (Decuypere & Landri, 2020; Grimaldi & Ball, 2020; Snricek, 2017). As standards- and outcomes-based education merges with digitalized learning platforms, many fear that teachers’ room for maneuver is growing ever narrower and risks turning into mere management of pre-programmed learning material and associated test formats. There are risks that teachers may increasingly become technical consultants and aides to students, and that school principals may lean too narrowly on data from digital comparisons and statistics (Pont et al., 2008; Williamson, 2017). Grimaldi and Ball (2019) sum up these trends: A growing body of literature in the field of educational research demonstrates how digital technologies are acting as drivers of significant changes to the nature and form of educational provision and practices, producing at the same time new modes of governing and forms of production and consumption of education. … As such, these technologies are part of a wider realignment of the relations between the state, schooling, civil society and expanding field of Edtech providers, corporate investors, advocacy groups and philanthropic actors of various kinds.(ibid., 2019: 1)

The effects of comprehensive digitalization and platformization are transforming traditional national policies and practices. Their increasing embeddedness in European collaborations is located in global spatialities of relations and networks in which actors and institutions are linked on a global scale (Amin, 2002; Krejsler, 2019b; Lewis, 2020; Lingard, 2021; Loveless & Williamson, 2013; Williamson, 2016). In addition, current globalization, assisted by digitalization, further intensifies the construction of global educational marketplaces (Ball, 2012; Moos & Krejsler, 2021). Consequently, the OECD has for more than 15 years written about aspects of improving ‘innovation’ in teaching and training, a concept that was transferred from industrial fields like pharmaceuticals and can be seen as an OECD-­ effort to make education learn from industrial and marketplace thinking (OECD, 2007).

The Transnational Turn Meeting New National(ist) Responses Until very recently, the transnational turn in school and education policy appeared to be an almost irreversible process, progressing unstoppably with the soft-power technologies described and the soft-governance approaches of the ‘open method of coordination’ and ‘multilateral surveillance’ (Lingard, 2021; Popkewitz, 2020). Gradually, however, since around 2016, we see intensifying contestation to transnational and multilateral solutions, contestation that is challenging much international collaboration (Rizvi et  al., 2022). Brexit, illiberal democracy in Hungary and

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Poland, and – more recently – a panoply of political effects following on from the Covid-19 pandemic serve as symptoms of more national(ist)-oriented contestations. This is materializing in diverse responses from anti-globalization, protectionism, and anti-immigration to new surges of populism and the far right (Applebaum, 2020; Bergmann, 2017; Goalkeepers, 2020; Judis, 2016; Mondon & Winther, 2020; Mounk, 2018; Standing, 2011; WorldBank, 2016). The chapters in this volume also explore how this change in the general political climate in most European countries is affecting school policy in such areas as integration, ‘national values,’ and resistance to transnational standards. The question of contestation and resistance to transnational policy, however, is a complex one that manifests in diverse ways in different European countries depending on the particular national contexts. Some of these responses are closely related to resistance to the often economistic turn in school and education policy that has followed the transnational turn propagated by the OECD and the EU in particular. Other responses have more to do with protecting national traditions, which may be either progressive or more nationalist (Rizvi et al., 2022). In the United States, which was so predominant in establishing the entire postwar transatlantic and transnational order, we have already seen setbacks to what might, in parallel, be called the ‘federal turn’ in school and education policy since the 1990s, as states increasingly contest federal moves such as federally mandated high-stakes testing since around 2010, and other aspects of the 2001 federal ‘No Child Left Behind’ school act. This led to the ‘Every Student Succeeds Act’ in 2015, which aims to return more autonomy to the state level. Studies of states’ narratives in California and Texas, for example, clearly show that resistance and contestations are connected to local states’ own narratives (‘The California Way,’ ‘The Texas Miracle’), while federal and national tendencies nonetheless remain in or slide into these very narratives, just behind the cover of state slogans. So while it looks as the federal turn is turning and is maybe being reinforced by a souring polarization in the general political climate, more scrutiny and maybe more time is needed to see whether these were just nominal changes or whether a new, more state-focused era is dawning (Krejsler, 2019a, 2020; McGuinn, 2016). So are we here seeing signs of an end to the transnational turn in Europe as well as in the United States and beyond in terms of global education policy? Or are these just bumps in the road, temporary setbacks, as we have seen previously? (Rizvi et al., 2022).

 lignment Vs. Diversity in Europe: The Unfolding of National A School Policy Reform Narratives As elaborated above, as transnational norms encounter national traditions, the dissemination of transnational school and education policies is subject to continuous national contestation and adaptation. To understand the nature of transnational

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collaboration on school policy one must, consequently, map the diversity of contestations and resistances that transnational policy also generates when it meets particular national contexts. Omitting to map these national differences in policy trajectories would trap one on the illusory path of claiming commonalities between countries which are in fact comparable only at the level of very general compromise in transnational consensus. ‘Quality,’ ‘efficiency,’ ‘evidence’ and so forth only exist at the level of general floating signifiers – until they get to work and disclose very different particularities at the national level (Laclau, 1993; Popkewitz, 2012). National and regional education perspectives have many similarities, but also differences (Hörner et  al., 2015). That is what the chapters in this volume illustrate vividly. In the chapters we detect a number of key discourses and mixtures thereof that compete for hegemony. As outlined above, a dominant standards- and outcomes-­ based education discourse emerged in the 1980s and 1990s in the competitive neoliberal state and in its reform of the public sector in the image of private enterprise and markets. The OECD and the EU were the main carriers translating and disseminating this discourse of human capital and knowledge economies into school and education policies (Pépin, 2006; Ydesen, 2019). A major aim of the discourse was to support students as they worked to qualify for the labor market, thus focusing on clearly described and measurable competencies (Hultqvist et  al., 2018; Krejsler, 2018; Moos, 2017; Moos & Wubbels, 2018). Keywords are ‘back to basics,’ with clear priorities for literacy, numeracy, and science subjects, within measurable and comparable transnational and national standards. A Bildung, didactics and democratic education discourse, on the other hand, is a general and comprehensive, widely used contesting discourse in northwestern continental Europe in particular, centering on the purpose of education in schools. Democratic Bildung and didactics discourse often draws on theories like those of John Dewey (1916), Klafki (2001), Uljens and Ylimaki (2015), and Biesta (2011). The core intention is to support children’s positioning of themselves in the world and in democratic communities and societies in ways that make them competent to understand and deliberate with other people. The influential German educational thinker Wolfgang Klafki sums up the key points of this discourse as development of self-determination abilities, participation capabilities, and solidarity capabilities (Klafki, 1983). A third key discourse that we detect among Central & Eastern European countries in particular, but also Western Balkans countries, refers to the traditions and aftermath of Soviet pedagogy, where the idea of centralized planning of school according to pedagogies that were partly ideological and partly followed a polytechnical ideal were dominant (Moos et  al., 2020). One could also mention other strong discourses such as the French discourse on secularism (laïcité) and secular education that from 1905 meant a radical separation between religion and public school (see Normand in this book), as well as an entrenched post-Napoleonic statist bureaucracy in France and Italy that mitigates the effects of transnational and neoliberal reform (see Normand and Landri in this book). Another aspect of the complexity of governance, however, is that it often evades public attention as the consequences of transnational collaborations slide silently

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into sedimentation (Jessop, 2009: 340; Moos, 2019). In the Danish policy reform context, standards-based education and testing  – inspired by PISA and IEA surveys – over the course of two decades slid into legislation entrenching gradually more comprehensive outcomes-based school approaches. The supporting argument was that all stakeholders need more accountable and transparent knowledge about what is happening in schools. In France, education vouchers proliferated in local government through a silent spread beyond public political debate (Lacheret, 2020), strongly supported by marketing and lobbying action from the voucher companies. Vouchers were depoliticized and depicted as a tool of free choice for parents to choose their child’s school. Researching the mushrooming of free and private schools in Sweden since the 1990s, Rönnberg et al. (2022) show how citizens in a traditionally social democratic society learn to see free and private schools for profit as the ‘new normal.’ Transnational collaborations thus disseminate and sediment in often nonlinear and unpredictable ways. Yet another aspect of the complexity of school policy reform has been convincingly argued by the influential American educational thinker Larry Cuban. He questioned to what extent school policy actually manifests in school practice, or whether the inertia and logics of institutional practice mostly adopt policy at lipservice level, then continue according to their own logics (Cuban, 2013; Tyack & Cuban, 1995). So how do contestations and resistances manifest in school policy and practice? Do curricula really change, or is it rather the discourse in and around school that changes at a more superficial level? Did transnational policy transform national school policy discourse, but never really reach school practice? The variations in often hugely different European contexts are probably considerable.

 chool Policy Reform in Eleven Nations Across the EU S and England By diving into a number of national cases with the intention of illuminating diversity across Europe, this edited collection explores how transnational collaboration is re-contextualized at the various national levels according to what makes sense and what is politically and educationally possible. As already argued, this is not solely a school policy issue, but also includes attention to recent turns toward national(ist) solutions in many European countries, with the rise of populism, protectionism, and anti-global forces; and it also includes attention to trends like commercialization and digitalization, which deeply impact how school policy developments can be framed and organized. To aid our reflections on this compilation of European national school policy reforms in terms of global education policy perspectives we have, furthermore, invited two renowned global educational comparative scholars with extensive experience of European developments: Thomas S. Popkewitz, of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Bob Lingard, from the Australian Catholic University. They have been explicitly invited to reflect upon European

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developments and their particularities in a global perspective, seen from the outside. With a global comparative and historically informed point of departure, Lingard thus problematizes European developments in school and education policy; often in light of recent and often increasingly vehement national – and even radical right-­ wing  - contestations of dominant transnational collaborations. He thus invites to debate the current status of those transnational collaborations  – the EU and the OECD in particular – that were institutionalized as vectors that were hoped to be able to gather and integrate the diversity of a historically battered European continent. In a more philosophical mode, Popkewitz reflects upon ‘Europe’ and ‘the European’ as a wide-ranging attempt to produce a particular gathering and integrating discourse to handle the future of a diverse continent by the extensive use of ‘indigenous foreigners’, ‘travelling libraries’ and ‘non-polemic educational alchemies’. In a concluding discussion chapter the editors reflect upon issues taken up in the country chapters in order to develop tentative conclusions concerning the transnational turn in European school policies – the contestations and resistances, as well as scenarios for the future of national school policies in Europe in a global policy perspective. Our choice of national cases was intended to roughly cover the diversity of European countries, with a focus on EU member states. As a non-EU country, England was chosen as it is a leading and often trendsetting participant in Anglo-­ American networks that have been dominant in setting agendas and standards for educational policy and research for Europe and worldwide, often by way of heavy influence in transnational agencies (Krejsler & Moos, 2021a). The rest of the cases are grouped by the key linguistic, ‘ethnic’ and cultural areas of Europe, with Denmark, Germany, and the Netherlands representing the Germanic-language Northwestern Europe; France, Italy and Spain representing Romance-language Southern Europe; and Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovenia, and Croatia representing the Slavic languages in post-communist Central & Eastern Europe and the Western Balkans. In Northwestern Europe we see convergence as well as variation  – from the Nordic region, with its traditions of social democratic welfare states with a focus on equity and comprehensive schooling (Krejsler & Moos, 2021b), to England, which has been trendsetting in the new public management of public-sector school and the focus on accountability in terms of high-stakes, standards-based education controlled by high-stakes testing and evaluation, to the federally structured German-­ speaking countries, where Bildung traditions and early tracking have been prevalent, to the Netherlands, drawing on German as well as strong English inspirations (Hörner et al., 2015). In Chap. 2, ‘Danish school policy: Remaining Nordic while going transnational,’ John Benedicto Krejsler of Aarhus University highlights Denmark as a case among the Nordic countries where school policies have turned increasingly transnational: the OECD, EU, and IEA have been important in driving school reform in all five Nordic countries, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden. Transnational collaboration has also transformed Nordic collaboration as the new forum in which inter-Nordic comparisons are now made.

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Danish and Swedish school used to be admired internationally as examples of Scandinavian progressive and equity-oriented educational thinking. With the transnational turn, however, Finland has taken over the place of envy-producing admiration. In response, from around 2000, Danish school made an almost 180-degree turn toward a strong new public management (NPM)-inspired accountability model in which standards-based education with an output focus to be controlled by testing was increasingly enforced. This development drew strongly on Anglo-American NPM and school effectiveness and evidence models (most explicitly from England, New Zealand and Ontario), as opposed to the older, more German-inspired didactics and Bildung models. Since around 2016, however, increasing resisitance to standards-based education and testing increasingly enters the public and policy agenda. In Chap. 3, ‘England: Neoliberalism, regulation and populism in the educational reform laboratory,’ David Hall of the University of Exeter focuses upon England as an exemplary case of neoliberal-inspired educational policy change. Hall argues that the marked Anglo-American turn to neoliberalism in the UK from the late 1970s was underpinned by what began as a public-sector reform program. In education, this prioritized market-based solutions to perceived public policy problems. In Wales and Scotland, constitutionally devolved powers in the sphere of education supported by national cultural/political traditions meant that there was scope for significant mitigation of the reform processes; in England, by contrast, such affordances were more limited, and emphasis on neoliberal and associated privatization and corporatization more marked. Latterly, as populist and nationalist concerns have come to dominate UK politics, educational reform in England has assumed a more inward-looking focus. In Chap. 4, ‘School reform policy and governance in Germany between national and transnational expectations  – with outlooks to Austria and Switzerland,’ Bettina Maria Gördel & Stephan G.  Huber of the University of Teacher Education of Switzerland Zug present school policy and governance systems in federal Germany, where educational autonomy is traditionally devolved to the state/Länder level; in federal Switzerland educational power also lies with each kanton whereas, by contrast, the school system in Austria is governed from the federal level. Until the mid-1990s most German states had an input-oriented school governance system determined by a comprehensive Bildung discourse. Later, the German-speaking countries became increasingly dominated by transnational policy trends in which pupil achievement testing and organizational quality inspection systems prevail. Here, output-oriented educational governance and quality features influenced by new public management still persist, although national bureaucratic traditions determine important aspects of how re-contextualizations take place. In Chap. 5, ‘Transnational forces in Dutch educational policies and practices,’ Theo Wubbels & Jan van Tartwijk of Utrecht University show how, since the 1990s, transnational forces have influenced Dutch school policy. PISA, PIRLS, SIMSS and TIMSS results at first led to national pride, as test results were among the best in the world. Gradually, however, small score slippages in the wrong direction as well as concerns about teacher shortages affected public opinion and came increasingly to

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be contrasted with the situation in Finland, where teachers are not in short supply because teaching is a respected and popular profession. More recently, national(ist) self-confidence can be seen in innovations such as emphasizing citizenship education from a democratic starting point (socialization) and emphasizing the role schools need to play in developing students into well-balanced grown-ups (subjectification). Since 2016, a turn can be seen toward a balance between transnational and national forces: in the proposed new curriculum, basic skills are emphasized based on the IEA and OECD studies, but national influences also appear, such as the emphasis on national history. In Southern Europe, France, Italy and Spain represent approaches to school policy in which the centralized bureaucratic power of the state has traditionally been strong. In France, a centralized statism with its post-Napoleonic focus on secular public school is still prevalent, albeit with increasing inspiration from transnational sources integrated into this centralized model. Italy represents, in many ways, a southern variant of this model, with welfarist traits, although affected by a less stable political model and tradition that represents a more fragmented nation of a richer and more modern north and a less wealthy and more traditional south, the Mezzogiorno. This model is increasingly challenged and reoriented in accordance with policy advice and standards from transnational organizations and new public management. Spain’s experience of authoritarianism under the Franco regime (1939–75) also shaped a centralized tradition, though school and education were strongly influenced by the Catholic Church. Under Spain’s democratic constitution from 1978, however, school was thoroughly reformed and the powers of the provinces were expanded within the federal model. The case of Catalonia is used to illustrate how the provincial–federal balances have developed in school policy simultaneously with increasing transnational influence (Hörner et  al., 2015; Normand et al., 2021). In Chap. 6, ‘French education policies and the PISA paradigm: the strong republican state absorbing external influences,’ Romuald Normand of Université de Strasbourg demonstrates how, since the early 2000s, French education policy has been increasingly enmeshed in transnational collaborations such as PISA, other OECD activities, and the open method of coordination. This has led to observable effects in the development of national programs on basic skills, early school-­leaving, school climate, and dropouts, but also with national assessments of student skills and school self-evaluation approaches. However, the republican heritage and civic nationalism have been constraining factors on the influence of neoliberalism; and the development of school markets and school choice has been resisted until now. The republican compromise still emphasizes standardized national curricula and a focus on equal opportunities, citizenship, and secularism, combined with reforms in which national interest groups and the ministerial technostructure play an important role in buffering transnational influences. In addition, French education policy is subject to a strong (and sometimes authoritarian) statism that conveys imaginaries of education and entrenched ideologies which often covers or obscures policy borrowing and lending. Increasing alignment with transnational and neoliberal agendas

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is observable in evidence-based education, digitalization, and human resource management restructuring in public education. In Chap. 7, ‘Changing school policies in Italy: From Welfare Equity model to the New Public Management instrumentations,’ Paolo Landri of the Institute of Research on Population and Social Policies (CNRIRPPS), Rome, shows the increasing influence of European discourses, technologies, and policies on school policies in Italy since the end of the 1990s, leading to a re-culturing of the education system. Historically, however, the Italian school system has been described as a southern variant of the Napoleonic state, with high elitism, bureaucratic professionalized centralism, and low performance. Previously embedded in a welfarist regime, school policies have during the last two decades undergone many reforms, or attempts at reforming the basic infrastructure, inspired by new public management and associated approaches that have reconfigured the educational policymaking arena. Beneath the surface, new transnational influences reveal a heterogeneous engineering of discourses, technologies, and competencies that point to a temporary equilibrium and the silencing of alternative policy knowledge. This reorientation is premised on waves of standardization of education that mirror the dominant transnational trends, often at the expense of local conditions of education. In Chap. 8, ‘Multi-scalar interactions and school policy: The trajectory of educational reform in Catalonia within the Spanish state,’ Antoni Verger, Mauro Moschetti and Edgar Quilabert of the Autonomous University of Barcelona use a scalar approach to show how the development of school policy within the Spanish federation has been shaped in the interplay with the constituent regions with a focus on the case of Catalonia. Thus an avalanche of changes was unearthed from the end of the Franco era in 1976, through devolving powers to the regional level, to adaptation to neoliberal new public management (NPM) policies and increased integration into the European transnational collaborations on school and education. More recently the case of public education policy in Catalonia has evolved from an NPM approach featuring ideas such as school autonomy, professionalized leadership styles, and performance-based accountability (1) toward an educational innovation approach strongly promoted by a civil society campaign backed by philanthropic and international organizations. To date, educational innovation as a broadly engaging programmatic idea has become a catch-all policy that allows the Catalan government to intervene in schools and promote school improvement dynamics. The chapter scrutinizes and questions how these developments can be situated as a conflictual relation of a region within the larger Spanish context to the federal level in particular and in relation to other regions in Spain. Post-socialist Central & Eastern Europe and the Western Balkans are profoundly marked by different trajectories towards the West since the departure from pre-1989 mostly Soviet-oriented approaches to educational policy and planning. In the cases of Poland and the Czech Republic pre-1989-policies represented a bureaucratic centralized approach with an educational focus on the Soviet ideological and polytechnical model, whereas Slovenia and Croatia had developed a more Soviet-independent approach, being part of former Yugoslavia. Post-1989, all four countries at first embraced Western European and transnational school, educational, and

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public-sector reform templates with enthusiasm; subsequently, however, various versions of backlash emerged to this almost unconditional embrace in the forms of returns to traditions and approaches from the pre-1989 era, as well as a marked return of national(isms) (Bacevic, 2014; Hörner et al., 2015; Silova, 2010; Silova et al., 2018). In Chap. 9, ‘School policy and reforms in Poland in the light of decentralization: Between democratization and centralization,’ Joanna Madalinska-­Michalak of the University of Warsaw discusses the profound changes in the Polish education system since the collapse of the communist regime in 1989. The chapter focuses on the processes of democratization, decentralization and the balances between national traditions and inter- and transnational influences that underpin the course of the Polish school system after 1989. The chapter finds that that the school system reflects a particular national trajectory with transnational inspirations that is currently neither fully democratic (despite heading in that direction since the 1990s) nor centralized (thanks to the decentralization of the units responsible for functioning of schools). We see an alternation of normative imperatives of political power in this process. Educational planning for national development appears strictly ideological in nature, as it was pre-1989. Scientifically based educational policy and planning is lacking, as ministers do not know how much time they will have to implement their own (or their party’s) educational project. The chapter emphasizes the need for a synergistic approach to educational policy, based on rational cooperation between politicians and researchers, but also taking into account the needs of the various stakeholders of educational change. In Chap. 10, ‘Czech school reforms: Between East and West,’ Petr Novotný of Masaryk University and Dominik Dvořák and Michaela Dvořáková of Charles University present their Central European case as a corrective to the widespread assumption that the education issues encountered in Western Europe are necessarily found across the whole European region in similar ways. They underline how pre-1989 school reforms in the former Czechoslovakia were carried out under Soviet influence in processes that were in continuity with older trends and the selective adoption of Soviet models. Those nations under communist rule did participate in global organizations such as UNESCO, however, as and when the Iron Curtain was periodically permeable. It is emphasized how post-socialist school reforms comprise complex  – and not yet completed  – interplays between domestic and transnational actors. OECD surveys and international education research have been used selectively to advance particular reform agendas; similarly, entry into the European Union has triggered external-funding-driven reforms. Finally, non-profit and transnational organizations (such as the Open Society Fund) and recently also homegrown institutions have stepped up to challenge ineffectual government in the field of school reform. Current reviews of the national curriculum are set to reveal the extent to which transnational influences still prevail or whether more nationalist approaches will gain momentum. In Chap. 11, ‘Education policies and reforms in Slovenia and Croatia: Shared history, diverging paths,’ Eva Klemenčič Mirazchiyski and Urška Štremfel of the Educational Research Institute, Ljubljana (Slovenia), and Nikša Alfirević and

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Ljiljana Najev Čačija of the University of Split (Croatia) analyze education policy and reform patterns in Slovenia and Croatia by exploring their common roots during the socialist era and their diverging development paths since the 1990s. Slovenia joined the EU, the OECD and other transnational processes earlier than Croatia, and the national(ist) backlash that in both countries followed the initial enthusiastic engagement with transnational organizations appears to have been stronger in Croatia than in Slovenia. In the post-Yugoslav 1990s, neoliberal and transnational approaches thus gained considerable influence in the form of funding and ideas. International large-scale student assessments (ILSA) and comparative studies, and their role in shaping national policies thus demonstrate how these countries and their specific national issues developed as post-socialist cases in transnational policy borrowing and lending patterns, activating particular underlying political/ideological drivers. Learning motivation and the professionalization of school leadership are just two among several areas where these two countries diverge from transnational patterns. The chapter develops a critical perspective on the motives and timing of Slovenian and Croatian education policymaking by exploring the reform initiatives and their impact, participation in and then withdrawal from some cycles of ILSA and comparative studies, and bilateral/regional cooperation efforts.

Conclusion In summary, this edited collection aims to present in rich detail an overview of how the proliferation of transnational collaboration in school and education policy in Europe has transformed and challenged national school policy reform within the different major regions of Europe, with a focus upon the EU countries and England. The chapters here collectively demonstrate how national school reform trajectories have developed subject to three sets of limiting factors: (1) according to what was politically and educationally possible within the respective nations in view of their differing traditions and balances of power between key stakeholders and traditions; (2) according to how this has allowed transnational collaboration to influence and permeate national policy and simultaneously produced national contestation shaping how transnational norms and standards have been re-contextualized to fit local contexts; and (3) according to how phenomena like digitalization, commercialization, and the return of national(isms) have affected how policy can be framed and elaborated. As documented in the chapters, this journey of national school policy reforms, with its considerable variance in trajectories, has led to and been shaped by an increasingly institutionalized emerging European transnational arena of policy collaboration since the 1990s (Hörner et al., 2015). Here it is demonstrated how predominantly Anglo-American norms challenge and clash with different national norms (Hultqvist et al., 2018; Krejsler & Moos, 2021a; Lawn & Grek, 2012; Ydesen, 2019). Most recently, this clash of norms affecting school policy becomes visible

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with an increasing return of the national – even the nationalist – in national political debates. That poses the question whether the transnational turn has reached its end – or whether we are just experiencing bumps in the road (Krejsler, 2020; Rizvi et al., 2022).

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Krejsler, J.  B., & Moos, L. (Eds.). (2021b). What works in Nordic school policies? Mapping approaches to evidence, social technologies and transnational influences. Springer. Krejsler, J.  B., Olsson, U., & Petersson, K. (2014). The transnational grip on Scandinavian education reforms: The open method of coordination challenging national policy-making. Nordic Studies in Education, 34(3), 172–186. Krejsler, J. B., Olsson, U., & Petersson, K. (2017). Becoming fit for transnational comparability: Exploring challenges in Danish and Swedish teacher education. In E. Hultqvist, S. Lindblad, & T. S. Popkewitz (Eds.), Critical analyses of educational reform in an era of transnational governance. Springer. Lacheret, A. (2020). The spread of vouchers among French local governments: When private companies reshape the meaning of a tool. International Review of Public Policy, 2(2), 178–191. Laclau, E. (1993). Politics and the limits of modernity. Harvester. Landsheere, G. D. (1997). IEA and UNESCO: A history of working cooperation. In Paper on the accompanying CD to the UNESCO publication 50 years of education (p. 21). UNESCO. Lawn, M., & Grek, S. (2012). Europeanizing education: Governing a new policy space. Symposium Books. Lewis, S. (2020). PISA, policy and the OECD: Respatialising global educational governance through PISA for schools. Springer Nature. Lingard, B. (2014). Politics, policies and pedagogies in education: The selected works of bob Lingard. Routledge. Lingard, B. (Ed.). (2021). Globalization and education. Routledge. Loveless, A., & Williamson, B. (2013). Shaping society, technology and learning identity. In A. Loveless & B. Williamson (Eds.), Learning identities in a digital age: Rethinking creativity, education and technology (pp. 7–30). Routledge. McGuinn, P. (2016). From No Child Left Behind to the Every Student Succeeds Act: Federalism and the education legacy of the Obama administration. Publius: The Journal of Federalism, 24. https://doi.org/10.1093/publius/pjw014 Meinck, S., Fraillon, J., & Strietholt, R. (Eds.). (2022). The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on education: International evidence from the responses to educational disruption survey (REDS). UNESCO & IEA. Retrieved from: https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000380398 Meyer, H.-D., & Benavot, A. E. (Eds.). (2013). PISA, power, and policy: The emergence of global educational governance. Symposium Books. Mondon, A., & Winther, A. (2020). Reactionary democracy: How racism and the populist far right became mainstream. Verso. Moos, L. (2017). Neo-liberal governance leads education and educational leadership astray. In M. Uljens & R. Ylimaki (Eds.), Beyond leadership, curriculum and Didaktik. Springer. Moos, L. (2019). Glidninger  - ‘Usynlige forandringer inden for pædagogik og uddannelser [Slidings - ‘Invisible’ transformations in education]. http://edu.au.dk/fileadmin/edu/Udgivelser/ E-­boeger/Ebog_-­_Glidninger.pdf Moos, L. (2021). Operating in an outcomes-based and a democratic Bildungs discourse. In M. Uljens & A. V. Oettingen (Eds.), Reinventing general theory of education - Non-affirmative education. Springer. Moos, L., & Krejsler, J.  B. (2021). Denmark: Contracts and evidence-based best practice. In J. B. Krejsler & L. Moos (Eds.), What works in Nordic school policies. Springer. Moos, L., & Wubbels, T. (2018). General education: Homogenised education for the globalized world? Zitschrift für Erziehungswissenshaft, 21(2), 241–258. Moos, L., Alfirevic, N., Pavicic, J., Koren, A., & Cacija, L. N. (2020). Educational leadership, improvement and change. Palgrave Macmillan. Mounk, Y. (2018). The people vs. democracy: Why our freedom is in danger and how to save it. Harvard University Press. Normand, R., Moos, L., Min, L., & Tulowitzki, P. (Eds.). (2021). The culture and social Foundation of Educational Leadership. Springer. Nóvoa, A., & Lawn, M. (2002). Fabricating Europe: The formation of an education space. Kluwer Academic Publishers.

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OECD. (2007). More about the Innovation Strategy for Education and Training. http://www.oecd. org/fr/education/moreabouttheinnovationstrategyforeducationandtraining.htm OECD. (2016). Contract management. http://www.oecd.org/governance/procurement/toolbox/ search/sigma-­contract-­management-­public-­procurement.pdf Oecd. (1996). The knowledge based economy. OECD. Parliament, European. (2021). Report on shaping digital education policy. (2020/2135 (INI)). Pépin, L. (2006). The history of European cooperation in education and training: Europe in the making - an example. EU Publications Office. Piketty, T. (2014). Capital in the Twenty-First Century. The Belknap Press. Pont, B., Nusche, D., & Moorman, H. (2008). Improving school leadership. Policy and practice. OECD. http://www.oecd.org/edu/school/44374889.pdf Popkewitz, T. S. (2012). Numbers in grids of intelligibility: Making sense of how educational truth is told. In H. Lauder, M. Young, H. Daniels, M. Balarin, & J. Lowe (Eds.), Educating for the knowledge economy (pp. 169–191). Routledge. Popkewitz, T.  S. (Ed.). (2015). The ‘Reason’ of schooling: Historicizing curriculum studies, pedagogy, and teacher education. Routledge. Popkewitz, T.  S. (2020). The impracticality of practical research: A history of contemporary sciences of change that conserve. University of Michigan Press. Rizvi, F., & Lingard, B. (2010). Globalizing education policy. Routledge. Rizvi, F., Lingard, B., & Rinne, R. (Eds.). (2022). Reimagining globalization and education. Routledge. Rönnberg, L., Alexiadou, N., Benerdal, M., Carlbaum, S., Holm, A.-S., & Lundahl, L. (2022). Going global: Sweedish free school companies and their international expansion. NordSTEP, x(x), x. Sahlin-Andersson, K. (2001). National, international and transnational constructions of new public management. In T.  Christensen & P.  Lægreid (Eds.), New public management—The transformation of ideas and practice (pp. 43–72). Ashgate. Silova, I. (Ed.). (2010). Post-socialism is not dead: (re)reading the global in comparative education. Emerald Group Publishing Ltd.. Silova, I., Piattoeva, N., & Millei, Z. (Eds.). (2018). Childhood and schooling in (post)socialist societies; memories of everyday life. Springer. Snricek, N. (2017). Platform Capitalism. Wiley. Standing, G. (2011). The precariat: The new dangerous class. Bloomsbury. Tyack, D. B., & Cuban, L. (1995). Tinkering toward utopia. A century of public-school reform. Harvard University Press. Uljens, M., & Ylimaki, R. (2015). Towards a discursive and non-affirmative framework for curriculum studies, Didaktik and educational leadership. NordSTEP, 1, 30–43. Uljens, M., & Ylimaki, R. (Eds.). (2017). Bridging educational leadership, curriculum theory and Didaktik: Non-affirmative theory of education. Springer. Union, European. (2021). Study: Towards a European education  - Critical perspectives on challenges ahead. Directorate-General for Internal Policies of the Union, PE 652.243. Williamson, B. (2013). The future of the curriculum: School knowledge in the digital age. The MIT Press. Williamson, B. (2016). Digital education governance: An introduction. European Educational Research Journal, 15(1), 3–13. Williamson, B. (2017). Big data in education: The digital future of learning, policy and practice. SAGE Publications. WorldBank. (2016). Polarization and populism: Europe and central Asia Economic Update. Retrieved from: https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/25341 Wyatt-Smith, C., Lingard, B., & Heck, E. (Eds.). (2021). Digital disruption in teaching and testing: Assessments, big data, and the transformation of schooling. Routledge. Ydesen, C. (Ed.). (2019). The OECD’s historical rise in education: The formation of a global governing complex. Palgrave Macmillan.

Part II

National Cases: Northwestern Europe

Chapter 2

Danish School Policy: Remaining Nordic While Going Transnational John Benedicto Krejsler

Abstract  This chapter presents Denmark as a case among the Nordic countries where school policies have turned increasingly transnational. In all five of the Nordic countries, the OECD, the EU, and the IEA have been significant actors driving school reform, while in the process transnational collaboration has also transformed Nordic collaboration itself by becoming the new medium by which inter-Nordic educational comparisons are made. Danish school had previously been admired internationally as an example of Scandinavian progressive and equity-­ oriented educational thinking. From the millennium shift, however, Danish school reversed direction and moved toward a strong accountability model drawing on ‘new public management’ and featuring standards-based education and a testing-­ controlled output focus. This reversal of policy from the previous approach based on German-inspired didactics and Bildung was strongly influenced by Anglo-American norms and standards, new public management and by ‘school effectiveness’ and ‘evidence’ models from England, New Zealand and Canada. Neoliberal discourse redefined school as operating in a competitive market for students, with increasing scope for commercialization. Welfare state ideals of equity, however, still offer a strong counterforce to this development. Recently, a national(ist) turn offers increasing contestation of transnational solutions of accountability, testing, and standards-­ based education, and some call for an increasing focus on so-called Danish values. Keywords  Danish school policy · Transnational education policy · Nordic dimension · Comparative education

J. B. Krejsler (*) Danish School of Education, Aarhus University, Copenhagen, Denmark e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. B. Krejsler, L. Moos (eds.), School Policy Reform in Europe, Educational Governance Research 22, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-35434-2_2

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Nordic School and Teacher Education Policies: An Overview This chapter focuses on Denmark as a case within the Nordic region. Here, school and teacher education policies have turned increasingly transnational since the millennium shift. The OECD, the EU, and the IEA (International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement) have been important in driving school reform in all five countries, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden, according to trajectories that show similarities as well as differences. Denmark suffered its first pre-PISA shock already in 1991, following the comparative IEA literacy survey. An important aspect of the reaction to Danish third-­grade pupils’ mediocre literacy skills was that both policymakers and the public at large noticed that Danish pupils had performed considerably worse than the Nordic neighbors with whom the Danes usually compare themselves (Mejding, 1994). This led to further Nordic comparative projects, notably the ‘Nordlæs surveys’ from 1996. In the same period, we saw a reversal in perception of the fortunes of the various Nordic national school systems, driven by new transnational collaborations and norms. Before the year 2000 and the surge in importance of OECD’s PISA surveys and IEA’s PIRLS and TIMSS surveys, Sweden and Denmark were traditionally looked upon as international champions of a Nordic model of progressive and child- and equity-oriented pedagogy, which attracted considerable international attention. Finland, on the other hand, was regarded as more traditional and was perceived as lagging somewhat behind (Telhaug et al., 2006). From the turn of the millennium, however, the balance in reputation between the Nordic school systems was turned around. Finland now occupied the position of the high-achieving, envy-producing school system, and Finland was the focus of high-level international attention and visits, showcasing that East Asian achievements in literacy, numeracy, and science could be achieved by Nordic strategies (Andersen, 2007; Sahlberg, 2011, 2016). In international and transnational perceptions, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, and Iceland have fallen behind, for the most part only achieving average or, at times, even below average scores (Blossing et al., 2016; Krejsler & Moos, 2021c). As trends in school policy often have considerable effects on teacher education – which is, after all, the institution that is supposed to produce the teachers who will realize the school reform visions – it is illuminating to note how similar trends have affected teacher education policies. Finland had already made teacher education into a 5-year master’s degree program in 1979. Upon the launch, however, of the Bologna Process and its vision to create a European Higher Education Area, the Finnish model became an envied inspiration for similar reforms in Iceland (2008) and Norway (2017) in particular, but also an agenda-setting point of departure for comparisons and debates about school and teacher education reform in Sweden and Denmark (Elstad, 2020, 2023; Skagen, 2006). Here, the Bologna Process has been particularly influential in reframing standards for teacher education, working in alignment with the school and educational priorities of the European Union and the OECD and the influential surveys of student performance in literacy, numeracy, and science that emanate from the OECD (PISA) and the IEA (TIMSS  [Trends in

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Mathematics & Science Study] and PIRLS [Progress in Reading Literacy Study]) (Krejsler et al., 2018). These transnational surveys generate a never-ending stream of criticism of teachers and teacher education as insufficiently fit to produce the next generation of highly skilled lifelong learners, and the criticism is then followed up by further school and teacher education reforms (Bales & Hobbel, 2018; Furlong et al., 2009; Hultqvist et al., 2018; Simões et al., 2020). This turn toward transnational norms and the subsequent change in perception of fortunes has not, however, diminished the Nordic countries’ passion for comparing themselves to each other (Krejsler, 2023). On the contrary, the comparisons have just been reconfigured, drawing now upon transnational surveys and statistics instead – the PISA and IEA surveys and OECD statistics such as ‘Education at a Glance’ (Hopmann, 2008; Jónasson et  al., 2021). This means that transnational agendas now increasingly inform and shape how Nordic agendas are construed. Nordic policymakers, practitioners, and educational researchers still maintain their tradition of collaborating in manifold ways  – as also within other policy areas (Andersen et al., 2007; Krejsler & Moos, 2021c; Telhaug et al., 2006). This collaborative process takes place in formal collaborations within the Nordic Council (established in 1952), the Nordic Council of Ministers (established in 1971), the Nordic Educational Research Association (established in 1972), and many other fora for collaboration, and it takes place in long-established informal collaborations in professional and personal networks between schools, teacher education institutions, and municipalities. This means that when Nordic school and teacher education policies undergo change and we look for comparative rationales for improvement, we are practically always comparing ourselves to the other Nordic countries at many levels. This mutual regard takes place in initiatives like the Northern Lights conferences and Nordic publications, but increasingly also via extensive reference to data from PISA, TIMSS, and PIRLS about the other Nordic countries (Jónasson, 2016; Krejsler & Moos, 2021b). Ongoing experience with cycles of transnational collaboration and surveys thus supplies narratives of school and, by implication, of teacher education that Nordic policymakers, educational researchers, and public debates align themselves with while simultaneously looking to the other Nordic countries for comparative inspiration, with the Finns in the lead. Whether this way of engaging with transnational collaboration can be referred to as part of a Nordic model or, more modestly, a Nordic dimension remains contested in all the Nordic countries. There is certainly plenty of mutual inspiration, including in school and teacher education. It is plain to see, nonetheless, that each individual Nordic country chooses its own trajectory, resonating with what is politically and educationally possible within each national context and each set of historical and educational conditions. But because school policy is so closely connected with national identity and nation-building, transnational collaboration is a sensitive area in a way that the rather incrementally and historically grown Nordic collaboration is not. For this reason, school policy is regulated at the level of detail by national policy in all Nordic countries, with Finland as something of an exception. The result is that school policy reform guided by transnational policy advice frequently encounters strong and vocal resistance

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when implemented in the national context (Blossing et  al., 2016; Krejsler & Moos, 2021c). Since the 1970s and 1980s, school reform has been increasingly frequent in Nordic countries. In Denmark, as will be elaborated in the following sections, there was one wave of school reform in 1958–1960, then another in 1975, then in 1993, in 2006 and, in 2013, a comprehensive and transnationally inspired reform. In Sweden, the school system was turned around from comprehensive uniform state school to municipal school with increased school choice options under strong new public management (NPM) inspiration in the early 1990s reforms; an additional reform with a strong transnational imprint was added in 2011. In Norway, the 1974 and 1987 reforms were national curriculum reforms (the latter with a focus on values); the 1997 reform expanded schooling, whereas the 2006 Act (the ‘knowledge lift,’ Kunnskapsløftet) was a thorough and transnationally inspired curriculum reform with a particular focus on literacy, numeracy, and science, followed up in 2019 by the more modest curriculum renewal. In Iceland, a modernized comprehensive School Act was finally enacted in 1974; then, with the 1995 act, municipalities took over schools; finally, since 2008 a comprehensive school reform act with significant transnational influence has reigned. In Finland, comprehensive school without streaming was achieved with the 1971–1977 and 1985 reforms; so-called trust-based school, with high levels of school autonomy, was introduced in the 1990s reforms; this autonomy was subsequently cut back, with increased state control over the curriculum, in the 2004 reform (Blossing et al., 2016; Hörner et al., 2015; Krejsler & Moos, 2021c). Simultaneously, Finland was declared a ‘model pupil’ of organizations like the OECD for its application of neoliberal and restructuring policy advice to education (Rinne, 2021, p. 55).1

Danish School Policy and Its Postwar Roots This chapter dives deep into the case of Denmark within this larger Nordic context. Danish school policy experienced major change in the postwar period. The Nordic welfare states were under construction, which included a massively expanding education system (Appel & Coninck-Smith, 2015a; Pedersen, 2011). The School Act of 1958 stated a rather traditional discourse:

 Similarly, Nordic teacher education programs have in their different trajectories from a seminary toward a more academic university model been subjected to numerous reforms in recent decades, with the sole exception of Finland (where change after 1979 was limited to adaptations to the Bologna process in 2005 and 2016). In Sweden, reforms were launched in 1977, 1988, 2001, 2011, and 2021; in Denmark in 1991, 1997, 2006, 2012 and 2022. In Norway in 1973, 1994, 1999, 2003, 2010, and 2017, and in Iceland in 1971, 1978, 1988, 1993, 2008, 2011 and 2019 (Arstorp, 2012; Elstad, 2020, 2023). 1

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The purpose of the Folkeskole [the Danish public primary and lower secondary school] is to promote and develop the children’s aptitudes and abilities, to strengthen their character and give them useful knowledge (1958: §1).

But in the official teaching guide that followed, popularly called the ‘Blue Report’ (1960), a radically different discourse was expressed. This document stated the overall task of school to be: “to promote all opportunities for the children to grow up as happy, harmonious and good people” (ibid., Volume 1:29). Several international influences are clear here  – above all anti-authoritarian, dialogue-oriented pedagogy, with its strong connections to reform pedagogy and developmental psychology, and a discourse on international cooperation, a consequence of the barbarism of the world wars. A showdown with ‘traditional pedagogy’ and rote learning was also mentioned. Group and topic work were at the fore, as was interdisciplinarity. Concern was expressed about too much focus on tests and grades (Thejsen, 2014). Simultaneously, however, we also saw the influence of Anglo-American curriculum theory, calling for clearer formulations of standards for school and education. Ralph Tyler’s book ‘Basic Principles of Curriculum and Instruction’ (1949) was particularly influential and was translated into Danish (1974). The school and education policy of the 1970s has to be seen in the light of the international 1968 uprisings. Spreading across the Western world, the uprisings impacted the Nordic welfare society countries particularly strongly and led to further drives toward democratization and equity issues. With the student uprising, the women’s liberation struggle, and the youth uprising, a new order in education was under way. The student uprising expressed a discourse on ‘research for the people’; it demanded the abolition of professorial rule and the democratization of the university instead. As for management technologies, a University Governing Act gave students parity with university teachers on study boards and introduced numerous other democratizing measures in the governance of universities (Folketinget, 1970, 1973). Discourse on gender equality became central to the women’s liberation struggle. Under slogans such as ‘class struggle’ and the struggle against inequality in society and school, a neo-Marxist discursive wave spread internationally. It had a major impact on the general societal debate and cultural life  – including how to think about pedagogy, education, kindergarten, and school. In the wake of these developments, a new comprehensive School Act was enacted (1975), which abolished streaming in lower secondary schooling and introduced a nine-year comprehensive school, albeit with some level of differentiation in certain subjects. And discourse about ‘students’ democratic Bildung’ was included in the preamble (Appel & Coninck-Smith, 2015a; Hermann, 2007). This short summary demonstrates that there was already plenty of international –particularly Nordic  – influence in Danish school and education policy in the postwar period, even if school and education policy were regarded as the preserve of national sovereignty all over Europe up to the 1990s. Nonetheless, the transnational collaboration that had begun under American tutelage at the end of the Second World War with its focus on economic collaboration to rebuild Europe gradually came, over the decades, to also set the agenda for school and education

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policy. It happened with the establishment of organizations like the United Nations (UNESCO), the Bretton Woods institutions (the World Bank, the IMF), the Marshall Aid, and the OEEC/OECD. The particular genealogy of transnational collaboration with its overwhelming focus on economic development gradually merged with school and education agendas. This made sense, as the discourse on human capital and rational choice dictated that school and education were increasingly vital if the desired high-performing knowledge economies were to be realized. But it also prepared the ground for the growing impetus to connect education rationales with those of the economy. From the 1990s, the way was open for the increasing marketization and commodification of school – something which had been taboo until the 1980s and the advent of the neoliberal turn in Western societies and economies (Krejsler, 2020; Krejsler & Moos, 2021a; Oecd, 1996; Telhaug et al., 2006; Ydesen, 2019).

The Neoliberal Turn, Accountability, and Standards-Based Education So in the 1980s, Danish school policy reform became a discursive struggle between the two camps: teachers, backed by the reform pedagogy tradition, and the new wave of neoliberal, neoconservative policies. On the one hand, there was the Development Council of the Danish Folkeskole, which allocated 400 million DKK (approximately €54 million) to a large number of diverse educational development projects in collaborations between educational researchers and practitioners. Results were gathered in evaluation reports that pointed to the application in practice of themes such as the class-teacher principle, gender equality, and holistic school. The so-called ‘ruminant report’ summed up the results, put them in perspective, and presented a platform of updated educational knowledge and experience that aimed to reform school and inspire practitioners and policymakers (Jensen et al., 1992). On the other hand, following the election of Margaret Thatcher as prime minister of a Tory-led government in Britain (1979–1990) and Republican Ronald Reagan as president of the United States (1981–1989), a neoliberal paradigm and policy regime was sweeping the world. It was a change in geopolitical paradigm, and in its wake, changes in school and education policy gathered momentum. In brief, the neoliberal regime signaled an increasing focus on market-inspired solutions to create more efficient use of limited tax resources in solving public-sector tasks. With new public management came an increase in discourse about parents and students as consumers, as well as about accountability. Decentralization was balanced by the requirement for documentation that overall political goals for the school were being met. Accountability, so it was said, would ensure the ‘freedom’ of schools to operate like companies in the school market (Hood, 1995; Sahlin-Andersson, 2001). In the Danish school context, this neoliberal approach of managing goals and frameworks led after the year 2000 to a softer version of a largely Anglo-American-inspired

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focus on standards-based education: a focus on governance through learning objectives, with documentation through testing (Krejsler, 2020; Krejsler & Moos, 2021a). The neoliberal regime gained considerable momentum in Denmark when the conservative–liberal so-called ‘four-leaf clover’ coalition government took office (1982–1988), led by conservative prime minister Poul Schlüter. This government launched the comprehensive ‘modernization program for the public sector’ project (1983), together with its associated new public management governance repertoire (Hjort, 2001; Pedersen, 2011). Bertel Haarder, the iconic education minister of this administration (1982–1993), launched a new direction for school, focusing on ‘basic knowledge and skills’ (Undervisningsministeriet, 1986). In the 1990s, the turn toward standards-based education was launched. This was to become the lodestar of Danish school reform. This turn in educational thinking drew on German didactics as well as the Anglo-American curricular discussions (Gundem & Hopmann, 1998). It started very softly, in continuation of the Folkeskole Act of 1975. The ministry set out as guidelines the purposes of academic school subjects and prepared indicative curricula and teaching guides in subject booklets for the individual subjects. These did not contain compulsory learning goals or standards for the students, and the focus was very much on the content of teaching. The Folkeskole Act of 1993 tightened this up. The ministry of education now required basic areas of knowledge and skills (‘Grundlæggende Kundskaber og Færdigheder’) to be specified for each individual subject area; these were required to serve as a basis for the teacher’s work in organizing and implementing his/her teaching. The stated purpose of each subject was formulated according to a uniform structure to ensure that the totality of subjects contributed to fulfilling the overarching purpose of the Danish Folkeskole. Developments after 2000 would be one long continuation of this work, specifying subject goals and subgoals in an increasingly mandatory standards-based education regime. For Denmark, the international comparative IEA literacy survey of 1991 of third-­ grade and eighth-grade students from 35 different countries was an early precursor to the enormous impact that transnational collaboration in school policy was to have after the turn of the millennium. The study established that Danish third-grade students read at the level of students in Trinidad and Tobago, and significantly below the levels of our Scandinavian neighbors. This experience, named the ‘Togo shock’ (Tobago in Trinidad & Tobago became confused with the West African country Togo), was a forerunner to the PISA shocks that would follow. The Danish public and Danish policymakers now had to come to terms with the fact that Danish primary and lower secondary school was probably not the best in the world after all (even if it was perceived as the most expensive). Jan Mejding, senior researcher at the then Danish Institute of Education, followed up on the IEA results with the report ‘The Ugly Duckling and the Swans’, pointing up the unsatisfactory comparison with other Scandinavian countries with a reference to the national nineteenth-­ century fairy tale of Hans Christian Andersen (Mejding, 1994). The so-called ‘Nordlæs survey’ was arranged, and again this concluded that Danish students read below the levels of our neighboring Scandinavian countries. This succession of shocks paved the way for the paradigm shift that was to shape Danish school and

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educational debate – from a paradigm centering on reform pedagogy, to an ever-­ tighter focus on standards-based education and basic knowledge and skills. At the same time, still in the 1990s, a turn toward learning and individualization emerged in Danish school policy, referred to in terms like ‘responsibility for one’s own learning’ and differentiation of teaching. This focus on the individual student’s learning was closely linked to a new business emphasis on creativity and innovation that stemmed among other inspirations from the rise of the internet. After the turn of the millennium this theme of innovation was partly to challenge, partly to integrate with and run in parallel with the focus on outcomes-based education (Appel & Coninck-­ Smith, 2015b; Hermann, 2007).

The Post-millennial Turn The turn of the millennium constituted a turning point in Danish school and education policy. The increase in transnational collaboration within the OECD, the EU, the IEA, and the Bologna Process consolidated a new European education policy regime, which then set the direction for national school and education policies among participating countries (Lawn & Grek, 2012; Nóvoa & Lawn, 2002). In these collaborations the Nordic countries are very active participants, although they participate to different degrees.2 In 1997 the OECD’s PISA surveys were launched, then administered for the first time in 2000; PISA would subsequently develop into the most agenda-setting governance technology for Danish school debate. This was also the case in the other Nordic countries, resulting in Finland becoming the envy of the rest. In 1998–99, the European-wide Bologna process was launched with the aim of developing a European Higher Education Area (EHEA). In the Danish context, this set the agenda and standards for teacher education and thus transferring it from the traditional seminary tradition toward the academic orbit of university and higher education, currently in the form of university colleges (Krejsler et al., 2018). In addition, the Bologna process was to become the transnational framework under which cooperation between European national quality assurance bodies takes place in the ENQA (the European Association for Quality Assurance in Higher Education). In the Danish context, these are the Danish Evaluation Institute (EVA) and the Danish Accreditation Institution. EVA, established in 1999, has since become the most influential producer of evaluations of Danish educational initiatives, from preschool day care facilities to teacher education.

 Denmark joined the European Community in 1973. Sweden and Finland joined the European Union in 1995. In 2000 Finland joined the euro zone as the only Nordic Country. Norway and Iceland have consistently stayed outside the EU, but largely adapt to EU standards and collaborate with the Nordic EU-members, who often talk their case within the EU. All Nordic countries are active within the OECD and the Bologna process, which are very influential in national educational debate and policy in terms of policy advice, standards, and inspiration for reforming educational structures. 2

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These developments in transnational collaboration represent what are often called ‘soft power’ strategies. Policy actors increasingly participated in and integrated with the transnational policy fora. At the transnational level, progress is seldom achieved by means of explicit decisions in the form of votes. Rather, progress is achieved by voluntary commitment to collaboration, with participants gradually moving toward compromise and consensus on formats through which comparisons become increasingly easy. This requires consensus on common standards for measurement, quality assurance, and evaluation at a level that is sufficiently decontextualized to secure comparability among different countries with different school and education systems. Subsequently, this consensus gives direction to the recontextualizations into national reforms that are acceptable in the respective national education policy contexts (Krejsler, 2018, 2023; Lawn & Grek, 2012; Nóvoa & Lawn, 2002; Rizvi & Lingard, 2010). This is what happened with Danish participation in the comparative international literacy, numeracy, and science surveys of PISA, TIMSS, and PIRLS, the establishment of university colleges, and the adaptation of EVA’s evaluation work to the standards of quality assurance collaboration in ENQA. Eventually and over time, the effect was achieved that Danish school and teacher education policies became increasingly comparable with Denmark’s partners internationally, which were undergoing similar processes. Countries – particularly small countries –submit to peer pressure and align because they do not want to exclude themselves from transnational collaboration and from their international colleagues by dealing with different things in different ways according to different standards than those of the international partner countries (Brøgger, 2018; Krejsler, 2018). From the late 1990s, a new and dominant transnational education policy regime thus emerged. School and education were moved higher up the political agenda and were now seen as strategically important in the provision of a skilled workforce in globally oriented knowledge economies. These economies were seen as requiring a flexible and adaptable workforce, constantly optimized and optimizing itself through lifelong learning. This discourse – connecting school and education closely to the market and human capital thinking  – was central to the strategies brought forward by the OECD, the EU and the Bologna Process (Hultqvist et  al., 2018). Given Denmark’s active role in these transnational collaborations, it therefore comes as no surprise then that a wealth of key government initiatives pulled in that direction. In 1998 it was the ministry of finance, not the ministry of education, that produced the first report on ‘Quality in the education system’ (Finansministeriet, 1998), following an earlier report by the same ministry on ‘Education: Costs and results’ (Finansministeriet, 1997). Following the turn of the millennium, there was a clear increase in discourse in Danish education policy in the forms of commission work and reforms framing school and education within a managerial focus on how expenditure was to be used more effectively and efficiently, with supposedly better results as a result. Not only liberal conservative, but social democrat-led Danish governments furthered their agendas for integrating school and education into knowledge economy visions for Denmark’s future by copy-pasting transnational policy advice like ‘The Lisbon Agenda’ and ‘Europe 2020’ into a raft of think tanks

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(the Globalization Council (2006) and the Growth Forum (2009)), comprehensive reforms of the public sector (the Quality Reform or Kvalitetsreformen, 2007), school initiatives (New Nordic School), and commissions (the Committee for Quality and Relevance in Higher Education (Kvalitetsudvalget, 2015), the Productivity Commission (2014)). A central part of this discourse production was the increasing demand for ‘knowledge that works,’ linking to the expressed need for better criteria for prioritizing limited public resources for costly welfare sectors such as health, social welfare, and education. This in turn gave momentum to the so-called evidence movement, which gained increasing political influence with its views on how to produce knowledge about what works (Eryaman & Schneider, 2017; Krejsler, 2017). Prompted by an OECD country report on Danish educational research, a Danish Clearinghouse for Educational Research was established in 2006 to produce ‘systematic reviews’ of educational research on educational initiatives for policymakers, practitioners, and other stakeholders (Oecd/Ceri, 2004). These initiatives focused on articulating school and education as strategically important for the nation’s economic growth and future. Denmark’s high spending on education – 7% of GDP (2015) compared to the EU average of 4.9% – gives rise to much discussion on the importance of these funds being used effectively and efficiently. This requires that initiatives and interventions are based on knowledge of ‘what works.’

 he OECD Country Report on Evaluation Culture T and Danish School Reform The publication of an OECD country report (commissioned by the Danish government) in 2004 was to have a formative influence on Danish school policy. This was the report on evaluation culture in Danish public school, led by the prominent English school-effectiveness exponent Peter Mortimore (Ekholm et al., 2004). It concluded that Danish primary and lower secondary school was characterized by a lack of a systematic and written evaluation culture. This lack, according to the report, contributed significantly to Danish education missing out on great learning potential (despite the fact that Danish per capital spending on school is among the highest internationally). In addition, the municipalities were criticized for not taking their school supervisory duty seriously enough. The report became a lever as a discursive technology for the liberal conservative government in power in its ‘values struggle’ against progressive traditions of reform pedagogy among school and teacher education professionals (Hanssen, 2015). In the wake of the OECD report, a battery of management technologies were launched to increase written documentation and formalized evaluation procedures. Most spectacular among these was the introduction of ten standardized national tests during a child’s schooling, as well as compulsory student assessment plans.

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(Here it should be mentioned that formalized testing had been almost taboo in Danish school since the 1970s.) The ten national adaptive tests focused on literacy, numeracy, science, and English, thus consolidating an emerging hierarchy among the academic subjects in school. Student assessment plans were introduced: these could be implemented in a variety of ways at local levels and were intended to enable systematic reporting of each individual student’s results in the various academic subjects, thus enabling further systematic and knowledge-based school– home dialogues. The municipalities were now also obliged to introduce municipal quality reports so as to systematically document, on a comparable basis, how each municipality’s schools were doing, and enabling the ministry of education to publish on its website how the 98 Danish municipalities were doing in relation to each other.

 he Merging of Transnational, National(First) T and Commercial Agendas These developments signified on the one hand that school and education were moving higher up the political agenda as national economic growth and development became more tightly associated with education and lifelong learning at both transnational and national Danish levels. On the other hand, this strategy represented a considerable shift in discourse and practice away from previous Danish school discourse, which had highlighted reform pedagogy, child-centered pedagogy, democracy, and citizenship. In 2003, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the liberal conservative prime minister, called this shift toward standards-based education a move from laissez-faire ‘sitting-in-­ circles pedagogy’ (rundkredspædagogik) to a ‘school of knowledge’ with more focus on ‘professionalism.’ The strategy was part of that administration’s comprehensive ‘values struggle’ against what it termed the ‘cultural radical elite that dominates universities and public debate.’ This discourse was promoted most loudly by the government’s parliamentary coalition partner, the populist and professedly anti-­ elitist Danish People’s Party, which underlined the importance of a return to what they termed Danish values. In his opening speech to the Danish parliament in 2003, Rasmussen expressed this reorientation of school policy in the following statement: We must realize that a certain amount of general factual knowledge is needed. For three decades, wrecks have been thrown at general factual knowledge. It has been perceived as rote learning. It appears that academic knowledge and skills have been downgraded in favor of sitting in circles and asking students, “What do you think yourself?” It can be perfectly useful to sit in a circle to discuss and have a conversation with each other. But the prerequisite for having a meaningful conversation is that you know what you are talking about. If unqualified opinions become as valid as qualified knowledge, then it all ends in empty stupidity (A. F. Rasmussen, 2003).

‘Steering school by learning goals’ – standards-based education – was introduced and consolidated in the period from 2001 to 2015. Academic subjects were

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systematically broken down into knowledge, skills, and competences, and thus a comprehensive taxonomic description of a school life was constructed. This taxonomy, it was claimed, enabled the evaluation in measurable terms of whether the individual student had acquired the learning goals and subgoals of the academic subjects taught. In 2017, this taxonomy included 217 compulsory competence goals, which were broken down into 866 compulsory knowledge and skills goals, which were subsequently translated into 3170 skills and knowledge goals. These last skills and goals, encountering harsh criticism of governance in detail, were then made voluntary (Christensen, 2017). This radical turn in how Danish school curricula are governed was linked to the ‘National Qualifications Framework’ (NQF), Denmark’s operationalization of the European Qualifications Framework (EQF). And this was the trajectory whereby Denmark made explicit the first levels of competences and learning outcomes of the EQF template so as to make lifelong learning operational (Moos, 2016). Next, in 2009 the liberal conservative Prime Minister, Lars Løkke Rasmussen, established the so-called Growth Forum as an extension of the previous prime minister’s Globalization Council. This forum agreed to carry out a ‘360-degree service inspection’ of the Danish Folkeskole (primary and lower secondary school). The School Flying Squad was set up, tasked with determining the status of primary and lower secondary school in Denmark with a view to reforming ​​school and teacher education and elevating Danish school to the ranks of the world’s best. Recommendations were made to assist the large PhD initiative for upskilling teacher educators among university college teaching staff. In its final report, the Flying Squad deferred overwhelmingly to the scientific frame of reference of the transnational institutions: it referred to the OECD’s PISA surveys 63 times, the IEA’s TIMSS surveys 17 times and PIRLS surveys 15 times, and referred to ten reports produced by the Danish Evaluation Institute, EVA (Skolens  Rejsehold, 2010). (EVA, as previously mentioned, is the Danish Evaluation Institute, integrated with ENQA, the collaboration on quality assurance within the framework of the Bologna process.) References to the larger scope of educational research at the Danish universities were only dimly visible. In 2011, Christine Antorini, the social democrat minister of education, launched the large-scale New Nordic School initiative. In discursive terms, this drew on the global reputation of the Nordic in terms of efficiency, equality, cuisine, and film to highlight the potentials of the Nordic region in education (Antorini, 2012; Ministeriet For Børn & Undervisning, 2012). Primarily it seemed to mean becoming as good as the Finns in literacy, numeracy, and science in transnational surveys (PISA, TIMSS, and PIRLS), while refining existing strengths such as project work and independent thinking for which East Asian tiger economies including Singapore, Hong Kong, and South Korea seemed to envy the Nordics. In the spirit of the knowledge economy discourse, the chairmanship of the New Nordic School initiative is shared between Dorte Lange, vice-chair of the Danish Union of Teachers, and Lars Goldschmidt, director of the Confederation of Danish Industry.

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The School Reform of 2013 Together, this set of coordinated initiatives paved the way for the comprehensive school reform of 2013, which codified much of the transnational- and Anglo-­ American-­ inspired school discourse (Folkeskoleloven, 2014). The reform was based on a political agreement (Ministeriet for Børn og Undervisning og Ligestilling, 2013) that in its three central goals for school reform stated as its explicit reference point the successful ‘whole system reform’ undertaken in Ontario, Canada (Fullan & Levin, 2009; Levin, 2008). The goals were these: (1) school must challenge all students to become as proficient as they can; (2) school must reduce the significance of the social background for academic results; (3) confidence in and wellbeing in school must be strengthened, among other things, through respect for professional knowledge and practice. These three goals, inspired by Ontario, must also be operationalized into measurable subgoals (Rasmussen et al., 2015; Skovmand, 2016). The school reform got off to a rough start, as its financing was complicated by collective bargaining between Local Government Denmark (the association of Danish municipalities) and the Danish Union of Teachers, which crashed, with comprehensive government lockouts of teachers. The subsequent national government intervention, largely supporting Local Government Denmark’s positions, was codified into legislation in the so-called Act 409 (409, 2013). Thus began a prolonged and profound issue of dispute, that the comprehensive school reform was interconnected with what was termed ‘greater flexibility in the use of teachers’ labor.’ This was made operational by giving school principals more power to negotiate at a local level with individual teachers about how their working hours are to be organized. This abolished the so-called UFØ model agreed with the Danish Union of Teachers in the 1990s, whereby each teacher had his/her workload allotted according to a standard number of hours for teaching (U), preparation (F), and other time for other tasks (Ø) (Thejsen, 2014). Likewise, teachers were now required to be present at school within working time, which diminished the flexibility available to teachers in the area of managing their teaching preparation, among other issues. Simultaneously, the school reform also contained elements that drew on reform pedagogy, such as increased emphasis on physical activities and more attention to bringing play and learning together. The school reform got off to a rough start, with marked dissatisfaction on the part of teachers (Thejsen & Jørgensen, 2014). The reform added to dissatisfaction with the so-called Inclusion Act (Inklusionsloven, 2012), which had stipulated that students with learning, behavioral, and other disabilities must be included in normal teaching settings to a much greater extent, partly to honor inclusion values, partly to reduce the increasing costs of special needs education. The Inclusion Act had been officially introduced with reference to the UNESCO Declaration of Salamanca (1994), which states children’s right to education regardless of disability, and the UN convention on disability rights (Handicap Convention, 2010), ratified by Denmark in 2009 (Petersen & Hansen, 2019). Teachers, researchers, and others have criticized the Inclusion Act for amounting to a cost-reducing exercise that

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burdens teaching work by placing resource-intensive students in normal classes without the additional resources that would make the inclusion work (Appel & Coninck-Smith, 2015b, pp. 50–53).

 t the Crossroads? Transnational Policy Meets A National(First) Resistance In summary, therefore, Danish school policy has become transformed since the turn of the millennium into a low-stakes version of a standards-based education regime monitored by standardized testing under the slogan ‘steering by learning goals.’ This is a decisive reversal of previous Danish school tradition, in which testing and mandatory learning goals had been taboo. We see similar developments in the other Nordic countries  – possibly with Finland as the exception, where schools and teacher education have retained substantial autonomy while adapting nonetheless, to transnational policy advice and standards (Krejsler & Moos, 2021c; Rinne, 2021). But the process has been far from smooth. The current blend of adaptation and resistance to transnational collaborations is unfolding at a time when Danish and Nordic developments are coming face to face with a number of geopolitical trends mediated via crises in the European Union – Brexit, the rise of illiberal democracies in Central and Eastern Europe, the anti-immigration backlash following the 2015 refugee crisis, a discourse of increasing confrontation between Western and Islamic cultural values and, most recently, the Russian invasion of Ukraine. All of these trends and events have increased inequality and insecurity in the globalized European economies (Bergmann, 2017; Judis, 2016; Rizvi et al., 2022; Standing, 2011; World Bank, 2016). The particular Danish trajectory taken to deal with this heap of challenges was already visible when the liberal conservative government coalition agreement with the Danish People’s Party after 2001 initiated a systematic increase in initiatives to curb immigration and a growing focus upon safeguarding what are called ‘Danish values’ as well as the Danish language. In school and education policy, the general policy trends of curbing immigration from outside the European Union and demanding greater assimilation to ‘Danish values’ from immigrants now became particularly visible. Thus, mother-tongue language instruction is losing out to increased focus on Danish language acquisition, in stark opposition to recommendations from the immigration and second-language acquisition research community, one that has been largely sidelined since the millennium shift (e.g. Kristjansdottir, 2020). That these general shifts in policy trends should become visible in school and education policy is hardly surprising, as school has always been a key institution in which discourse about nation-building, national values, and the future success, strength and economy of a country is enacted (Bergmann, 2017; Cherry, 2019; Haas & Matthiesen, 2020).

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The Danish adaptation to transnational norms, supposedly to correct the failings of national education outlined above, was paralleled nonetheless by increasing pressure to place Danish culture and history firmly in the preamble to the School Act. There were also initiatives from as early as the early 1990s to develop a canon of Danish literature. These were inspired by cultural conservative American trends, most spectacularly by Allan Bloom’s bestselling book ‘The Closing of the American Mind’ (1987), translated into Danish as the ‘The Story of the West’s Intellectual Decay’ (1991). On the one hand, the years following the millennium shift can be seen as a period when the transnational norms of standards-based education in a low-stakes test-and-­ documentation version were thoroughly incorporated, offsetting the older Danish school tradition of reform pedagogy and anti-testing, student-centered approaches (Blossing et al., 2016; Ekholm et al., 2004). But on the other hand, national undercurrents can be seen continuously working beneath the level of full-scale adaptation to transnational policy advice and standards.This happens in several forms. One of these undercurrents gathers progressive as well as culturally conservative proponents of Danish school traditions, regardless of differences in motivation. The progressives refer to child-centered reform pedagogy, didactics, and Bildung traditions that historically developed in Denmark with German inspirations; the conservatives refer to the Danish homegrown giants of the nineteenth-century, the enlightenment figures  – Grundtvig and Kold  – who marked Danish school so deeply (Blossing et al., 2016; Rømer et al., 2017). A second undercurrent is seen in the reference to the Danish canon of literature, art and so forth, as well as in the appeal to so-called Danish values propagated by traditional conservative elitist school values as well as by the right-wing nationalist propagators who have gained considerable strength (Bergmann, 2017). The surprising consequence has been what might be termed a somewhat unholy alliance between the progressive left in education and the national(ist) anti-immigration, often outright xenophobic, parts of the traditional and extreme right. Since around 2016, one can sense a strengthening of the positions of resistance that coalesce from these developments. Merete Riisager, the libertarian minister of education (2016–2019), has focused on Bildung, partly as a critique of a one-sided focus on standards-based education and testing (Trier, 2017). As mentioned, despite the 2018 decision to retain ‘steering by learning goals’ with mandatory competence areas and goals (including skills and knowledge areas), implementation in more specific subskills and content goals will in future only be indicative guidelines (Christensen, 2017). Likewise, opposition to the design of the national tests is increasing not only among teachers and parents, but gaining support in parliament as well. The national tests, their impact on the organization of school practice, their validity, and their reliability are questioned (Bundsgaard & Kreiner, 2019; Kousholt, 2019). In February 2020, parliament decided to temporarily suspend national tests for all schools except for the most vulnerable 20% of students. In the meantime, work is under way to reform testing in ways that document better what children can master and that can be used by teachers in working with the individual student (Bundsgaard & Kreiner, 2019; Kousholt, 2019). In 2021, a new model of national

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testing was finally agreed, to take effect from 2026, and here the focus is on testing early in the school term in literacy and numeracy, customized to make tests more educationally usable in teachers’ concrete work with their students. In conclusion, therefore, one can say that resistance is becoming increasingly visible to transnationally inspired standards-based education and testing in Danish school and education policy since around 2016 among coalitions of forces ranging from the progressive left to the culturally conservative and national(ist) right. Similar developments are observable in the other Nordic countries, each by way of their particular trajectory. In Sweden, the turn toward more national(ist) solutions and ‘Swedish values’ started later, perhaps owing to Sweden’s universalist and internationalist traditions. Access to mother-tongue language instruction in school still retains strong legitimacy in Sweden, unlike in Denmark. The refugee crisis of 2015, when Sweden took in disproportionately more refugees than any other Nordic country, nevertheless became the starting point for the rise of the Sweden Democrats, a culturally conservative, populist and xenophobic party similar to the Danish People’s Party. But whereas the Danish People’s Party had its roots in the strong tax resistance movement of the 1970s and turned to anti-Islamic sentiment later on, the Swedish People’s Party has its roots in the small white supremacy, even neo-Nazi movements of the far right. Between the Danish and Swedish trajectories, similar tendencies are observable in Norway, where the Progress Party has followed similar paths to the Danish People’s Party, and in Finland, where the Finns’ Party grew from the dissolution of the Finnish Rural Party (1995), representing nationalist and xenophobic developments (Bergmann, 2017). These developments resonate with the geopolitical changes observable across the countries of Europe, as well as in the United States, where transnational policies are questioned by a resurgence of coalitions of national(ist) forces that increasingly penetrate mainstream policy (Judis, 2016; Krejsler, 2020; Mondon & Winther, 2020). Whether this trend is a bump in the road or a change of paradigm that will in turn transform school and education policies will be intriguing to follow in the perhaps turbulent years to come.

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Krejsler, J. B., & Moos, L. (2021b). Discussion: The Nordic dimension in national school policies and transnational social technologies? In J. B. Krejsler & L. Moos (Eds.), What works in Nordic school policies? Mapping approaches to evidence, social technologies and transnational influences (pp. 237–254). Springer. Krejsler, J.  B., & Moos, L. (Eds.). (2021c). What works in Nordic school policies? Mapping approaches to evidence, social technologies and transnational influences. Springer. Krejsler, J. B., Olsson, U., & Petersson, K. (2018). Becoming fit for transnational comparability: Exploring challenges in Danish and Swedish teacher education. In E. Hultqvist, S. Lindblad, & T. S. Popkewitz (Eds.), Critical analyses of educational reform in an era of transnational governance (pp. 93–112). Springer Publishing House. Kristjansdottir, B. (2020). Fagene dansk, dansk som andetsprog og minoritetsmodersmål: Status og hierarkier [on the subjects of Danish, Danish as a second language, and minority mother tongue languages]. Nordand – Nordisk tidsskrift for andrespråksforskning, 15(2), 78–92. Lawn, M., & Grek, S. (2012). Europeanizing education: Governing a new policy space. Symposium Books. Levin, B. (2008). How to change 5000 schools: A practical and positive appraoch for leading change at every level. Harvard Education Press. Mejding, J. (1994). Den grimme ælling og svanerne?: Om danske elevers læsefærdigheder (Vol. 1994–1920) [The Ugly Duckling and the Swans?: On Danish Pupils’ literacy skills]. Danmarks Pædagogiske Institut. Ministeriet For Børn & Undervisning [Danish Ministry of Education]. (2012). Velkommen til Ny Nordisk Skole [Welcome to the new Nordic School]. The Danish Ministry of Education. Ministeriet for Børn, Undervisning og Ligestilling [Danish Ministry of Education](2013). Aftale mellem regeringen (Socialdemokraterne, Radikale Venstre og Socialistisk Folkeparti), Venstre og Dansk Folkeparti om et fagligt løft af folkeskolen [Agreement between the social-democrat-­ led government and the Liberal Party of Denmark and the Danish People’s Party concerning improvement of academic quality in the Danish Folkeskole (June 7, 2013). Mondon, A., & Winther, A. (2020). Reactionary democracy: How racism and the populist far right became mainstream. Verso. Moos, L. (2016). Pædagogisk ledelse i en læringsmålstyret skole? [Educational Leasdership in a Goal-Directed School?]. Hans Reitzels Forlag. Nóvoa, A., & Lawn, M. (2002). Fabricating Europe: The formation of an education space. Kluwer Academic Publishers. Oecd. (1996). The knowledge based economy. OECD. Oecd/Ceri. (2004). National review on educational R&D: Examiners’ report on Denmark. OECD/CERI. Pedersen, O. K. (2011). Konkurrencestaten [the competition state]. Hans Reitzels Forlag. Petersen, K. E., & Hansen, J. H. (Eds.). (2019). Inklusion og eksklusion [Inclusion and exclusion]. Hans Reitzels Forlag. Rasmussen, A.  F. (2003). Statsministerens Åbningstale (07/10/1003) [The Prime Minister’s Opening Speech in parliament]. Retrieved from https://nyheder.tv2.dk/article.php/ id-­250263%3Astatsministerens-­%C3%A5bningstale-­ Rasmussen, J., Holm, C., & Rasch-Christensen, A. (Eds.). (2015). Folkeskolen – Efter reformen [Danish school – After the comprehensive 2013 reform]. Hans Reitzels Forlag. Regeringen. (2006). Fremgang, fornyelse og tryghed -Strategi for Danmark i den globale økonomi – de vigtigste initiativer [Progress, renewal and security – A strategy for Denmark in the global economy – The most important initiatives]. The Danish Government. Rinne, R. (2021). Finland – The late-comer that became the envy of its Nordic competitors. In J. B. Krejsler & L. Moos (Eds.), What works in Nordic school policies? Mapping approaches to evidence, social technologies and transnational influences (pp. 47–66). Springer. Rizvi, F., & Lingard, B. (2010). Globalizing education policy. Routledge. Rizvi, F., Lingard, B., & Rinne, R. (Eds.). (2022). Reimagining globalization and education. Routledge.

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Rømer, T. A., Tanggaard, L., & Brinkmann, S. (Eds.). (2017). Uren Pædagogik 3 [Impure Pedagogy 3]. KLIM. Sahlberg, P. (2011). Lessons from Finland. American Educator, 35(2), 32–36. Sahlberg, P. (2016). The global educational reform movement and its impact on schooling. In K. Mundy, A. Green, B. Lingard, & A. Verger (Eds.), The handbook of global education policy (pp. 128–144). Wiley-Blackwell. Sahlin-Andersson, K. (2001). National, international and transnational constructions of new public management. In T.  Christensen & P.  Lægreid (Eds.), New public management  – The transformation of ideas and practice (pp. 43–72). Ashgate. Simões, A. R., Lourenco, M., & Costa, N. (Eds.). (2020). Teacher education policy and practice in Europe: Challenges and opportunities for the future. Routledge. Skagen, K. (2006). Lärarutbildningen i Norden [Teacher education in the Nordic countries]. HLS Förlag. Skolens Rejsehold [The School Flying Squad]. (2010). Rapport B: Baggrundsrapport til Fremtidens folkeskole – én af verdens bedste. Anbefalinger fra Skolens Rejslehold [Background report on School of the Future]. Styrelsen for Evaluering og Kvalitetsudvikling af Folkeskolen (Skolestyrelsen). Skovmand, K. (2016). Uden mål og med: Forenklede fælles mål? [A school without direction: On simplified common goals?]. Hans Reitzels Forlag. Standing, G. (2011). The precariat: The new dangerous class. Bloomsbury. Telhaug, A. O., Mediås, O. A., & Aasen, P. (2006). The Nordic model in education: Education as part of the political system in the last 50 years. Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research, 50(3), 245–283. Thejsen, T. (2014). Kommunalisering, UFØ’re og læsechok. In T. Thejsen (ed.), Lærernes kampe – Kampen for skolen [Teachers’ struggles – The struggle about school] (pp. 70–86). Gyldendal. Thejsen, T., & Jørgensen, H. B. (2014). Fra forståelse og samarbejde til knockout. In Lærernes kampe – Kampen for skolen [Teachers’ struggles – The struggle about school] (pp. 92–110). Gyldendal. Tyler, R. W. (1949). Basic principles of curriculum and instruction. University of Chicago Press. Tyler, R. W. (1974). Undervisningsplanlægning [Basic principles of curriculum and instruction]. Christian Ejlers Forlag. Undervisningsministeriet [Ministry of Education]. (1986). Om grundlæggende kundskaber: Et debatoplæg [On basic skills: A debate paper]. World Bank. (2016). Polarization and Populism: Europe and Central Asia Economic Update. Retrieved from https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/25341 Ydesen, C. (Ed.). (2019). The OECD’s historical rise in education: The formation of a global governing complex. Palgrave Macmillan.

Chapter 3

England: Neo-Liberalism, Regulation and Populism in the Educational Reform Laboratory David Hall

Abstract  The analysis of school reform in England offered in this chapter seeks to make sense of a 35-year period of post-welfarist hyper-innovation in which regulatory and centralised approaches have gone hand in hand with a persistent and tenacious neo-liberalism. Stretching from the Conservative administrations of the 1980s and 1990s, through the New Labour administrations of the late 90s and 00s and on to the Conservative and Coalition administrations since 2010 it charts mostly continuities, but also discontinuities between these eras. It argues that the lighter touch, self-regulation and ‘club government’ characteristic of educational governance during the post-war era prior to the election of the Thatcher-led governments from 1979 have been radically altered by processes of marketisation and centralised regulation. Contrary to dominant accounts of governance (Rhodes R, Understanding governance. Open University Press, Buckingham and Philadelphia, 1997) that emphasise the hollowing out of central government, the marketisation of education as part of a marked neo-liberal turn in this context has been accompanied by a dramatic increase in centralised regulation. England’s early adoption of this approach in the 1980s led to it emerging as a laboratory for educational reform linked both to marketisation and an associated outcomes and test-based accountability both of which subsequently materialised as widespread transnational trends. Whilst the election of a New Labour government in 1997 did result in significant discontinuities, not least in terms of the levels of government expenditure on schools and the teaching profession, the dominant model of marketisation and regulation was largely reinforced during this time paving the way for those more privatising, and increasingly idiosyncratic and populist, interventions that have developed strongly since 2010. Keywords  Marketisation · Neo-liberalism · Regulatory government · Governance and new public management

D. Hall (*) University of Exeter, Exeter, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. B. Krejsler, L. Moos (eds.), School Policy Reform in Europe, Educational Governance Research 22, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-35434-2_3

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Introduction This chapter seeks to make a new contribution to extant debates about the character and nature of school reform in England. It traces school reforms over a period stretching from the aftermath of the Second World War through to the present day. Given that the current wave of school reform in this context is identified in this chapter as having started in the 1980s there is a particular emphasis here upon the last 40 or so years. The specific contribution of this chapter is to both capture the broad character of these reforms and to locate them within a range of theories and ideas most particularly those relating to neo-liberalism, regulatory government, governance and New Public Management and consequently to offer a uniquely comprehensive account of school reform in this context. It is important to note before beginning this chapter that the foregrounding of neo-liberalism should not be read as having been coterminous with a withdrawal or dissolution of state intervention in the field of education in this context. Things have turned out to be rather more complex. So, whilst the advance of neo-liberalism has been widely associated with the development of modes of governance (Kooiman, 2003; Rhodes, 1997) not least educational network governance (Ball & Junemann, 2012) and although this broad trend has indeed been evident in context of English school reform, its development has been accompanied by the simultaneous advance of regulatory approaches in which the British state has played a central and centralising role. As will be seen from the account that follows school reform in England has involved neo-liberalism going hand in hand with increasing levels of centralisation and regulation. Following description and analysis of the context for and period preceding the neo-liberal turn in English school reform, the chapter is organised around what are identified as the three principal stages of the post-welfarist (Ball, 1997) reform of English schools from 1979 to the present day. This includes an analysis and discussion of how these three principal stages of school reform might best be characterised alongside consideration of their relationship to wider international and global trends in school reform.

The Context for Post-welfarist School Reform The broader canvass for the establishment of post-welfarist approaches to school reform in England is one that may be familiar to readers. The Conservative Party election victory in 1979 leading to the formation of a Margaret Thatcher led government is widely viewed as a watershed moment in UK politics. It was an election victory that secured the ascendance within the Conservative Party of a New Right strongly attached to the twin pillars of a new and re-worked form of economic liberalism, neo-liberalism, as well as to a similarly re-fashioned neo-conservatism, linked to the defence of a particular set of traditions most especially in relation to

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order, authority and discipline (Gamble, 1994). It reflected both an international trend towards neo-liberalism as represented, for example, by the US Presidential elections of the 1980s and represented a marked shift away from more social-­ welfarist approaches to solving perceived national social and economic problems that had become more common in the UK during the post-war period in political administrations led by both the Labour and Conservative parties. Some of the conditions that in the UK led to the election of a New Right inspired government taking office in 1979 had also been and were continuing to be experienced throughout what were at the time widely referred to as the advanced industrial economies of the West. During the 1970s faith in Keynesian government intervention allied to social-welfarism had been increasingly challenged, following periods of economic turbulence linked, for example to the OPEC oil crisis. As part of this a new discourse began to take root emphasising the inefficiencies and ineffectiveness of governments and the excessive costs of maintaining the welfare state. This directly established the ground for subsequent major programmes of public service reform in a range of European countries including the Netherlands, Sweden and the UK and elsewhere Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the USA (Pollitt & Bouckaert, 2011). This changing social, political and economic landscape is viewed as providing the basis for programmes of reform that were later collectively described and characterised as the New Public Management (NPM). Central to these reforms were attempts, now recognised as being at the core of NPM (Clarke & Newman, 1997; Gunter et  al., 2016), to make governmental activity more business-­like through the transplantation of management techniques and business values from the private sector. So, whilst the emergence of NPM was part of a wider international trend (Pollitt & Bouckaert, 2011) it was one in which the UK is viewed as a front runner (Hood, 1991). The same applies in relation to the nature of school reforms in this context, with England presented in this chapter as an international laboratory for school reform (Hall & Gunter, 2016) as befitting its early start and pioneering status (Levin and Fullan, 2008).

Post-war School Reforms in England The wider ideological shifts referred to above need to be understood within the context of an educational landscape in England that in some ways had changed significantly during the post-war period. The 1944 Education Act sought to modernise some aspects of state financed educational provision via a tripartite system of secondary education which involved the creation of secondary modern and technical schools and the expansion of grammar schools. Entry to these schools would come to be determined via a selective examination sat by children at the ages of 10 or 11 and called the 11 plus. Those achieving higher scores and ‘passing’ this examination were offered the opportunity to progress to grammar schools, those in the next band of attainment to technical schools and those with lower scores, ‘failing’ the 11+, would progress to secondary modern schools. In practice very few

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technical schools were developed so that the system developed was overwhelmingly bipartite rather than tripartite. In each case parents with sufficient economic resources could opt-out of this local authority provision and send their children to private schools. The 1944 Act strengthened the interventionist role of the state in schools and also largely accorded with long established conservative views and ideas regarding the desirability and inevitably of scholastic and wider social hierarchies (Heywood, 2017). Three further features of the 1944 Education Act are important to note. First, it was marked by de-centralisation primarily on account of the role afforded to local authorities in the provision of maintained schooling making them the prime and, in many locations, the sole providers of state funded schools. Accordingly local government became a principal actor in this expansion of state education. Second, a more socially and economically liberal approach to the re-­ organisation of education in the 1944 Act left in place a range of private actors and institutions. As well as religious institutions mostly encompassed within the 1944 reforms, Christian Church of England and Roman Catholic sponsored schools, these included a large sector of private schools (confusingly referred to as ‘public’ schools). These private schools and the private preparatory schools that fed them had dominated elite pre-war pre university education especially in England. Their pupils were drawn overwhelmingly from the most socially privileged and economically advantaged families and their alumni continued to dominate political, social and business elites in the UK. This unwillingness to displace or disturb socio-­ economically dominant elites also mirrors a wider and de-centralised aspect of the 1944 Act via the continuation of a lighter touch culture of self-regulation for professional elites (Moran, 2003). In this mode of regulation teachers would experience a licensed autonomy in relation to curriculum and pedagogy, in particular and over which the Secretary of State for Education and the national Department for Education (DfE) had very little direct formal involvement. This lighter touch mode of regulation was perhaps best exemplified by the system of school inspections during this period conducted on the basis of a primarily cooperative relationship linked to a model of critical friendship (Baxter & Clarke, 2013) as part of what has been termed a ‘secret garden’ approach to regulation (Hood et al., 1999).

 he Emergence of and Early Challenges T to Comprehensive Schools By the 1950s the overwhelmingly bipartite system introduced in 1944 was beginning to fracture. Whilst the process that began in the 1950s of creating and opening comprehensive schools in England is viewed as a limited interruption to more liberal and conservative approaches to education in this context, it nevertheless represented at the time a significant challenge to the ancien regime of schooling in this context. Although the extent of claims about the scope of the overhaul represented by comprehensivisation must be tempered not least by both the partial break – up of

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the bipartite system across local authorities (some chose not to remove the bi-partite system) and the socio-economically skewed characteristics of the intakes of many so-called comprehensive schools (Ball, 2008), it did nevertheless represent a significant break with past practices. By the early 1980s the overwhelming majority of maintained secondary schools in England were described as comprehensives and were pursuing a partial form of common schooling where children of a range of academic ‘abilities’ and from different socio-economic backgrounds might find themselves being taught under the same roof. At the very least this process of comprehensivisation did significantly fragment, and in many localities overhaul, the largely bipartite system of secondary education established in 1944. At least in part this can be viewed as reflecting the capacity of local authorities during this period to shape provision according to locally identified priorities and concerns. These local concerns and priorities included, not least, the failure of the tripartite/bipartite system to sufficiently disturb the overwhelmingly socially reproductive effects of state funded education in ways that served to reinforce rather than sever longer standing social class divisions in the UK (Halsey et al., 1980). They also included variously the emergence of a new middle class, disinclined or financially unable to send their children to private schools, who were increasingly unwilling to accept for those of their children, who had ‘failed’ the 11 plus, an educational route often focused upon preparation for manual work. Also important here and no doubt fuelling the above was the increasing prominence of ideas that challenged the capacity of 11 plus tests to offer sufficiently reliable evidence regarding the academic capabilities and future academic potential of children. Combined these factors offered significant interruptive potential to previously more dominant trends in school reform; not least during the late 1960s and early 70s, a period during which the number of comprehensive schools was growing at its fastest rate (Ball, 2008 ibid) and during which the school leaving age was raised to 16. At the very point in time at which many local authorities were increasingly converting their previously bipartite educational provision to comprehensives a significant ideological shift was taking root. Concerns about falling educational standards in maintained schools were captured and channelled via a series of ‘Black Papers’, emerging from within the New Right of the Conservative Party and variously advocating for a range of economically liberal approaches to school reform focused upon educational vouchers, parental choice of school and competition between schools (Cox & Dyson, 1969; Cox & Boyson, 1975). Concerns expressed in the Black Papers were also centred upon the emergence of neo-conservative concerns focused upon the dangers of ‘progressive’ teaching methods, the shift to comprehensive schools more generally and associated perceptions of inappropriately high levels of teacher autonomy and concomitant lack of teacher accountability. Totemic expression was given to these matters in widely publicised events linked to ‘progressive’ pedagogic change in William Tyndale Junior School in London during the period 1974–1976 (Davis, 2002). This reached its apogee when a quasi-judicial inquiry into the events at the school legitimated the idea that teachers not only had too much autonomy but also that they were pursuing subversive ends (Whitty & Menter, 1988); an episode interpreted as marking the demise of a period of

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progressive teaching in England (Dale, 1989). This neo-conservative turn in attitudes towards school reform gained significant traction in October, 1976 when the then Labour Prime Minister James Callaghan, in a now famous speech at Ruskin College, Oxford endorsed the discourse of falling standards and set in motion what was to become a long lasting, dominant and cross political party focus upon the so-­ called ‘standards agenda’. Of particular importance here was that Callaghan went further than expressing concerns about declining educational standards by linking this issue to a diminution of the UK’s international economic competitiveness. In short, the reform of what were perceived by some as malfunctioning schools had become ever more urgent signalling the escalation of education as an issue of significant political importance and framed within a direct association between school reform and national economic success. The discursive appearance amongst both the New Right of the Conservative Party and the leadership of the Labour Party of twin and similarly conceived concerns regarding progressive teaching and declining standards in schools are viewed as offering significant early momentum to the emergence of a surprisingly resilient political settlement on educational reform in which a focus upon improving educational ‘standards’ would come to occupy centre stage. Furthermore a marked trend towards a human capital approach to education and its wider economisation had been established; a theme that was also to endure throughout subsequent stages of reform. So the period of time covered in this section of the chapter reflects both the pre-­ war legacy of social and economic liberalism in which private actors and institutions were included in the post-war educational settlement and in which the interests of socio-economically dominant elites were carefully protected as part of a power sharing arrangement in which each of central government, local government and the teaching profession would play key roles. Initially this was a settlement based upon traditional, conservative ideas about academic ability resulting in the establishment of a bipartite system. For a variety of reasons this proved unsustainable as efforts to modernise the British economy and society ran up against deep rooted socio-­ economic inequalities that continued to play out in schools organised around academic selection. By the end of this period, comprehensive schools developed in the wake of such tensions, had largely replaced post-war schooling arrangements as part of an increasingly politically fragile arrangement that was coming under increasing pressure from both main political parties.

Establishing Post-welfarist Reform in England (1979–1997) School reform under the Margaret Thatcher led Conservative administrations of the 1980s took a little while to gather pace and to take shape. It is interesting to note in this regard that even by 1985 a White Paper specifically rejected either local or central government involvement ‘to determine the detailed organisation and content of the programme of the pupils of any particular school’ (DES, 1985, p. 11). The 1986

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Education (No.2) Act, by way of contrast, offered a better taste of what was to come via significant changes to school governing bodies including the appointment of business representatives and increased powers for them. This is viewed as a marker of what was to become a diminution of the role and powers of local authorities in relation to their responsibilities for schools and the allied transfer of these powers to individual instiutions and new, private policy actors in this field.

The 1988 Education Reform Act The 1988 Education Reform Act took the provisions of the 1986 Act significantly further by simultaneously establishing two key platforms for school reform, marketization and centralisation, acting as cornerstones for subsequent reform efforts. The first of these, marketization or more specifically quasi-marketisation (le Grand & Bartlett 1993), was achieved initially via the local financial management of schools (LMS). This served to devolve budgetary powers previously mostly held by local authorities to individual schools. In turn this provided the basis for new budgetary arrangements contained within the 1988 Act that allocated individual school budgets linked to the number of pupils that they recruited. Under this new marketised regime schools that were able to recruit sufficient pupils by securing the choice of parents would variously thrive and/or survive; those that could not would be left to close or merge with other schools more successful at winning parental favour. The second cornerstone of the 1988 Act was the centralisation of extensive powers directly into the hands of the Secretary of State for Education. This occurred as part of the introduction of a National Curriculum based upon identified standards in relation to a core of subject disciplines. A key dimension of this was the simultaneous introduction of national testing at four key stages stretching from the reception years at Primary (First) school, Key Stage 1, through to the final year of compulsory schooling at age 16, Key Stage 4. Taken together the various provisions of the 1988 Act conferred upon the Secretary of State for Education the power not only to prescribe the National Curriculum, but also to change it as he/she saw fit. Furthermore, this included not only the knowledge, skills and understanding that pupils were expected to have at the end of each key stage, but also establishing arrangements for the assessment of pupils at the end of each key stage in relation to attainment targets also established by the Secretary of State. Finally, the 1988 Act, as well as laying the foundations for the simultaneous marketisation and centralisation of schools in England, can also be viewed as establishing the basis for the replacement of comprehensive schools as the default model for maintained secondary provision. By introducing two new types of school, City Technology Colleges and Grant Maintained Schools, neither of which ever expanded beyond a very small number of institutions, the 1988 Act also signalled the beginning of an era of school fragmentation. This was a direct challenge to and attempt to break-up, a system in which comprehensive schools had come to predominate even though at the time of the Act some local authorities, such as Bolton in Greater

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Manchester, had only recently re-organised along comprehensive lines from a previously bipartite system of grammar and secondary modern schools. Taken together these three principal features of the 1988 Act, regulated centralisation, marketization and fragmentation of school types very much established the ground for subsequent school reforms. They capture the principal tenets of New Right thinking underpinning the 1988 Act. First, via the experimentation with school markets/quasi-markets and new institutional types located outside of local authority control reflecting a willingness to disrupt and break up existing school provision in the interests of pursuing a particular form of post-welfarism. Second, via the introduction of a National Curriculum and associated testing inspired largely by a neo-conservative view of learning and teaching (Apple, 2004). These changes also reflected the appetite of the Conservative administration at that time to significantly extend its powers over schools and to directly intervene in schools in ways that directly mirrored their understanding of teaching and learning; a process with the claimed justification not only of re-asserting authority and discipline in schools but also of enabling the UK to compete more effectively in an international economy.

 chool Reform and the Conservative Administrations S of the 1990s Following the 1988 Act, Conservative administrations of the 1990s were principally pre-occupied with enacting the 1988 reforms not least some of the complexities generated by the prescriptive National Curriculum (Ribbins & Sherratt, 1997) including, for example the ten levels of specified attainment for each of the four level/key stage Standards Attainment Tests (SATs). This did not mean, however, that the reforming zeal of the Conservatives was diminished as a series of new education acts were passed by the Houses of Parliament during an era of hyper innovation. The 1991 School Teachers’ Pay and Conditions Act, for example, further centralised government control in relation to teachers’ pay by establishing a new teachers’ pay review body, appointed by the Prime Minister and whose recommendations could be modified or, indeed, rejected by the Secretary of State for Education. The 1992 Education (Schools) Act led to the creation of the Office for Standards in Education (OFSTED) a new school inspection body largely, although not entirely, overshadowing the longer standing school inspectorate, Her Majesty’s Inspectorate (HMI). The newly created OFSTED’s remit was to undertake school inspections and it was to do so via teams of inspectors employed by largely private organisations rather than, as had been the case for HMI, with civil servants. Schools were to be inspected much more regularly in 4 year cycles with a focus upon pupil attainment as well as teacher processes and with recommendations for improvement for which school governors and ‘senior management’ were to be held accountable (Ribbins & Sherratt, 1997). The critical friend model had been effectively abandoned and OFSTED would primarily operate according to prescription rather than discussion.

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Regulatory Government and the Demise of Self-Regulation The principal interpretation of the Conservative reforms of the 1980s and 1990s offered here is that it they both reflect and form an important part of a key development in the British state during the 1980s. This is in the form of a shift of regulatory mode that distinguishes regulation in the UK before and after the first Thatcher led administration of 1979. This move is from forms of self-regulation or ‘club government’ that had predominated since the nineteenth Century and that were based upon ‘informality, flexibility, cooperation’ (Moran, 2003). In schools this was perhaps most evident in the dispersal of powers between the teaching profession, local government and central government and in the pedagogic and curricula autonomy experienced by classroom teachers prior to the 1980s. During the 1980 and 1990s major efforts were made to break this system and to institute a new top-down model of regulation so that self-regulation, cooperation and informality were corroded and displaced by external regulation, prescriptive standards and directives and formality. This move towards new forms of regulation involved, in particular, the codification of knowledge that had frequently been previously held in tacit or more informal forms by teachers and other education professionals. This represented a significant diminution of the formal powers and autonomy of teachers and their unions/professional associations as well as of local authorities. In direct contrast to this central government and the authorities established by them, not least OFSTED, secured significant advances in their formal powers. The reforms also involved the instrumentalisation of educational processes not least so that the formal achievements of children could be reduced to forms intelligible to these new methods of scrutiny. Overall this can be viewed as a process corresponding to Scott’s (2008) notion of high modernism in which the previously ungovernable or harder to govern is rendered governable via a process of simplification in which that which is hidden is made legible, that which is implicit is made explicit and that which is diverse is standardised. So, what emerged from this period was a new measurable form of school accountability that was remarkably amenable to subsequent and rapid changes in the availability, speed and capacity of data processing.

School Marketisation Running alongside this new regulatory mode was a move towards a more marketised school system in which local authorities had been removed as the default providers of maintained education. Fundamental to this marketization was the unleashing of market forces within a state funded model best described during this phase as a quasi-market (Le Grand & Bartlett, 1993). As previously discussed this was achieved via the dual processes of local financial management and the widespread availability of ‘school choice’ information to parents principally based upon national tests results (as widely reported in  local, regional and national school

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league tables) and OFSTED inspections. As might be inferred from the above the regulatory aspects of these reforms are viewed as accordant with neo-liberalism not least given the diversity of forms of contemporary neo-liberalism (Gamble, 2019) that are compatible with development by the state of institutions that support markets. In this particular instance market building that provides the distinguishing information that education ‘consumers’ require for markets to function. Whilst more destructive aspects of wider anglo-american neo-liberalism were undoubtedly released during this era and, whilst some of its New Right proponents no doubt had an eye on the larger prize of eliminating or significantly reducing both public forms of schooling more generally and state funding to schools more particularly, the principal focus of school reforms in England during the Conservative administrations of the 1980s and 1990s remained strongly aligned to a form of NPM in which its relationship to neo-liberalism was especially close (Hall & Gunter, 2016). Overall, this period of school reform from 1986 onwards is viewed as reflecting the reforming zeal of the Conservative administrations in which neo-liberally inspired attempts to marketise schools went hand in hand with significant increases in central regulatory powers that sought to dramatically shift the previous political settlement between central government, local authorities and teachers noticeably to the detriment of the latter two groups. Clearly these reforms represented in part a dramatic shift from modes of educational governance that had developed from 1944 to 1979 and can be interpreted as a marked shift towards regulatory government and away from approaches that foregrounded producer groups including teachers and local government and that more closely resembled club government. The reforms are also interpreted as harking back to earlier, more economically liberal, market orientated features of school reform in England as well as a newly resurgent conservatism in which educational progressivism, most especially in forms championed by teachers, is disavowed in favour of more traditional modes more favoured by central political elites. The educational reforms enacted by the Conservative administrations of the 1980s and 1990s in England are viewed as reflecting not only historical and contemporary trends emerging from within the fields of UK and English politics but also wider international and transnational developments. As referred to above the turn towards neo-liberalism, as well as reviving a longer attachment to economic liberalism in this context, also reflected wider international trends associated with a rejection of Keynesian approaches to reform that had predominated in the post-world war II era. In particular, the Reagan and Bush presidential administrations in the US (1981–1993), largely coinciding with the Thatcher led administrations in the UK, offered significant momentum to the global spread of neo-liberalism in education not least via powerful international institutions including the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. In this wider movement in support of neo-liberal change, the UK government viewed itself as being in the global vanguard and assumed a role, especially under Margaret Thatcher, as an international proselytiser for the New Right both within the EU and across Europe more widely. Similarly, the

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UK is widely viewed as being at the forefront of the New Public Management movement as a transnational approach to public service reform and in ways as will be seen in the next section, that encompassed regulatory approaches to school reform that would appeal beyond the New Right.

 mbedding Post-welfarist School Reform in England E (1997–2010) This section of the chapter refers to school reforms under the New Labour administrations of 1997–2010. New Labour, Standards and Continuity The title of the first major piece of legislation enacted under New Labour, the 1998 School Standards and Framework Act, offers a strong insight into one of the principal school reform continuities between New Labour and previous Conservative administrations. There was to be an obdurate focus upon the notion of school ‘standards’ that was sustained through each successive New Labour administration. It represented at this early stage in New Labour’s first administration a clear intention to keep in place the principal structures of the National Curriculum as laid down, albeit with subsequent elaboration and limited modification, in the 1988 Act. Indeed, the creation of National Strategies for literacy and numeracy following this which sought to directly intervene in the minutiae of teacher classroom practices in these core areas of the National Curriculum spoke more of intensification than revision or repeal in this regard. New Labour’s motivation for this form of intervention, given the potential for vilification and condemnation in a still very powerful print media should any significant deviation from the standards agenda have been identified (Campbell, 2011), may not have been circumscribed so much by neo-conservative thinking, nevertheless it did speak significantly more of continuity with than change from the previous Conservative administrations. The sense of continuity was not only in relation to those more centralising features of school reform enacted by previous Conservative administrations. Schools had emerged from the 1988 Education Act as individual business units competing with one another, to a greater or lesser extent according largely to locational factors, in hierarchical local education markets where market position was determined mostly by attainment data in league tables that were in turn strongly associated with the socio-economic features of their pupil intake. New Labour are viewed as reinforcing not only the acceptance of those marketised features of England’s school system introduced in 1988, but also of expanding and extending aspects of this development into new territory.

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Marketisation and Privatisation Under New Labour The introduction of Education Action Zones, also part of the 1998 School Standards and Framework Act, whereby clusters of schools were created in socio-­economically disadvantaged areas, specifically included their sponsorship by local businesses so that private sector involvement was structured into their formation. Similarly, local education authorities rated as ‘failing’ following inspection by OFSTED were to be replaced by private businesses following a competitive tendering process. The above marketised and privatising approach to school reform later found expression in the formation of City Academies in 2000. This new school type was intended to increase diversity and choice in urban school markets and outside of local authority control. They were to be sponsored by businesses and by individuals, churches or other voluntary bodies who were expected to contribute up to £2 million of capital costs. Not deterred by a lack of success in attracting such levels of private sponsorship, efforts were made to significantly expand the Academies programme with targets set for 200 or more such schools by 2010. As well as the marketising and privatising dimensions of the above reforms, the formation of Academies fits into a longer pattern of school disruption and fragmentation first established during the 1980s and principally focused upon removing comprehensive schools as the default mode of secondary schooling. Not only Academies, but also a movement towards specialist schools under New Labour can be seen as significant in this regard. The specialist school programme offered a range of specialist status options from which schools could choose including language, sports and technology and had the effect of encouraging schools to change their names to reflect their new status. By 2010 just under 90 per cent of maintained schools had gained specialist status. The specialist school programme would prove relatively short-lived given that it was to be swiftly abandoned by the Conservative/ Liberal Democratic Coalition administration formed following the 2010 general election. However, a speech made by Tony Blair in 2005, proposed something altogether more wide ranging than the specialist school programme. It offered a sense of the way in which a standards based political convergence around school reform that had expanded to include marketization and privatisation might drift further into something altogether more ambitious: We want every school to be able quickly and easily to become a self-governing independent state school – an opportunity not just open to a small number of schools, but to all who want it. (Blair, 2005, p. 8, cited in West and Bailey, 2013).

Two further dimensions of school reform under New Labour are worth exploring before we move on to the next section of this chapter. Schools and Performance Data The collection, analysis and availability of pupil, sub-school, whole school and cross school level data linked to the attainment of pupils in tests linked to the National Curriculum gained significant pace during the New Labour years. This

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trend was strongly supported by an emerging model of reform in which performance data was becoming central to the management, both locally and nationally, of pupils, classrooms and schools. Under New Labour an especially fervent version of national school management had evolved to position schools, teachers and, by implication young people, as deliverers of school improvement. Deliverology (Barber, 2007), which was to form the basis for a more ambitious reform of wider public services in the UK under the auspices of the Prime Minister’s Delivery Unit, was strongly associated with the emergence of schools as newly data rich institutions and as sites for improvement targets based upon national and local modelling and analysis of attainment data. As part of this considerable pressure was exerted upon pupils, teachers and schools to deliver ever higher levels of attainment within the increasingly narrow parameters of national tests (Hall & Gunter, 2016). This move towards target setting and subsequent performance management rapidly became, and indeed remains at the time of writing, a dominant feature of English school, classroom, pupil and wider family lives. Via a combination of high stakes inspection, high stakes testing and high stakes markets, schools have been left with frequently strictly limited room for manoeuvre in terms of developing localised responses to educational problems. This shift towards performance management has led to forms of self-regulation within schools and classrooms (Ozga, 2009) that are at some distance from those modes of self-regulation largely displaced by the neo-liberal reform processes described above. Instead these new forms of self -regulation in schools serve to reinforce and strengthen national systems of monitoring and surveillance as schools, teachers and young people replicate and reproduce these wider forms at a local and personal level. Schools in Scotland and Wales and Devolution Following voting amongst the Scottish and Welsh electorate in late 1997 in favour of Scottish and Welsh devolution, devolved powers over education were formally handed to the new Scottish Parliament and Welsh National Assembly. Prior to the formation of a Scottish Parliament, Scotland’s education policy had been largely overseen by the Scottish Office rather than the Department for Education, so that schools and associated reform efforts in this context during the earlier pre-­devolution period can be viewed as distinctive from both England and from Wales, where pre-­ devolution school reform had been significantly more closely tied to England (Rees, 2007). Whilst regulatory reforms in Scotland and Wales have shared some similarities with England not least in relation to NPM inspired attempts to performance manage schools, the extent of neo-liberal inflection has been noticeably weaker than in England (Arnott & Menter, 2007). It is important to note that this has not only been the case in Scotland, but also in Wales. This divergence with school reform in England has been perhaps most evident in the continuation of local authority comprehensive schools in both nations in a political climate in which attempts to displace or undermine this form of school did not gain any significant traction in the period under question. As such marketisation has been more muted and

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privatisation less widespread in both the Scottish and Welsh maintained schools system reflecting a form of NPM less intimately associated with the so-called ‘creative destruction’ of longer standing forms of public provision. New Labour and the Mainstreaming of Privatisation and Marketisation The widespread adoption by New Labour of marketised approaches to school reform, allied to attempts to disrupt and fragment comprehensive schools, can be viewed as a shift from the experimental phase of the Conservative administrations of the 1990s to the mainstreaming of such approaches to school reform in an English school context. In addition, strong acceptance of and support for other aspects of the 1988 Education Reform Act further reinforces this sense of continuity between the Conservative administrations of the 1990s and the New Labour administrations from 1997 to 2010. This does not mean, however, that the New Labour approach to schools was only marked by continuities. Discontinuities included, in particular, public spending on schools. Public expenditure on schools was increased significantly during New Labour’s tenure following a long period of low investment in this area under previous Conservative administrations and with significant implications for new school building and teacher salaries. In addition, approaches to reform evident in later years of New Labour’s tenure not least the Every Child Matters initiative of 2003 and the City Challenge programmes did point to new approaches indicative of modes of school reform less focused upon the neo-liberal. Another important aspect of the New Labour era was a marked impatience in relation to school reform. One source of this impatience was a diminution of temporal sovereignty (Jessop, 2007) as a newly intense media coverage of education (Campbell, 2011), including in particular the growth at that time of 24  hour TV news channels, made inroads into public perceptions of an area that had previously oftentimes occupied the backwaters of national life. This was none more so than in relation to the growing importance during the New Labour era of international data sets, OECD/PISA in particular offering comparative data about national educational performance (Grek, 2009). This directly fed into a longstanding concern amongst political elites in England about the relationship between educational standards and international economic competitiveness referred to earlier in this chapter not least at a time when notions of the knowledge economy were in the discursive ascendance (Dale, 2005). It also propelled a frenzied media coverage (Grey & Morris, 2018) foreshadowing the growing future influence of such performance data as governmental performance in the field of education was increasingly judged according to the narrow strictures of resultant league tables and frequently interpreted in terms of ‘success’ and ‘failure’. A particular target of this impatience and the hurried governmental responses to the latest ‘crisis’ in education were those public institutions run by experienced professionals not least those willing to and capable of challenging hasty and questionable central government led proposals. This can be viewed as being associated

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with the neo-liberal ‘public bad, private good’ mantra that frequently underpinned New Labour approaches to school reform and which involved the replacement of public with private actors and an accompanying exclusion or marginalisation of public service partners in new ventures (Gunter et  al., 2014). This approach had inevitable consequences for both local authorities and teachers and their professional associations/unions. Accordingly, partnership approaches to solving educational problems were largely eschewed in favour of central government seeking new, often private partners unlikely to dispute an exclusionary approach to local authorities and local authority teachers. Whilst there were certainly discontinuities as well as continuities between those school reforms undertaken by the Blair and Brown led New Labour administrations during the late 90s and 00s and those of the previous Conservative administrations of 1979–1997, it is argued here that the latter notion of continuities better captures the key dimensions of school reform during this era. This perhaps reflects more generally how the third way of New Labour could be difficult to discern amidst a more neo-liberally inspired trajectory (Hall, 2003). Whilst some aspects of New Labour’s interventionism in schools, especially during the Gordon Brown led administration (2007–2010), did not lean so much towards the neo-liberal,  the broader thrust of their school reforms continued along the path set by the Conservative administrations of the 80s and 90s in ways that continued to closely correspond to a more neo-liberally inflected model of NPM. As such New Labour willingly embraced a neo-liberal post-welfarist approach to school reform and an accompanying search to replace public with private actors in this field. In addition, New Labour strengthened the scale and extent of central regulatory powers via their school reforms in ways that continued to shift the balance of power away from teachers and local authorities and towards central government and those central agencies established via national legislation. As in the previous era identified in this chapter, educational reforms in England under New Labour both reflected and drew upon wider transnational approaches as well as more domestic historical, political and ideological trends. In particular New Labour’s commitment to national testing and educational standards and standardisation can be viewed as part of a marked and wider international trend in numerous national contexts during the 1990s and 2000s. As previously referred to this can be interpreted in relation to the growing international importance and influence of OECD/PISA and the continuing and growing international importance of NPM during this era (Pollitt & Bouckaert, 2011); both developments in which outcomes-­ based education data occupy centre stage. This trend has also been associated with the emergence of an EU governed European education policy space in which soft forms of power were used to help steer national education systems towards standardisation and national testing (Lawn, 2011). Similarly New Labour’s commitment to educational marketization can be linked to the continued and pervasive transnational influence of neo-liberal approaches to public service reform and privatisation in which markets and competition were viewed as key to the development of education systems.

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 ccelerating Post-welfarist School Reform in England A (2010-Present Day) This section of the chapter covers the Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition administration from 2010 to 2015 and the Conservative administrations from 2015 to the present day. This is a period marked by consistently strong continuities and similarities with the two previous periods in relation to each of the three areas of school reform identified in the first section; centralisation, neo-liberalism and further disruption and fragmentation of what remained either institutionally or ideologically of those parts of the school system that existed prior to the 1980s reforms. Rapid Growth of Academies The first major piece of legislation in this era, The Academies Act, 2010 was intended to significantly expand the Academies programme far beyond the relatively modest proposal for academies that had emerged under New Labour (Gillard, 2011). Its aim was to enable all schools, both primary and secondary to convert to Academy status free from any interference by those local and parental groups who has been increasingly successful in the final years of New Labour in opposing schemes to convert their children’s schools into academies. At a time of marked national austerity and public funding restrictions following the financial crash of 2008 it is important to note the financial incentives available at that time to those schools converting to Academy status. Justified on the basis of greater school ‘autonomy’ and enhanced teacher freedoms the 2010 Act offered all maintained schools a route to Academy status that excluded local or parental challenge. As well as provisions for existing schools to become Academies provisions were made in this Act for new schools, termed Free Schools and based upon the Swedish model of Friskolor (Walford, 2014), to be encouraged to form as a particular group of Academies. Whilst the direction of the Free School development with a focus upon enabling parent and teacher led initiatives might suggest a departure from more centralising, hierarchical modes of control so evident in earlier phases of post-­ welfarist school reform it is not at all clear that any serious room for manoeuvre has been established in this regard. In particular a very tight, centralised vetting of all free school applications alongside the exclusion of parents from decisions about schools choosing to opt-out of local authorities as described above, suggests quite the opposite. The Academies Act itself can be viewed as an encapsulation of all three of the major strands of school reform referred to earlier in this chapter. By removing not only local authorities, but also parents, teachers and local community groups from decisions regarding local schools, and more specifically their legal right of challenge, this Act is viewed as taking even further the contemporary centralising tendency of English school reform. Simultaneously in its attempt to remove local authorities it was an Act that further accelerated the marketization and associated

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educational market building that had been accumulating since the overlaying of a quasi-market for schools upon a local authority based system in 1988. It also sought to further disrupt and fragment the pre-1988 legacy of local authority comprehensive and community schools that had remained predominant in the face of over 20 years of frequently hostile reform. In this latter regard by 2021 just under 50% of maintained schools in England were academies; 79.5% of secondaries and 38.3% of primaries (Freedman, 2022). Perhaps unsurprisingly the process of converting schools to Academy status in the wake of the 2010 Act continues to this day with a target of 100% conversion by 2030 announced by the incumbent Secretary of State for Education in 2022. The ‘independent’ state funded school can at the time of writing be safely viewed as having replaced the local authority comprehensive as the dominant school model. Local Authorities Displaced, Multi-academy Trusts Emerge The school autonomy and teacher freedoms promised in the Academies Act were located largely in the removal of local authority control and the requirement for Academies to follow the National Curriculum. In terms of the former, in the early years of academisation it was not unusual for single schools to become Academies, but later changes in the rules regarding academy conversion have meant that schools wishing to become Academies must now join one of the fastest growing organisational entities in the English education landscape, the Multi-Academy Trust (Greany & Higham, 2018, Simkins et al., 2018). Multi-Academy Trusts (MATs) are charitable companies that have been set up to manage groups of Academies and Free Schools. They vary significantly in size and location. Some are small with just two schools, others are significantly larger with 20 or more schools. Some are located within a particular locality or region of England, others manage schools across a range of localities and regions. MATs are set up by sponsors who are drawn from a wider range of groups than under New Labour including businesses, charities, faith communities and schools, colleges and universities, but with a significantly larger role than previously for private and corporate educational actors. The ARK MAT, for example, at the time of writing was made up of 39 primary and secondary schools in London, the South-East and the West Midlands and was set up by a group of hedge fund managers. So schools leaving local authorities now join MATs in a piecemeal development that has latterly emerged as a byzantine mid-level structure between central government and individual schools. Whilst evidence about the nature of MATs is only beginning to strongly emerge at the time of writing early indications strongly suggest that promises of autonomy look to be increasingly out of reach with more familiar themes of hierarchical national control via performance data and, increasingly the potential via the 2014 introduction of Regional School Commissioners, regional control (Hughes, 2020; Simon et al., 2021). In addition, whilst some evidence of network governance has emerged within the system of MATs and the earlier academy chains (Ball and Junemann, ibid) a variety of factors including the opaque nature of these networks means it remains unclear at the time

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of writing as the extent to which these newer forms of governance are now acting to displace as opposed to reinforce and support the new regulatory modes identified in this chapter. Centralising Tendencies Persist This continuation of hierarchical and authority based approaches to the control of schools mentioned above can at least in part be located within a continued focus upon high stakes national testing and accompanying datafication (Williamson et al., 2020) and performance management. As one of the MAT ‘Chief Executives’ in a recent study noted he is under direct control from central government and ‘all the DfE care about are results’ (Hughes, 2020, p. 17). This paradoxical combination of hierarchy and authority with official discourses of teacher ‘freedom’ and institutional ‘autonomy’ can be located within the previously mentioned and enduring performance management regime that emerged earlier in the reform process. Subsequent adjustments, not least during this latest stage of reform, have led to a broader range of measures that have enabled pupil progress from Key Stage 2 to be included as a key performance indicator as well as a tighter focus upon those traditional subject disciplines deemed by the Secretary of State for Education to be worthy of greater prominence. This continued focus upon high stakes testing linked directly to the National Curriculum, combined with high stakes OFSTED inspection frameworks that also frequently correspond to the National Curriculum has meant that the room for manoeuvre for individual Academies has not expanded significantly not least within the context of the emergence of MATs and Regional School Commissioners carefully monitoring, via performance data and inspection outcomes, the performance of MATs and individual schools. Furthermore the capacity of individual schools that remain under local authorities to reject Academy status and to determine their own futures has been further undermined not least by the requirement that schools deemed to have ‘failed’ an OFSTED inspection are at the time of writing required by the Secretary of State for Education to become Academies. In the current school reform environment, autonomy is better understood in relation to the complex, but increasingly corporatized and managerial task (Courtney, 2015, Gunter et al., 2016, 2017), of putting and holding together MATs. In this regard, the role of leaders and managers in relation to school reform in England has received much attention not least in relation to both the localised management of schools within the triad of OFSTED, national testing and local markets and the increasing imperative within this marketised environment to manage schools as localised business units (Hall, 2013). Populism and Educational Reform This sense of central government continuing to exert hierarchical control over schools has been reinforced during the period covered in this section of the chapter by prescriptive and frequently idiosyncratic direct ministerial interventions in

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relation to highly specific educational matters. Although such direct interventions have ranged over relatively wide ground there has been an increasing tendency for them to reflect nationalist and populist ideas that have proliferated in England both before and in the wake of Brexit. For example, earlier ministerial interventions during this period focused upon issues including the appropriate age for learning poetry by rote and the precise number of words in a foreign language pupils should memorise by the age of 16 (Adams & Bawden, 2022). A further particular focus has been upon the teaching and learning of reading and the repeated favouring of synthetic phonics in the face of widespread evidence pointing to the need at the very least for more pluralist approaches (Wyse & Bradbury, 2022). Whilst such debates about reading, the teaching of poetry and language learning have been more technocratic in nature it has been increasingly the case that direct ministerial interventions have frequently been attuned to more right-wing populist and nationalist concerns about education. This has involved the rise of antagonistic populist and nationalist discourses that follow the populist tendency of purporting to represent ‘the people’ against an ‘elite’ (Foster & Feldman, 2021; Hussain & Yunus, 2021). Interestingly the elite in the case of school reform in England has been frequently defined, paradoxically from senior politicians and their aides in the Department for Education itself since 2010, as the ‘educational establishment’. Those associated with this ‘establishment’ and others seeking to question or challenge the direction of school reform were frequently subject to vicious and derogatory slurs by senior officials and described, for example, by Michael Gove (Secretary of State for Education, 2010–2014) and Dominic Cummings’ (Special Advisor to the Secretary of State for Education, 2010–2014) as ‘enemies of the people’ and the ‘blob’ (Craske, 2021). Populist discourse has also been evident, for example, in the promotion of a specific programme of ‘British values’ in schools and in debates about the teaching of British history and, more specifically, colonialism (Watson, 2020). It has also been visible in the vastly different treatment of ‘good’ parents supporting free schools and ‘bad’ parents opposing academies who were legislatively excluded from participating in decisions about the future of their local schools. This combination of hierarchical centralisation and populism has been referred to as technocratic populism (Blunkett & Flinders, 2021), a term which captures both the above and the continued and growing importance of processes of datafication in this context. Overall, this period represents significant levels of continuity with the two previous eras identified in this chapter as both marketisation and privatisation persisted as central themes of school reforms and as the continued acquisition of regulatory powers by central government endured. However, both the scale and pace of marketisation and privatisation accelerated markedly during this period to levels previously unknown during the period covered by this chapter. In addition, the nature of the regulatory powers assumed by central government, and government Ministers in particular, took on forms that were increasingly idiosyncratic reflecting the emotional turmoil and unpredictability of a nationalist and populist government veering towards more autocratic approaches.

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Discussion Neo-liberal, post-welfarist school reform in England has been accompanied by heightened levels of centralised regulation linked increasingly to the management of data at local/MAT, regional, national and international levels. Levels of marketisation have been continually ratcheted upwards as new, frequently private and corporate actors and institutions have acted to displace public institutions as the independent state funded school has emerged as the dominant school model. In addition, the concomitant disruption and fragmentation of local authority comprehensive schools is nearing completion as a project now that the proportion of local authority comprehensive secondary schools in England has been reduced to a relatively small minority. These school reforms have been underpinned by the prescription, codification, economisation and instrumentalisation of educational processes and outcomes linked to a data rich performance management system based upon high stakes standardised testing and high stakes inspections that provide information to educational consumers in competitive markets. Although these changes have been partly occluded by some of the more superficially nostalgic aspects of schools in this context, not least a marked fashion for discipline, order and uniformity, the scale and scope of these reforms have been dramatic and marked by hyper-­innovation and a permanent revolution of reform. Much, although far from all, of this reform process has failed to take root in Scotland and Wales as they have remained more strongly attached to local authority comprehensive schools (Evans, 2021) and largely avoided the extent of the diminution of public education so evident in England. This alone speaks to the limits of an over reliance upon viewing schools through the lenses of global and international trends in education. Nevertheless the extent of hurried and media fuelled central government responses to the publication of new OECD/PISA international test results in England (Grey & Morris, 2018) does lend support to claims regarding the rising importance of global modes of educational governance (Sellar & Lingard, 2014) as does a persistent, marked focus upon educational data in England, now a firm transnational feature of many education systems across the globe. Whether England can any longer be viewed as an international laboratory for neo-liberal school reform is an important question in this context not least given the frequently idiosyncratic populist and nationalist turn highlighted in the final section of this chapter. However, as is made clear in this chapter the continued commitment to neo-liberal school reform via processes of marketisation, privatisation and corporatisation has endured and, indeed, strengthened, as populism and nationalism have gained ground in more recent years. Largely absent from this chapter have been the subjects of this reform; those teachers, school leaders and managers and school pupils and their families who have lived, worked and studied through this permanent revolution of school reform. Whilst the account offered has foregrounded shifts in the nature of state activity in relation to schools this should not be taken as a failure to take seriously attempts to govern those subjects of these reforms. Such a shift in focus raises important

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questions about new modes of state activity in this area and possible future shifts from those modes of regulatory government explored in this chapter. Three questions in particular stand out in this regard: Were the current panoply of directive state policy instruments to be withdrawn, to what extent would this influence the future practices of those studying and working in the school system given over 30  years of intensive and unrelenting school reform? How long will the specific developments in the British regulatory state in the field of education as outlined in this chapter last? To what extent will the unleashing of marketisation, privatisation and corporatisation prove to be compatible with current levels of regulation? Some clues as to how things might play out in future years emerged during the Covid-19 global pandemic when the limits of centralisation under an increasingly fragmented and marketised school system in England became all too visible not least with regard to marked disjunctures between national directives for schools, to variously open/close or request that pupils wear masks/not wear masks, and local conditions in schools that frequently and sometimes unequivocally pointed to the opposite course of action. The reaction of the DfE to this situation reflected both the autocratic as the DfE invoked legal and financial punishments for errant schools and local authorities and the absurd as schools trying their best to help protect children, families and communities from a deadly virus became the subjects of official attempts to vilify them.

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Le Grand, J., & Bartlett, W. (1993). Quasi-markets and social policy. Macmillan. Levin, B., & Fullan, M. (2008). Learning about system renewal. Education Management, Administration and Leadership, 36(2), 289–303. Moran, M. (2003). The British regulatory state: High modernism and hyper-innovation. Oxford University Press. Ozga, J. (2009). Governing education through data in England: From regulation to self‐evaluation. Journal of Education Policy, 24(2), 149–162. Pollitt, C., & Bouckaert, G. (2011). Public management reform (3rd ed.). Oxford University Press. Rees, G. (2007). The impacts of parliamentary devolution on education policy in Wales. Wales Journal of Education, 14(1). Rhodes, R. (1997). Understanding governance. Open University Press. Ribbins, P., & Sherratt, B. (1997). Conservative secretaries of state and radical educational reform since 1973. Cassell. Scott, J. C. (2008). Seeing like a state. Yale University Press. Sellar, S., & Lingard, B. (2014). The OECD and the expansion of PISA: New global modes of governance in education. British Educational Research Journal, 40(6), 917–936. Simkins, T., Coldron, J., Crawford, M., & Maxwell, B. (2018). Emerging schooling landscapes in England: How primary system leaders are responding to new school groupings. Educational Management Administration & Leadership, 47(3), 331–348. Simon, C., James, C., & Simon, A. (2021). The growth of multi-academy trusts in England: Emergent structures and the sponsorship of underperforming schools. Educational Management Administration & Leadership, 49(1), 112–127. Walford, G. (2014). From city technology colleges to free schools: Sponsoring new schools in England. Research Papers in Education, 29(3), 315–329. https://doi.org/10.1080/0267152 2.2014.885731 Watson, M. (2020). Michael Gove’s war on professional historical expertise: Conservative curriculum reform, extreme whig history and the place of imperial heroes in modern multicultural Britain. British Politics, 15, 271–290. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41293-­019-­00118-­3 West, A., & Bailey, E. (2013). The development of the academies programme: Privatising school-­ based education in England 1986–2013. British Journal of Educational Studies, 61(2), 137–159. Whitty, G., & Menter, I. (1988). Lessons of Thatcherism: Education policy in England and Wales 1979-88. Journal of Law and Society, 16(1), 42–64. Williamson, B., Bayne, S., & Shay, S. (2020). The datafication of teaching in higher education: Critical issues and perspectives. Teaching in Higher Education, 25(4), 351–365. Wyse, D., & Bradbury, A. (2022). Reading wars or reading reconciliation? A critical examination of robust research evidence, curriculum policy and teachers. Review of Education, 10(1), e3314.

Chapter 4

School Reform Policy and Governance in Germany Between National and Transnational Expectations: With Outlooks on Austria and Switzerland Bettina-Maria Gördel and Stephan Gerhard Huber

Abstract  Over the last 20  years, there has been a strong international focus on school quality and the output of schooling, particularly with the implementation of national and international student achievement testing as a national policy in reaction to the first PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) results. This chapter examines the global educational policy regime and its influence on educational policy in Germany, with outlooks on such policies in Austria and Switzerland. Until the mid-1990s, Germany and the other German-speaking countries had an input-oriented school governance system, which was, and is still, based on each country’s specific form of bureaucracy. Not only in academia, but also in policy-­ level administration, the governance system was predominantly determined by discourse about the content of Bildung and the theory of education, with a strong focus on school curricula and the education and qualification of teachers, that is, the curriculum of teacher education. In the 2000s, the discussion in German-speaking countries was dominated by transnational policy trends, stimulated by transnational agencies with impacts on the policy level (e.g., the OECD), such as student achievement testing and the development of quality management systems, including inspection and evaluation approaches. The rise in implemented accountability measures led to increased centralization. However, the education policy debate was also influenced by ideas on new public management (NPM), which has manifold consequences for the decentralized management of schools. The decentralized approach has provided greater decision-making power at the school level (but not necessarily with more financial or personal resources, except in a few states gradually, nor has it necessarily deregulated the school system). B.-M. Gördel (*) · S. G. Huber University of Teacher Education of Switzerland Zug, Zug, Switzerland e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. B. Krejsler, L. Moos (eds.), School Policy Reform in Europe, Educational Governance Research 22, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-35434-2_4

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The school governance regimes of all three countries have changed over the last 20 years, strongly influenced by international discourse, mostly stipulated by the OECD. Germany, Austria, and Switzerland have taken on specific characters in their attempts to mix traditional aspects with neoliberal instruments of school governance. Keywords  Governance · Management · Policy · Reform · School

Introduction Until the beginning of the 2000s, Germany had a rather input-oriented school governance system, not only in academia but also in policy-level administration. This input-oriented school governance system was predominantly determined by the discourse around Bildung, for example, about the theory of education, the discussion on the curriculum, and the education of teachers. In different versions, this governance system also applied to the other German-speaking countries, Austria and Switzerland. From the mid-1990s onward, the school governance discussion in German-­ speaking countries was dominated by transnational policy trends, such as student achievement testing and the development of organizational quality in schools. Since 2001, far-reaching reforms have been implemented in all three countries. This influence of an output-oriented and decentralized governance of school quality—highly influenced by ideas on new public management (NPM)—still persists. However, the German school governance system has taken on a specific character over the last 20  years in an attempt to mix traditional aspects with neoliberal instruments of school governance. Austria and Switzerland have followed similar trends but with different trajectories. Transnational policies have wielded major influence on making these school policy reforms in German-speaking countries possible in the first place, and they continuously affected the reform processes afterwards. The triggering event was the international student performance comparison study, Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2000, whose results were presented to the public by the implementing organization, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), at the end of 2001. Nonetheless, behind this single study stood developments initiated by various transnational organizations that can be traced back to the 1950s. This chapter deals with school reforms and governance over the last 20 years in Germany, in particular, with outlooks on Austria and Switzerland. Finally, a perspective is offered on the development of school policy trends against the background of the influence of transnational organizations on their national school policies.

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Historical, Sociological, and Cultural Contexts The developments of Germany, Austria, and Switzerland as nation-states are quite different. With respect to education, all three countries are federally organized, consisting of 16 federal states (Länder, singular form: Land) in Germany, 9 federal states (Länder) in Austria, and 26 cantons (Kantone, singular form: Kanton) in Switzerland. As a federal principle, matters of education lie within the sovereignty of each federal state and canton in Germany and Switzerland, respectively. This means that for both countries, each state/canton has its own school system framed by individual jurisdictional and administrative laws, encompassing its own educational policy goals, school structures, school types, curricula, and so on. In contrast to Germany and Switzerland, in Austria, the federation holds legislative power in important matters of school quality, such as teacher training or the development of curricula (for detailed information about the school systems of all three countries, please see https://eurydice.eacea.ec.europa.eu/national-­education-­systems, for Germany: Huber et  al., 2017; for Austria: Fallend, 2012; and for Switzerland: Criblez, 2007; Huber, 2011a, b). Despite their differences, all three countries have one common aspect that is crucial for understanding the context of school reforms that have taken place over the last two decades. Traditionally, the school systems of Germany, Austria, and Switzerland were organized around curricula and an understanding of instruction, guided or mandated through input-controlled governance. Teachers were autonomous in their teaching but bound in their educational decisions to the curricula. The school as an organization is embedded in the local community and the state (Germany), cantonal (Switzerland), or national (Austria) education system, which is organized according to the specific national form of bureaucratic administration (Pollitt & Bouckaert, 2005). The bureaucratic organizational structures and their governing principles have characterized schooling and the form to govern schools in all three countries. Two features are typical of bureaucracies: their hierarchical organization and their input-controlled top-down governance. The following paragraphs describe these aspects and their effects on the sphere of education. Similar to Germany, one or two administrative levels are below the canton and federal state levels in Switzerland and Austria, respectively, and the schools function as the lowest units (Huber et al., 2017). Whereas in Germany and Austria, these administrative layers caused—at least on the surface—highly centralized governing schemes by a system of top-down stipulations; in Switzerland, this was not necessarily the case. In the latter case, at the meso level (the municipality), the school council traditionally played an important role in public schooling. One of its main tasks was to set strategic objectives for the schools in the municipality. In some cantons, the members of the governing body were/are assigned to their positions via democratic elections; in others, they were/are appointed by the municipal council as honorary members. This kind of grassroots democracy has wielded a stronger influence on matters of teaching and learning than the municipal school boards at the meso level in Germany and Austria.

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Nonetheless, in Germany, hierarchy was not as established as it seemed to be, according to the formal organization of school administration. In the 1980s, schools had informally achieved the status of relative freedom. In fact, schools had the status of being non-influenceable by the system of top-down stipulations, an issue that had already been identified as a general problem of bureaucratic administrations in the 1960s (Gördel, 2016). Laws and their specifications were passed on to lower administrative levels and from there to schools. However, serious controlling measures have never been taken (van Ackeren et al., 2015; Steffens, 2007). Accordingly, the German school governance system of the 1980s was characterized by quite a strong position of the teaching profession, along with its values, attitudes, and daily routines of teaching and learning (Huber & Gördel, 2006). This last example illustrates the input-controlled governance system, which is traditional for bureaucratic school governance systems in German-speaking countries. The input-oriented form of school control is based on top-down regulations in the areas of teaching, personnel, organization, and finance (Binder & Trachsler, 2002; Trachsler et al., 2007; Trachsler, 2010; Trachsler & Nido, 2008). The more detailed the regulation, the more pronounced the input-oriented control mechanism becomes. Since the early nineteenth century in Germany, input regulation was predominantly determined by the discourse around Bildung and didactics, for example, about the theory of education and the discussion on the curriculum (see the works of Humboldt and Döpfner, among other influential scholars of the nineteenth century). Here, a humanistic and broad vision of education as general education (Allgemeinbildung) was favored. The German conception of school education is based on the idea that pupils deal with materially defined “educational goods” and approach them in different ways to gain a deep understanding of them (e.g., description, analysis, discussion). Furthermore, according to the German Constitution, school education should be broad and general in order to give individual students sufficient freedom for their personal development, serve the various functions of society (enculturation, qualification, allocation, integration, and legitimation; Fend, 2008), and secure students a free space against the sphere of influence of interest groups from politics, business, culture, and so on (Gördel, 2017; Reuter, 2003). In the 1980s and 1990s, this concept of school education was strongly oriented toward Wolfgang Klafki’s (1996) didactic approach, called “critical-constructive education”. The values and objectives of this educational approach include teaching skills such as autonomy, co-determination, maturity, and emancipation. Accordingly, school lessons should deal with epoch-typical key problems (Fuchs, 2003). The basic idea was that the development of society, its economy, and the labor market would be too unpredictable to offer an educational concept narrowed down to qualification in school. Likewise, the fundamental rights to personal development, enlightenment, and critical emancipation were cited as arguments against narrowing down education to qualification. The quality of school education should be managed through a combination of curricula, partially standardized exit examinations, and a system of teacher education (based on university studies of two subjects and pedagogics, followed by a

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two-year period of teacher training in school). This input-controlled governing system was believed to achieve a high standard of quality in school education, as well as equal quality standards in schools and equal chances for individual students. School visits by the school inspector (Schulrat) played a rather subordinate role. Thus, the German system of quality control was dominated by regulatory, i. e. bureaucratic, and professional aspects (Huber & Gördel, 2006). The main task of the state-run school supervisory authorities was to control regulations. A monitoring-­ based system of quality control or a market-oriented system played no role at all.

 ermany: Main School Policy Reforms Since the 1990s; Key G Transnational Agendas, Effects on School Policy, Contestations, and Recontextualizations Main School Policy Reforms Since the 1990s The dominance of the bureaucratic governance principle of educational quality control in German-speaking countries has been replaced since the 1990s. These school policy reforms have been accompanied by the general transmission of the Anglo-­ Saxon paradigm of public administration and its governance system to the bureaucratic one of the European continent. These changes have been implemented more profoundly in some European states than in others (Pollitt & Bouckaert, 2005, 2011). This transnational global policy trend has been pushed forward by different transnational actors, as shown in the next section. Whereas internationally, the shift to the quality control of school systems started in the early 1980s, in Germany, this development only began in the mid-1990s in line with the general reform of the German states, their governance systems, and administrative structures (Gördel, 2016). However, the change from an input-­ controlled and centralized system to a more output-controlled and more decentralized one was initiated in most of the German Länder only after the sobering results (German students’ scores) in international large-scale assessment tests, such as Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), PISA, and Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS). PISA 2000 revealed not only the mediocre performance of German students in general compared to their peers in other OECD states (Schümer & Tillmann, 2004), but also considerable differences in school quality among the German Länder themselves. In particular, students from immigrant or socially deprived families were found to have significantly fewer opportunities to pursue a sound educational career than those with “stable” parental backgrounds (Baumert et al., 2001). Austria and Switzerland faced similar results in the first international assessment tests in which they participated (Brügelmann & Heymann, 2002; Jungbauer-Gans, 2004). These results of international testing, mainly those of PISA 2000, caused concern and manifold discussions among the German, Austrian, and Swiss public about

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their systems of quality control based on the above-described input-oriented and centralized governance regime. Due to this situation, in Germany, the Standing Conference of Ministers of Education and Cultural Affairs (Kultusmnisterkonferenz KMK)1 has aimed to align the education policies of the Länder according to the key features of successful PISA countries (see KMK, 2001a, b, 2002a, b, 2003, 2004, 2006; Popp et al., 2012). However, the reforms were not just copied but carefully analyzed and adapted to fit the historical peculiarities of the German school systems (Klieme et al., 2003). An agenda of reform measurements was established that followed the underlying ideology of NPM and its three leading principles of decentralization and deregulation, output orientation, and competition and market orientation, which meant a diametrical change to the former school governance system. Due to the German federal school system, the reforms have been pursued in different ways, with many characteristics of the new system of school governance and quality control. Nevertheless, in all 16 Länder, five concurrent structural components can be identified according to the decentralization of organizational structures and the output orientation of regulations (Huber et al., 2016; Heinrich, 2007; Rürup & Heinrich, 2007; Huber & Gördel, 2006; KMK, 1997, 2001a, b, 2002a, 2006; Niemann, 2015): • a self-managing school pursuing school development with responsibilities in educational, human resource, financial, and organizational matters, as well as for self-evaluation; • a bundle of output-oriented, evidence-based referential frameworks for schools and teaching, such as the state-level curricula, internal school programs, and curriculum guidelines; national quality standards of education for certain subjects, including math, German, English, French, biology, chemistry, and physics; and last but not least, quality frameworks for schools as the yardsticks for their school development activities; • an output-oriented system of quality control consisting of accountability measures, such as high school graduation exams (for each state/Land) administered centrally by the state, assessment tests at the state level, comparative studies in school and at the class level, systems of school inspection in each state/Land, and self-evaluations at the school level; • an output-oriented report system at the level of the Länder, and at the federal level, pursuing a comparison between the states; and • a reorganization of the school authorities from a regulating and controlling to a more guiding and supporting body. Additionally, the implementation of the third control mechanism typical of NPM was attempted as a governance device but was rather minimal in its implications— competition among schools via a quasi-market. Currently, German schools compete

 KMK is a national board mandated to align the main school policies and to prevent too large deviations among the schools in the country. 1

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for students, as school budgets are associated with student enrollment figures. Consequently, school profiles are developed to stand out and attract as many pupils as possible. Competition also exists within schools regarding the orientation of school profiles and job promotions (Gördel, 2020). These reforms have had effects not only on the governance of schools, but also on the school administration above schools—the school supervisory system. Although the above-described reform agenda seems to generate a fundamental change in governance, this is not the case for Germany (or Austria and Switzerland). The school governance system that has emerged in Germany is a mixture of traditional bureaucratic structures and instruments and those of NPM (Gördel, 2016).

 ey Transnational Agendas and Their Effects on School Policy K in Germany Over the last 20  years, Meyer et  al. (2017) have perceived “the emergence of a global educational policy regime that attempts to monitor and assess global educational quality and assist national governments in the development of their education systems” (p. 132; see also Bürgi, 2017). Close examination of this global educational policy regime and an analysis of its influence on global educational policymaking is worthwhile, specifically that of Germany and its reforms since the 1990s. The analysis comprises two steps. First, we present the most influential transnational agendas and their influence on global school policymaking are presented. Second, we discuss their influence on school policy reforms, particularly in Germany.

 ransnational Agendas and Their Influence on Global T School Policymaking In their analysis of worldwide education governance, Meyer et al. (2017) “identify three major models of educational quality and governance that have influenced global education discourse” (p.  132). These models are the human rights-based model of UNESCO, the professional-pedagogical model pursued by the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA), and the economic-­oriented model of the OECD (see also Ydesen & Andreasen, 2021). The models can be interpreted as transnational agendas of the mentioned international organizations. A comparison of these three models shows quite different (educational) policy goals and values (Popp et  al., 2012). Whereas the policy goals of UNESCO and the IEA are educational, those of the OECD focus particularly on economic growth and social well-being.

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In the scientific literature, there is a general consensus that the influence of OECD policies on national school policies, especially that of PISA, far surpasses that of UNESCO and the IEA (Bloem, 2015; Bürgi, 2017; Meyer et al., 2017; Popp et al., 2012; Radtke, 2016). Flitner (2006) classifies the OECD’s transnational agenda as the most influential. She identifies three educational assessment companies—the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) Ltd., the Educational Testing Service (ETS) and WESTAT Inc., and the CITO Group—as the driving actors behind the policies of the three global educational players. These companies act politically by using projects such as PISA to gain access to the national education markets of highly industrialized countries. At the same time, these countries serve as role models (benchmarks) for the world. Flitner (2006) emphasizes the OECD’s position for those companies because “as a governmental organisation it offers a larger and more stable funding framework than, for example, the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA)” (p. 247). Similarly, Bürgi (2017, pp. 13–14, 18–23) emphasizes the OECD’s key position among those transnational actors. She identifies the organization as the decisive node in the international education governance setting, where different transnational education networks converge. Thus, despite the differences among the agendas, a consistent global educational policy regime emerged (Adick, 2012, p.  93; Popp et al., 2012, p. 231): • an output-oriented governance regime by setting education indicators and monitoring and assessing educational quality (governance by norm setting, knowledge distribution, and opinion formation); • regular educational policy reports (governance by opinion formation); and • the distribution of reform agendas according to an evidence-based education and best practices approach (governance by instruments). Transnational Agendas and Their Influence on School Policy in Germany As for the global level, the literature judges the OECD’s influence on German school policy as being equally dominant (Niemann, 2015; Popp et  al., 2012; Tillmann et al., 2008). Here, the OECD’s frequent repetition of the effects of school quality on a country’s socioeconomic development since the 1960s finally triggered concern and manifold discussions among the public and in politics in the 1990s (global educational governance by opinion formation; see Adick, 2012; Flitner, 2006; Popp et al., 2012). Moreover, the OECD’s soft governance approach to global educational ranking and benchmarking led to a delegitimization of the German school system with the results of PISA 2000. Suddenly, reforms also became possible (see van Ackeren et al., 2015; Adick, 2012; Flitner, 2006; Popp et al., 2012). On the one hand, this readiness for reforms has to be viewed against the background of Germany’s economic situation at that time—a poorly performing economy, a reform backlog (Reformstau) of the German state in general and the welfare

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state in particular, as well as the process of increasing economic competition by globalization. Since the 1990s, globalization has led to the outsourcing of many unskilled jobs to countries of the global south. During this time, the German public became increasingly aware that the German economy, without any natural resources, was vastly dependent on the quality of education. Thus, national educational productivity was regarded as vital. OECD rankings and benchmarking on education became increasingly vital in a world of increasing globalization and in the shift to a neoliberal economic policy (Ydesen & Andreasen, 2021, pp. 225ff.). On the other hand, international educational studies initiated in the 1990s by the IEA had a considerable impact on the German reforms after PISA 2000: Not least because of Germany’s performance in the TIMSS study, education experts at least were aware of the deficiencies in the German school system and initiated the systematic review of educational outcomes through scientific studies in some Länder (see Bos/ Postlethwaite/Gebauer, 2009, p. 278f.). The intensification of international comparison processes was institutionalized in 1997 with the Constance Resolutions of KMK [1997]. Germany’s participation in PISA can be perceived as a direct consequence of these resolutions. (Niemann, 2015, p. 145, translated by the authors from German to English; see also Fuchs, 2003; Raidt, 2010)

Similar to the tests and rankings that initiated the reforms, the school policy reforms were dominated by the transnational policy trends defined by the OECD (Niemann, 2015). With the testing system, the OECD transferred its dominant NPM policy concept to school policy in Germany (see above). The OECD pursued the NPM concept not only in the school sector but also generally in the public administration sector. Hence, the reforms in the school sector proceeded in line with general reforms in the German public sector. They started in some Länder already in the mid-1990s; the federal government and other Länder followed in 2000 onward (Gördel, 2016). It seems an odd coincidence that PISA 2000 smoothed the way for NPM reforms in a sector that was naturally quite far from management thinking. In contrast to the agenda of the actual reform driver (OECD), in Germany, school politics and the public used the IEA’s educationally driven policy agenda to argue for the reforms. It was argued that output orientation and decentralization (the agenda of NPM) had to be adapted to the education sector with the right sense of proportion to secure its pedagogical values. Nevertheless, Niemann (2015) stated: Since PISA was conceptualized by the OECD, the study is not free of ideological coloring but approaches education from an economic perspective and conveys associated learning techniques (see Grek, 2009; Henry et al., 2001; Spring, 2008). In the course of the [German] post-PISA debate, the impacts of education on economic performance, increased productivity, and innovative capacity in a competitive global environment were constantly emphasized, making the economically oriented interpretation of education a central point of reference in education policy reform debates (see Krais/von Friedeburg, 2003, p.  42; Martens/Niemann, 2013). (p. 144; translated by the authors from German to English; see also Fuchs, 2003)

Therefore, according to Raidt (2010) and others, the pedagogical values within the reform debate also changed over time. For example, in school curricula, the discussion was no longer so much on education as a process of personality development

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geared toward autonomy, participation, and emancipation but more as an alliance between the teacher and the student to foster individual performance (Fuchs, 2003). In the years that followed until now, the reform path taken was consolidated, influenced by reform advice from the OECD and regular PISA surveys. Germany started to perform significantly above the OECD average. “Accordingly, each newly published PISA report reduced the pressure for reform and at the same time supported the reform path taken” (Niemann, 2015, p. 151). Since then, the mix of old and new values, the new notion of Bildung transmitted with the PISA study, and the neoliberal governance system introduced by NPM have caused many discussions in the educational science community and among the German public (Cortina, 2016; Fuchs, 2003; Radtke, 2016; Zedler, 2000). The following section presents this debate in more detail.

 ey Contestations and Conspicuous Recontextualizations K of the School Policy Reforms in Germany Just after the publication of the German test results in PISA 2000, reform measures were much discussed among the relevant political actors, although they were not necessarily controversial (Flitner, 2006; Niemann, 2014, 2015). To design an adequate reform agenda, the German Federal Ministry of Education aimed to filter the key features of successful PISA countries, especially those with similar cultural, sociological, and political backgrounds. Although a broad consensus about the general reform features existed, their particular design evoked various contestations among the German public, in school politics, and in the German educational sciences. The following subsections present examples of these controversies about the reforms and their conspicuous recontextualizations according to the three main characteristics of NPM. Finally, an area of German school politics is presented that has been influenced by the policies of transnational organizations but has not yet been as successful in initiating reform measures as the NPM reform agenda over the last 20 years. This is the area of digitalizing the school system. Output Orientation: From Bildung to Qualification One of the key factors that characterized the German reform discussions from the beginning was the development of instruments to introduce an output-oriented school quality system. The focus was on the development of national education standards and the assumed change from the traditional concept of Bildung (see section “Historical, Sociological, and Cultural Contexts”) to the concept of competency with respect to literacy and a functionalist approach to school education called qualification (Fuchs, 2003; Huber et al., 2017; Klieme et al., 2003). Some worried

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that the functionalist approach would lead to a fundamental change in values within the German education system (Raidt, 2010). Fuchs (2003)—a representative of the critical group (Zedler, 2000)—stated that with these new concepts, introduced with TIMSS by the IEA and adapted by PISA, the OECD aimed for a global school education oriented toward a qualification for social and economic needs and the pragmatic mastering of concrete life situations (see section “Historical, Sociological, and Cultural Contexts”). Huber further elaborated in an internal document on the effects of this shift from Bildung to qualification, brought about with the instruments of the output-­oriented system of school quality control: It is increasingly expected that the content of this education [as acquisition of competencies] and the methods of its acquisition correspond to the requirements of a country’s economy and consequently that competencies are taught that can then also be used effectively. (…) Central mechanisms for quality assurance are then, for example, increased accountability, quality control through school inspections (or external evaluation), a nationally defined curriculum with (centralized, standardized) testing procedures, etc. (Huber 06.06.2011, translated by the authors)

Along with the introduction of national education standards and centralized testing procedures came the fear of the reduction of school education to economically relevant subjects and, within them, to cognitive knowledge. In 2003, the KMK (2002a, 2003, 2004) passed national education standards only for the “main” school subjects, such as German, mathematics, foreign languages (English and French), and the natural sciences, including biology, chemistry, and physics. In these subjects, standards should mainly be developed for cognitive knowledge, as the only dimension of education to be assessed by instruments oriented toward competency models. “Minor” subjects, such as the liberal arts, religious, and physical education, and educational dimensions, including attitude, social and communicative competencies, creativity, and critical thinking, were feared to be marginalized. Benner (2002) even assumed that international comparative school performance studies and their education standards could lead to the development of a world curriculum without any relation to cultural and historical particularities. However, in Germany, this was not necessarily the case. Due to German federalism in the education system, the national education standards also experienced recontextualizations. In the beginning, the standards jointly adopted by the German Länder were expected to bring about a certain level of cohesion across the German schools and the Länder boundaries. However, because of the school sovereignty of the Länder, it happened that the Länder began to adapt and modify the KMK standards and establish its own testing systems along with the national one. Decentralization: From Re-regulation to Increasing Regulation National education standards and an output-oriented governance system should also bring about a general shift from centralization to decentralization. It was argued that education standards would expand the pedagogical freedom of school principals

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and teachers and were starting points for their professionalization and for school and teaching development. However, in Germany, the multitier system was maintained (see section “Historical, Sociological, and Cultural Contexts”). Attempts to decentralize decision-­making power did not necessarily lead to deregulation but often increased facets of regulation formulation. Currently, German schools are linked to a bundle of referential frameworks, such as educational quality standards, the state-level curriculum, quality frameworks for school development, or guidelines for developing a school syllabus (see above). The scope of school-based curriculum development has increased with the decentralization of more autonomy to schools. The duty to develop a school curriculum is part of a contract system with the school governance authorities. Huber et  al. (2017) view German schools in a double-bind situation between central regulations and local requirements, between an evidence-based feedback system and hierarchical accountability and control patterns. At least in Germany, there is still ongoing irritation regarding how to handle this double-­ bind situation. Schools and teachers who are committed to these functions value this ‘tested curriculum approach’ positively, in contrast to those who think that tests are counterproductive with respect to local efforts to create school-internal standards for student achievement and practice. With this in mind, these latter schools rely on the concept of autonomy as promised and granted by parliaments. (Huber et al., 2017, p. 281)

Five years after the first reform decisions regarding greater school autonomy, Flitner (2006) perceived an overall low level of school autonomy in the German Länder. He noticed that deregulation, an independent personnel policy, or cost–benefit accounting of schools, which would allow limiting school supervision to output controls, were still not common in international comparison. Instead, “[t]he number of regulations imposed on schools is currently not decreasing, but increasing; the ‘density of regulations’ is rising” (Flitner, 2006, p. 265). He further observed a hybrid formation of old and new forms of external steering of schools, an overlapping and combination of detailed input-administration with occasional output controls. The possible deregulation encounters much greater obstacles in the structures, thought patterns and internal conflicts of the school administrations of the Länder than in the individual schools. (Flitner, 2006, p. 265)

Gördel (2016) had a similar assessment of the reforms in the school administration of the Land Hesse. Often, bureaucratic elements and NPM run in parallel, leading to an overload of regulation. This reform finding was confirmed again in 2021 in a study (Huber et al., 2022) on the role of school supervision during the COVID-19 pandemic. Thus, although decentralization was supposed to lead to a reduction in regulation and to more autonomy for schools, it seemed to have had the opposite effect. Due to the dense accountability and control system, on the one hand, and the need to individualize learning opportunities and instruction, on the other, Huber et al. (2017) perceived a growing suspicion about the policy talk on decentralization, deregulation, and autonomous schools among teachers:

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Many professional schools cope with these developments akin to how they cope with external measures: in a more or less sovereign way. They master external requirements in strategic and creative ways, though some suffer for various reasons, such as bad working conditions. (Huber et al., 2017, p. 282).

Economization, Market Orientation, and Competition: Changing Values Although the elements of market orientation and competition play a rather marginalized role in the new German system of school quality control, some scientists harshly criticize the implicit influence of economic thinking on mindsets and actions in the school sector. These scientists consider that transferring economic criteria and (change) management strategies and the steering of school quality to schools would lead to a change of values in the school system (Flitner, 2006; Hartong et al., 2018; Heinrich & Kohlstock, 2016; Höhne, 2015; Raidt, 2010) similar to that induced by the change from the concept of Bildung to that of qualification. One of these management strategies is the implementation of competition among schools—that is, of a quasi-market among schools. According to Krautz (2020), this school competition would have a negative side effect; that is, schools and teachers would lack time for their effectual core duty (i.e., for teaching and educating). Moreover, in such a school market, education would become a commodity and a human investment. Schools would unconsciously view themselves as providers of education and as economic units of action (Flitner, 2006). Parents would tend to choose schools where their children would most easily obtain the highest school-­ leaving qualification. The pedagogical autonomy of teachers would be displaced in favor of an economically oriented autonomy concept of schools. Another example of the economization of the school system cited by critics is control through an output orientation and standardization, through tests, quality management, and other specifications and controls (Herzog, 2016; Krautz, 2020). This would transfer the myths of efficiency, effectiveness, and controllability of input and output from the space of the economy to the pedagogical field. However, pedagogy and teaching would be characterized per se by contingency, which requires pedagogical, not economic or technological strategies, to deal with. Cybernetics-oriented ideas of this kind would not do justice to the complexity of teaching, schooling, and school quality (Biesta, 2015; Buck, 2015; Herzog, 2012, 2016; Karcher, 2015). In this context, the digitalization of schools is viewed critically by some scholars as well. Learning software often suggests that the technological deficit, typical of pedagogy (Luhmann & Schorr, 1982), has been overcome (Krautz, 2015). However, that would not be the case, as learning and teaching are complex processes that are highly dependent on personal interactions between students and their teachers. Here, too, the pedagogical autonomy of teachers and their professional actions would be undermined (Raidt, 2010).

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I nfluence of Transnational Organizations and Their Agendas in the Field of Digitalization In the 1980s and 1990s, computers and the internet started to be promoted as learning technologies. In the 2000s, e-learning was developed. Since then, there has been ongoing international experimentation with new software and various forms of online and hybrid learning. Digital skills have also been increasingly embedded in national curricula. This development means, in reverse, that national school politics need to be willing to commit themselves to financing the digital equipment for schools, the training of teachers, and teaching and learning materials, as well as implementing and further developing digital learning in schools. Accordingly, the above-mentioned transnational organizations—namely, OECD, its related educational assessment company, ACER, and the IEA—have been trying to influence worldwide national school policies to foster the use of digital learning technologies in schools. They have used the same governance strategies of norm setting, knowledge distribution, and opinion formation as those employed to foster international change toward an output-oriented and management-based system of school quality control. Its most influential instruments are again aimed at monitoring and assessing the digitalization of schooling and distributing regular educational policy reports on the topic, as shown in the following paragraphs. Although digital skills and the digitalization of school systems have been increasingly international reform topics of those transnational organizations over the last 20  years, in Germany, the international pressure of these organizations was not strong enough to initiate the above-described reform measures toward the digitalization of its school system. Already in 2003, PISA revealed that in German schools, the use of computers by 15-year-old students was below the international average (PISA Konsortium Germany, 2004). The PISA survey in the following years showed that the situation in German schools did not change. This trend was again confirmed in 2018 by the school achievement survey International Computer and Information Literacy Study (ICILS), which was conducted by ACER from 2013 to approximately 2020 and then taken over by the IEA. Likewise, the technical infrastructure in German schools was still below the international average (Autorengruppe Bildungsberichterstattung, 2020; Eickelmann et al., 2019). Finally, the Federal Government and the Länder came to an administrative agreement called DigitalPakt Schule, which came into force in May 2019. With this agreement, 5.5 billion euros were made available to general and vocational schools for improvements in their digital infrastructure. In 2017, KMK took up the issue by defining competency areas for digital school education across the Länder. However, somehow, it seemed that more pressure was needed to initiate fundamental changes toward digitalization in the German school system than reports of transnational organizations were able to nudge—similar to the situation in 2001. This time, the pressure was the COVID-19 pandemic. During the pandemic, the possibilities of online learning were finally discovered nationwide, from one day to another, as the German schools had to handle several lockdowns. Now, schooling is also possible at a distance and asynchronously. Since then, teachers’ and students’

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willingness to use digital media has grown, as has their media literacy. The school management has provided schools with equipment (though insufficient), has offered teachers with implementation ideas for distance learning, and has given them autonomy in the concrete design of their lessons (Huber et al., 2022). The extent to which the use of digital media required during the crisis has been maintained afterwards remains unclear. According to a study in which representatives of school supervisors were interviewed (a sub-study of the school barometer; Pham-Xuan), not all teachers want to continue to use or even further develop the digital forms of teaching and learning. Overall, the new digital communication channels were viewed positively by the school supervisors. The results are new rhythms, a higher frequency of meetings, and a more regular exchange with individual schools and with various levels of school supervision. Nevertheless, the need for development is clear. Pedagogical objectives have been reflected more, but concepts of hybrid forms of teaching and learning have not yet become standard in schools. However, by addressing pedagogical objectives that have been in place for a long time, the school inspectorate is confident that individualized instruction and the strengthening of self-directed learning will be promoted and implemented in parallel with digitalization in the near future. Accompanying support and qualification measures, as well as appropriate framework conditions, are essential for realizing these goals.

Conclusion For Germany, the influence of the OECD in general and PISA in particular could be traced as a key factor among international and transnational organizations that attempt to influence national school policies. The OECD has had a similar influence on the school policies of Austria and Switzerland. All three countries are members of the OECD; their economies depend on a highly educated society, and they have faced rather sobering PISA results. In particular, Germany and Austria have strong roots in the bureaucratic governance model, while Switzerland is strongly rooted in direct democracy. Therefore, the OECD’s transnational NPM agenda for school systems has been recontextualized in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland and has led to a more hybrid way of traditional and NPM governance. Thus, a mixture of decentralism and centralism and of input and output regulation has emerged, as perceived by Karlsen (2000) and Huber et al. (2022). As is the case in Germany, the implementation of output regulation and decentralism is realized by new input regulations that are centrally conceptualized. The phase of reform initiation in the first years after PISA 2000 seemed to be followed by the phases of recontextualization, adaptation, and consolidation in all three German-speaking countries. With the COVID-19 pandemic from March 2020 onward, the phase of consolidation was again defrosted, and reminders by international organizations, such as the OECD and the European Union (EU), to reform

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school systems toward digitalization have been addressed on a large scale. The German-speaking countries, however, have not followed the international reform trend as pioneers but more as hesitant followers. The next few years will show how the three countries will implement digitalization and adapt it to their respective school systems. The OECD and PISA have had a strong influence on national policy setting. Over the last 20  years, they have shaped the international and national focus on school quality and the output of schooling. Consequently, the school governance regimes of all three countries have also changed over the last two decades. However, all three countries differ mainly because of their already established distinct governance systems. Each country has taken on a specific character in its attempt to mix traditional aspects with neoliberal instruments of school governance.

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Niemann, D. (2014). After the Big Bang – German education policy in the wake of the PISA Study and the Bologna Process. In K. Martens, P. Knodel, & M. Windzio (Eds.), Internationalization of education policy. A new constellation of statehood in education? (pp.  91–114). Palgrave Macmillan. Niemann, D. (2015). PISA in Deutschland: Effekte auf Politikgestaltung und -organisation [PISA in Germany: Effects on policy making and organization]. Die Deutsche Schule, 107(2), 141–157. PISA Konsortium Deutschland (2004). PISA 2003. Der Bildungsstand der Jugendlichen in Deutschland  – Ergebnisse des zweiten internationalen Vergleichs [PISA 2003. The level of education of young people in Germany  – results of the second international comparison]. Waxmann. Pollitt, C., & Bouckaert, G. (2005). Public management reform. A comparative analysis. 2nd revised and updated edition. Univ. Press. Pollitt, C., & Bouckaert, G. (2011). Public management reform. A comparative analysis. New public management, governance, and the Neo-Weberian State (3rd ed.). Univ. Press. Popp, M., Akbik, A., de Olano, D., & Martens, K. (2012). Strategie der sanften Steuerung im Schulsystem [Soft control strategy in the school system]. Die Deutsche Schule, 104(3), 228–241. Radtke, F.-O. (2016). Konditionierte Strukturverbesserung. Erziehungswissenschaft flankiert von der Deutschen Forschungsgemeinschaft unter Anleitung der OECD verwirklicht von der Kultusministerkonferenz [Conditioned Structural Improvement. Educational science flanked by the German Research Foundation under the guidance of the OECD realized by the Conference of Ministers of Education]. Zeitschrift für Pädagogik, 62(5), 707–731. Raidt, T. (2010). Bildungsreformen nach PISA. Paradigmenwechsel und Wertewandel [Education reforms after PISA. Paradigm shift and value change]. Dissertation. tredition. Reuter, L.  R. (2003). Erziehungs- und Bildungsziele aus rechtlicher Sicht [Aims of upbringing and education from a legal point of view]. In H.-P.  Füssel, & P.  M. Roeder (Eds.), Recht  – Erziehung  – Staat. Zur Genese einer Problemkonstellation und zur Programmatik ihrer zukünftigen Entwicklung (pp. 28–48). (Zeitschrift für Pädagogik, Beiheft; 47). Rürup, M., & Heinrich, M. (2007). Schulen unter Zugzwang – Die Schulautonomiegesetzgebung der deutschen Länder als Rahmen der Schulentwicklung [Schools under pressure  – The school autonomy legislation of the German states as a framework for school development]. In H.  Altrichter, T.  Brüsemeister & J.  Wissinger (Rds.), Educational Governance. Handlungskoordination und Steuerung im Bildungssystem (pp.  157–183) [Educational Governance. Action coordination and control in the education system]. VS. Schümer, G., Tillmann, K.-J., & Weiß, M. (Eds.). (2004). Die Institution Schule und die Lebenswelt der Schüler [The institution school and the living environment of the pupils]. VS. Spring, J. (2008). Research on globalization and education. Review of Educational Research, 78(2), 330–363. Steffens, U. (2007). Schulqualitätsdiskussion in Deutschland. Ihre Entwicklung im Überblick [The discussion of school quality in Germany  – its development at a glance]. Institut für Qualitätsentwicklung (IQ) Hessen. Tillmann, K.-J., Dedering, K., Kneuper, D., Kuhlmann, C., & Nessel, I. (2008). PISA als bildungspolitisches Ereignis. Fallstudien in vier Bundesländern [PISA as an event of educational policy. Case studies in four federal states]. VS. Trachsler E. (2010). Überlegungen zum Umgang mit der Schulpflege. Mitschrift beim Symposium der Kantonalen Kader Vereinigung (KKV) [Thoughts on dealing with school maintenance. Transcript at the symposium of the Cantonal Management Association (KKV)]. Grindelwald. Trachsler, E., & Nido, M. (2008) Schulaufsicht und Schulevaluation in der Thurgauer Volksschule [School supervision and school evaluation in the Thurgau elementary school]. Schlussbericht der Evaluation im Auftrag des Amtes für Volksschule des Kantons Thurgau. Amt für Volksschule. Auf Nachfrage beim Amt für Volksschule erhältlich.

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Chapter 5

Transnational Forces in Dutch Educational Policies and Practices Theo Wubbels and Jan van Tartwijk

Abstract  This chapter discusses six transnational forces in Dutch education over the last 60 years. These forces were inspired for the larger part by a mix of elements with a societal background and by educational research studies: (1) New Public Management and the autonomy of schools’ governing bodies; (2) Striving for equity in education which led to fighting early stratification; (3) Designing education and specifically teaching based on evidence with a continuous debate on what counts as evidence; (4) Social constructivism as a source for inspiration of a new pedagogy in secondary education; (5) The gimmick of the knowledge society and its curricular implications; and (6) International benchmarking of student outcomes. For the influence of the role of evidence in education and the social constructivist turn in education, the developments in the Netherlands seem to follow the transnational forces quite well with little national counterforces. For New Public Management and school autonomy, fighting early tracking, and international benchmarking, we can see that national influences among others inspired by the constitution are competing with the transnational ones and at times even seem to be stronger. Before discussing these forces, we sketch the Dutch educational system in order to understand the context of these forces in Dutch education. Specifically, we focus on the role of the Dutch constitution, the inspectorate, and the final examinations in secondary education in guaranteeing the quality of education. This chapter is concluded with a short note on the influence of digitalization and commercialization. Keywords  Tracking · Lump sum financing · Evidence-based · Constitution · Benchmarking

T. Wubbels (*) · J. van Tartwijk Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. B. Krejsler, L. Moos (eds.), School Policy Reform in Europe, Educational Governance Research 22, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-35434-2_5

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Introduction This chapter discusses six transnational forces in Dutch education over the last 60 years. To understand transnational forces in Dutch education, we will first sketch the educational system with its many different and strongly separated tracks in secondary education. How this system functions can only be understood through the influence of the Dutch constitution on educational debates in relation to the control mechanisms of the National Inspectorate of Education and the national examinations at the end of secondary education. These exams function on the one hand as a quality control mechanism, and on the other as a guidance for schools and teachers on what to teach and what not. A final characteristic of the Dutch educational system that we will describe, is the role of the governing bodies in the system.

System Characteristics The Structure of the Dutch Educational System The educational system in the Netherlands consists of 8 years of primary education (age 4–12, comprehensive) and four to 6 years of secondary education (tracked). After secondary education, students go to several forms of vocational and higher education. Secondary education in the Netherlands is highly tracked: students are sorted at the start of secondary education into five tracks (three general education and two pre-vocational education). It is difficult for students to move between tracks. The general education tracks range from lower general education (4 years, 27% of the students), higher general education (5  years, 23% of the students) to preparatory-university education (6  years, 23% of the students). The two pre-­ vocational tracks host 27% of the students. Students in various tracks in secondary education are often not in the same building, which increases the difficulty to move between tracks. Which track students go to is determined by secondary schools based on the recommendation of the teacher which is communicated to the parents or caretakers towards the end of the final year of primary school. This recommendation can be corrected if results of a school-leaving test, administered after the recommendation has been communicated, show that the advice of the teacher is too low. Cognitive abilities play a decisive role in this placement advice. The track of secondary education, in turn, determines in which type of tertiary education students can enrol. Only students with a secondary diploma at the preparatory-­university level can directly enrol in a research university. Higher general education graduates can enrol in universities of applied sciences that provide programmes for high level vocational education. Students from medium general education and the pre-vocational tracks can only follow up into programmes for medium level vocational education. Thus, the strict tracking in Dutch education results in important decisions of a child’s future at the age of 12.

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Constitution Characteristic for the Dutch education system is the guarantee for freedom of education in article 23 of the constitution (Grondwet voor het Koninkrijk der Nederlanden, 2008). This article was included in 1917 in the constitution as part of a historic compromise between Protestants, Catholics, and liberals about state-­ funding of education. This compromise “pacified” a long and heated debate that dominated Dutch politics in the previous 60 years and which is referred to as the “Schoolstrijd” (War on Education). The second paragraph of this article partially reads (translated into English): “Providing education is free, taking into account the government’s supervision of education and the government’s care for the competence and morality of teachers.” The interpretation of this article is a topic of debate because, on the one hand, freedom to provide education is proclaimed, but on the other hand, the government’s supervising role is also emphasized. The historic 1917 compromise entailed that all schools, private or public, have the right to the same financial support from the government provided that the curriculum matches the government’s supervision criteria. Thus, when a group of parents can show the government that a school they want to start will attract a sizable number of students, they will get money to fund the school. In 1917, these were almost always Catholic or Protestant schools, but nowadays, also Islamic schools or schools with a particular pedagogical concept are founded and funded by the government on these conditions. At present, one-third of the primary schools are public schools (Ministerie van Onderwijs Cultuur en Wetenschap, 2014) and two-third are private (Centraal Bureau voor de Statistiek, 2015). Also, there is consensus on the government’s care for the teacher’s competence and morality. The competences teachers need to have are described by law (Rijksoverheid, 2017). It is the government’s responsibility to decide on these competences based on proposals from, among others, the teacher unions. Teacher education institutions are required to prepare teachers according to these competencies.

Control Mechanisms The meaning of the phrase in the constitution “supervision of the government” has been debated intensely. Nowadays, this debate has resulted in a balance between the Inspectorate of Education’s standards for the quality of education, which have a considerable impact on what is happening in schools, and the school’s freedom to make pedagogical choices. The government sets outcome standards for both primary and secondary education, but schools are free in how to reach these outcomes. Schools are also free to give teachers, students, or parents a say in this. Regarding outcomes, national examinations at the end of each of the tracks of secondary education check if schools deliver the outcomes the government has proclaimed. How schools prepare students to pass these examinations is up to the

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schools. When a considerable share of the students at a school does not pass the final secondary exams, the inspectorate will publish negative reports about the school, and in the end, the government may stop funding such a school. A similar control mechanism functions in primary education, where results on tests that are used to monitor students’ progress can also be used by the inspectorate to monitor the quality of education. Thus, tests and examinations play an important role in quality control, and in practice also in shaping the curriculum schools offer. Schools often focus on high test results and what is needed to pass the examinations and such emphasis follows parents’ pressures. The inspectorate not only monitors the examinations results, but also some elements of the educational process, both in public and private schools. It also has the right to evaluate schools according to national standards regarding, among other things, the quality of the lessons, the number of students that leave the schools without a diploma or who would continue their education in a lower academic ability track, and the internal quality assurance system of the school. When one or more of these elements are below standards, schools can get a warning and if they are repeatedly below standards in the end a school can be closed. By law, the inspectorate also was assigned to report annually about “the state of education”, to provide politicians insight in how schools are performing.

Governance Above we wrote again and again “schools” when referring to what the rights, freedom, obligations etc. of schools are. This was in fact a shortcut for “the governing body of schools”. These governing bodies can be regarded as the representatives of those who founded the schools shorter or longer ago. Often, they regard it as their mission to guard the specific character of their schools. More often however, they primarily regard it as their task to oversee the schools both from an administrative and a pedagogical perspective. All schools have a governing board that is the employer of a school’s director or a board of directors that usually runs several schools. We refer to the governing board and the board of directors together as the governing body. The board of directors or the school directors oversee the daily running of a school or schools and are accountable to the governing board, functioning at some distance of the schools. This governing board discusses strategical issues with the board of directors, such as what kind of philosophy of education a school needs to have, the development of human resources, what the ideal number of students would be and, most importantly, housing and the financial situation and planning. In practice, the board of directors has a lot of freedom in and responsibility for the quality of education and the financial health of the schools. There is a wide variation in the size of responsibility of these governing bodies. Some are huge entities, with the largest being responsible for over 60 schools of secondary education with over 60,000 students and an annual turnover of over 550 million euro. Others, a small minority, are responsible for just one primary school

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with about 120 students and a turnover of 300,000 euros. The majority is between these extremes with larger entities in secondary than in primary education. There are two distinct types of governing boards respectively for public and private schools. The governing boards of public schools are appointed by the local community government: the city council. For the private schools the governing boards co-opt new members. Members of these boards usually are appointed for their expertise on finance, human resources, law, education, and housing. We will come back to the developments in the last 60 years that have led to this situation.

Transnational Forces in Dutch Education New Public Management and Autonomy The Dutch system of controlling output of schools in both primary and secondary education by respectively a national test and national examinations as described above, is in place for secondary education since 1920 and is closely connected to the freedom of education which is guaranteed in the constitution. One of the principles of New Public Management (NPM), the first transnational influence in Dutch education we discuss, is to govern through outputs rather than inputs (Lane, 2002; Sahlin-Andersson, 2001). Thus, controlling the quality of education through the final examinations in the Dutch system is a form of output control that can be considered NPM avant la lettre. The government sets the goals of education and checks if these are reached, and it is the freedom and responsibility of schools to shape the curriculum such that the goals are met at the end of primary and secondary education. Many other elements of NPM, such as accountability checks and resigning from steering based on inputs, were not visible before the 1990s. When looking at the practice in primary and secondary education in the 1960s one can see that the government also put quite some emphasis on regulating through inputs. There were, for instance, very detailed rules for composing the students’ and teachers’ timetable of lessons and on what items how much money had to be spent. For most expenditures approval had to be given by the ministry of education. For example, hiring a new teacher had to be approved by the ministry and the ministry paid the school exactly the amount of money needed for the salary of the specific teachers hired. Also, the government determined the salaries of teachers. Payment to a school was based on the school showing the specific expenditures. As of the 1970s, discussions on the autonomy of schools started. This was a specific element of the more general trend to make the government smaller and provide all kind of organizations with more autonomy. The discussion on more autonomy of schools got momentum in 1980 as part of a NMP orientation in the government’s policy in a document on decentralization in educational policy (Kloprogge, 2008). It was felt that schools had to obey to too many very detailed rules and it was assumed that when governing boards of schools would have more

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freedom in their acting and policies, they would be better equipped to cater for students’ needs in a heterogeneous and dynamic society (Vrieze & van Gennip, 2006). As a condition, it was mentioned that governing boards would need sufficient competence and power to use this freedom in appropriate ways. The latter was a sign that the government was hesitating, more than for other sectors like railways, utilities, or heath care, to give more autonomy in the education sector. One of the risks that was seen, was that some governing boards would not be capable to develop appropriate policies and that the schools therefore would need to be closed or put under government supervision. Another risk that was foreseen was that competition between schools would be on an unequal playing field when parents would be able to make financial contributions to the schools’ financial resources. Even though such risks were identified, the government wanted to introduce more autonomy, but it seemed to be an even stronger wish of the schools (Kloprogge, 2008). Many governing boards, and specifically the bigger ones, urgently requested more autonomy themselves to be able to adjust to local circumstances and developments. A school in a village might have different needs than an inner-city school. Also, a large teacher labour union asked for more autonomy in a report entitled “The Enterprising school” (ABOP, 1989). This report sketches an enterprising school as an independent organization that acts in accordance with economic principles. It was only in the early 1990s that the government’s reluctance faded away and the autonomy of schools really took off. In 1993 the associations of governing boards of schools in primary and secondary education came to an agreement with the national and local government about strong decentralization of the educational sector. Governing boards would become far less dependent in their policy from the national government. City councils, which were until then the governing boards of public schools, would be required to appoint independent governing boards for these public schools. Governing boards got a much more autonomous position to be able to act in specific local contexts (Schevenings Beraad Bestuurlijke Vernieuwing, 1994). As of 2000, in educational policy more and more NPM characteristics such as increasing autonomy for schools, deregulation, economizing and possibilities for variation between schools were prominent. This is clear in the Ministry of Education policy letters in 1999 and 2000 emphasizing education quality, variation, and accessibility with local autonomy and less central regulations (Ministerie van Onderwijs, Cultuur en Wetenschap, 1999, 2000). At the same time, in according with NPM principles, there appeared a tendency to use targets (e.g., number of students that pass the final examinations), performance indicators (e.g., the number of students that complete secondary education without grade retention) and accountability checks (e.g., an annual financial report and a report on examination grades) were part of the government’s policy (Rutgers, 2004). In fact, many targets have been set in the last 30 years, covering a broad range of societal issues from including more special education needs’ students in the mainstream classes, diminishing the amount of bullying, and improving the citizenship skills during primary education. Schools were required to account for how they worked on achieving these targets and what

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their results were. It is now common practice that the central government provides general directions (e.g., more attention in the curriculum for the Dutch role in the slave trade) and gives schools the freedom how to do this in practice, but with the obligation to show afterwards how they did this and what the results were. Another example is the government’s decision that schools need to have a quality system, including a school guide for parents and students, a complaints system, etc. It is up to the schools to develop such a system, with again the obligation to report on this system and the results achieved with it. One of the ideas behind introducing autonomy increasing measures was, in line with NPM tenets, that through competition between schools, the quality of education would improve and that better performing schools would attract more students than lower performing schools. Waslander (2001) showed, however, that such a development could not be observed. In addition, drawbacks arose: for example, training for the test instead of an emphasis on learning; spending money on glossies instead of education; and competition between governing boards for the best housing which is provided by the city or village where schools are located. All this did not mean that the government did not make educational policy anymore. Several educational reforms, to be described later in this chapter, were initiated by the government. These became the topic of an investigation by the Dutch Parliament of which the report was published in 2008 (Commissie Parlementair Onderzoek Onderwijsvernieuwing, 2008). The committee concluded that there was considerable political support when these reforms started and that, subsequently, their implementation had been very much top-down. Consequently, many teachers had felt that the innovations were forced upon them, be it by the governing bodies or by the government. This made many teachers feel that they lacked professional autonomy. Also, these innovations were considered by many teachers and the general public as unsuccessful. This lack of autonomy and failures hurt the teachers own and public esteem for the teaching profession. A specific element of the autonomy of educational organizations was the gradual introduction of lump-sum financing. This movement already started in the 1960s of the previous century in higher education (Vossensteyn et  al., 2017). As with the general trend toward school autonomy, also for the lump-sum financing some schools were more eager to get this than others and again, the government was hesitating to provide this freedom. Some schools resisted, because of the short-term negative consequences (Kloprogge, 2008). For example, all schools of the same size, would receive the same amount of money for the salaries. Schools with a relatively old and therefore expensive teacher team would have to spend more money for personnel than a school with a younger and thus cheaper teacher force. Thus, the former could less than the latter invest in material expenditures ranging from the maintenance of the building and cleaning to buying schoolbooks or computers. Because the schools did not have a say in the level of the teacher salary, this was felt to be unrealistic and unfair. Also, for example the rule about the number of lessons a student had to follow could lead in a school with high personnel costs to making classes bigger which could have negative effects on the education quality. Combining the introduction of lump-sum financing with maintaining all kind of rules was rather

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different from decentralizing tendencies in other sectors where, e.g., the railways became fully independent from the government with accountability afterwards for mutually agreed targets for punctuality of the trains. Gradually this lump-sum financing was introduced in all educational sectors, in secondary education in 1996 and primary education in 2006. The reasons for these differences in timing were the scale of the institutions. It was assumed that the bigger an institution was, the easier, more successful, and profitable it would be to grant it the lump-sum financing (Vrieze & van Gennip, 2006). In higher education already in the 1960s institutions were relatively big with many institutions hosting over 10,000 students. However, in primary education, at that time, many schools had no more that 150 pupils. As a side effect of the general trend toward autonomy, the governing bodies responsible for schools started to merge into bigger unities to be better equipped to use the expected autonomy and to spread the risks for smaller units connected to a lump-sum financing. Now, a primary governing board can have the responsibility (and possibility to shift money between buildings) over 40 or 70 schools each with 200 pupils. Thus, an extra layer in the system has been created: powerful governing bodies of several schools. The trend towards more autonomy for individual schools thus was hampered by the introduction of this extra governing layer. Policy making that was the task of the ministry before, is now quite often the responsibility of the governing bodies of schools.

Equity in Education: Fighting Early Tracking In 1968, Rosenthal and Jacobson published their famous book “Pygmalion in the Classroom” (Rosenthal & Jacobson, 1968). They described experiments in which teacher expectations were manipulated by telling teachers that some of their students had high IQs, even though in fact these students had been randomly selected. It was said that the experiments showed that (false) teacher expectations did influence teacher behavior towards students and that consequently the relative performance of these students increased. Although these experiments were rightly criticized (e.g., Wineburg, 1987), these findings sparked worldwide movements for equity in education, the second transnational influence in Dutch education. Educational equity was considered vulnerable for false teacher expectations based on students’ social economic status (SES) and gender. In the Netherlands, this vulnerability was even greater than elsewhere because of the tracked secondary education system. This system might force students into a premature, primarily socially conditioned, and gendered choice for a school career (Netherlands Scientific Council for Government Policy, 1986). Evidence shows that the earlier students are out into a specific track the more students from parents with a high SES are favoured (OECD, 2013). Comparisons with educational systems in other countries were often used to argue that this early tracking should be postponed to a later age (e.g., Netherlands Scientific Council for Government Policy, 1986). Therefore, starting from the 1960’s, attempts to reform the early tracking system were initiated

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primarily by social-democratic politicians and educational researchers. However, these efforts had little results, because there was and is no political consensus on the need for postponement of the tracking. Already back in 1968, a law was introduced to make the first year of secondary education a year to orient students on what would be the best track for them. This “brugjaar” (bridging year) was placed in schools that usually offered a limited number of tracks, for example only general or only vocational tracks, and so the determination of the track was not effectively postponed. In the 1970’s, experiments were run for several years in a limited number of schools with comprehensive education. Students in these schools, irrespective of their cognitive ability, were in the same class for 3 years. In this way, the choice for a particular track was postponed 3 years. The social democrats saw this as a good solution for a substantial problem, but other political parties, specifically the liberals, were more concerned about the possible negative effects for the cognitively most able students. These students might be kept behind because teachers would focus on the less able students (van Dijk, 2008). In the end, these experiments were stopped, but the discussion continued. From 1993 onwards, a “basic curriculum” including 14 subjects with standardized goals was implemented in the first 3 years of secondary education for all students. The original goals of this reform were to pay more attention to the development of skills in the curriculum and to postpone the tracking of children at the age of 12 until 14. Both aims sought to strengthen the chances on good education for all students specifically those coming from low SES families. However, the reform became the topic of a heated debate and only a weak version of the original plan was implemented: all students had to take the 14 subjects and reach the common goals, but they would do that within tracks for which they were selected at the age of 12. Although there were schools offering several tracks, moving between tracks was still very difficult. The basic curriculum met with much resistance and ultimately was eliminated in 2006. In 1999–2002, a reorganization of the lower levels of secondary education was introduced, combining medium general education with lower vocational education in one track with the aim to create more pathways for students in these schools. This reform was relatively successful, although at first the image of the new track was rather negative because it was perceived as a school type for students who couldn’t succeed in the other levels. In addition, in this school type the other tracks described in the introduction still were present. This section has described several attempts over a long-time span to postpone students’ choice for a school career. These attempts were by and large not successful, and the Netherlands continues to stay in an internationally rather isolated position with its early tracking. It seems that in this case national forces won over the transnational forces.

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What Counts as Evidence in Designing Education and Teaching A third influential transnational agenda in the Netherlands was and is the “what works movement” that raises the question what counts as evidence in educational research and practice. In the 1970s and 1980s, so-called process-product research dominated research on “good” teaching (see, for example, Brophy & Good, 1986). In this type of research, quantitative data were collected on the teaching behavior of teachers in the classroom using systematic observations (process), after which the association with students’ cognitive learning as determined by scores on tests (product) was investigated. Under controlled conditions, it was subsequently examined whether specific teaching behavior indeed led to the intended effects, after which teachers could be trained in this behavior (Rosenshine & Stevens, 1986). The what works movement started in the USA in 1986 largely based on results of process-product research, when a government designed booklet “What works: research about teaching and learning” (Bennet, 1986) was published. This brochure with 41 research results was meant to be used as a practical guide for parents and teachers seeking those educational practices found to be most effective in helping children to learn. This booklet and its second version with 19 more findings (Bennet, 1987) were the start in educational policy in the USA and other countries of an emphasis on teaching based om what research can tell schools and teachers to teach effectively, and also how parents can support their children’s development. The booklet included interventions in the classroom, the home environment and for improving school effectiveness. The Netherlands followed this movement rather quickly. In 1991 a book supported by a grant from the government was published entitled “School examples” (Meijnen et al., 1991). The book described for about 30 themes short conclusions from research in the USA that were corroborated by research results in the Netherlands. This research used several research methods, qualitative and quantitative, but very few quasi-experimental and randomized controlled studies. As the USA version, the book had three sections: home environment, teaching, and the school. It focused on effective education for at-risk students. For every theme a list of studies was used to support a conclusion for action or intervention. E.g., one of the conclusions was that teachers having high expectations for their students and showing these expectations, realize higher student results than teachers with low expectations. This conclusion was supported referring to five studies from the USA and seven from the Netherlands. In addition, conclusions from Dutch practice and portraits of effective Dutch schools were presented. In the 1980s and 1990s, process-product research was increasingly criticized because it was found that what successful teachers do has much more to do with how they respond to the specific needs of their students in various everyday teaching situations than with the systematic application of certain behavioral routines (e.g., Calderhead, 1996). Nevertheless, since 2000, the attention for research into effective teacher routines increased again. One reason for this revival was the introduction of the No Child Left Behind Act in the USA by the Bush administration in

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2001. This legislation assumed that using high and measurable goals would improve educational outcomes. It required states to establish standardized assessments and schools to rely on scientifically based research for programs and teaching methods. The act defines this as “research that involves the application of rigorous, systematic, and objective procedures to obtain reliable and valid knowledge relevant to education activities and programs”. Scientifically based research results in “replicable and applicable findings” from research that used appropriate methods to generate persuasive, empirical conclusions (No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, 2002). In the Netherlands, we saw both support for this revival and criticism. There has been a continuous and vigorous debate on the possibilities to teach according to evidence from research. In 2006, the “Onderwijsraad” (Education Council), the most important advisory council of the government on educational issues, argued that research after an explorative phase always would have to come to experimental studies with control groups to test relationships between teachers’ actions and student learning. The council considered this approach, that resembled the earlier process-­product studies, necessary for evidence-based teaching. For the introduction of the results of educational research in practice, the council advocated to develop directives for teacher actions and teaching protocols and a role for the inspectorate to monitor if the directives and protocols were followed in practice (Onderwijsraad, 2006). These recommendations of the council have not been put in practice. There were severe criticisms on these lines of thinking for example by Stevens (2006) who introduced theory about education and the educational process as missing elements in the discussion about teaching effectiveness. He rejected the possibility to acquire evidence from teaching experiments, because such experiments in his view cannot take the idiosyncratic processes into account that make learning individually unique and highly dependent on the interaction and relationships between individuals, that is between students and their teacher. He considered such experiments as too simplistic to describe the complex educational processes and to provide advice for teachers in practice who must cope with these idiosyncrasies. These experiments cannot include sense making processes that in Stevens’ view are essential for educational practice; processes that need to result in activities and environments that are perceived as meaningful by participants, both students and teachers. Experiments never can sufficiently take the practical teaching and learning situations into account which would make these experiments (or quasi-­ experiments) valid: ecological validity of the experiments is always poor. Stevens referred to an example: direct instruction might work for a motivated student but not for an uninterested one. Gravemeijer and Kirschner (2007) analysed in depth the shortcomings of the Education Council’s approach to educational research for practice. They argued that such experimental research was not feasible, far too expensive, and too generalizing. It would show that an approach would work, but not how it worked, and such insight is needed for professionals to be able to use research results in a deliberate manner. The Parliamentary committee that studied innovations in 2008 (Commissie Parlementair Onderzoek Onderwijsvernieuwing, 2008) also investigated the role of evidence in these innovations. It concluded that scientific evidence had only played

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a marginal role when developing the educational reforms and that the own, individual experiences of the policy makers and their circles had often been more important. The committee pleaded for basing educational innovations on sound empirical evidence. If such evidence was not available, innovations should always be piloted on a small scale and be monitored and evaluated by scientific research. However, what counts as sound empirical evidence was not clear. In the 2014 report of the Dutch committee on the future of the educational sciences, the conclusion was drawn that such evidence should be developed, and that different types of research should be used to inform education. The committee used the term evidence-­ informed as a replacement for evidence-based. This term puts the emphasis on the role of the professional in using evidence adapted to his or her local circumstances (Commissie Sectorplan Onderwijswetenschappen, 2014, p.4). When analysing the documents of the Dutch parliament, one can see that nowadays most politicians and certainly the civil servants in the ministry of education use the term evidence-­ informed rather than evidence-based. The plea by the Parliamentary committee that innovations should always be based on sound empirical evidence, fuelled the interest in education for the work of international authors such as Hattie (2009), Marzano (whose 2003 book “What works in education” was published in Dutch in 2007) and Slavin (2014). In practical publications and policy documents, elements can be seen referring to prescribing effective teaching and the teacher as a deliberate professional. Nearly 30 years after the book “School examples” (Meijnen et al., 1991), books were published in the Netherlands entitled “On the shoulders of giants” (Kirschner et al., 2018) and “Twelve lessons for effective teaching” (Surma et al., 2019), in which insights from cognitive psychology (again primarily from USA research) were translated into recommendations for teachers. These books’ approach differed substantially from the 1991 book following the critique on teacher effectiveness research. Whereas the School Examples book in fact prescribed what effective interventions were, the Kirschner et al. (2018) book was based on 24 seminal articles and some subsequent studies to illustrate how research could inform deliberate teacher actions. E.g., the first chapter describes the Bloom (1984) paper on studying methods for group instruction that are as effective as one-to-one tutoring. Based on this paper and subsequent work several recommendations were presented such as “mastery teaching in combination with activation of prior knowledge is a powerful strategy” and “one-to-one teaching is the most powerful teaching strategy, but happily there are strategies to peer with this in a class”. Similarly, the role of context in learning was illustrated based on the Brown et al. (1989) paper on situated cognition. The Meijnen et al. (1991), Kirschner et al. (2018) and Surma et al. (2019) books are three publications in a rather long list of all kinds of publications covering what research can tell educational professionals. Another example is a volume edited by Beijaard (2016) that presented for teacher educators research evidence for their teacher education programs. Its title “Knowing what works” makes clear in what tradition it stands. The adagium that interventions should only be implemented when these have been proven to be effective is still powerful today. In 2021, for instance, the government provided the education sector with 8500 million euros to

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help counter negative effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on student learning. This (for the Netherlands) huge amount of money was only to be spent on proven effective interventions (Ministerie van Onderwijs en Wetenschappen, 2021). To help schools with identifying this evidence, a list of evidence was published. The basis for this list was provided by the summaries of research on the website of the UK-based Education Endowment Foundation (2016), the Teaching and Learning Toolkit. This again illustrates the strong transnational influences on education, educational research, and educational policy in the Netherlands.

Social Constructivism: A New Pedagogy in Secondary Education Social constructivism, the fourth transnational influence in Dutch education, is a theory of learning or an epistemological theory (e.g., Phillips, 1995; Von Glasersfeld, 1996) that has become rather popular in educational research and consequently has influenced educational policies in several countries. Its main tenet is that knowledge is constructed by learners and often this is described as an active process of the learner. The latter better can be described as an activity because it is not necessarily a purposeful activity. Furthermore, in social constructivism, learning is situated and the process of construction is a social process that proceeds in interaction with other persons and/or materials (Simons et al., 2000). Quite often this social constructivism is translated into a prescriptive theory of teaching that assumes that teachers should not lecture but be coaches of students and should bring students together in groups to learn. Teaching should support active and self-regulative learning. We think this is a misinterpretation, because constructivism is an epistemological theory and has no evident clear-cut pedagogical implications: for example, students can (and do) construct knowledge when a teacher is lecturing (Nathan & Sawyer, 2014). Based on these social constructivist ideas that aimed at active and self-regulative learning (Simons, 2000; Simons et al., 2000), in 1998 in the Netherlands a reform of the pedagogy in the last 2 years of higher general education and the last 3 years of preparatory-university education was introduced. The most prominent and most debated element of this innovation was that schools could implement the “studiehuis” (study house), which many schools did. The study house was a radical shift in the pedagogical approach in classes towards student independent and self-­ responsible learning and inquiry. For teachers, it meant a shift in their role from being the source of knowledge to act as a supervisor, coach, and facilitator of learning. This approach was referred to as “new learning”. From a policy perspective, the main aim of the study house was to strengthen students’ chances for completing higher education successfully, by providing a better preparation in secondary education for how students were supposed to study in higher education. Such preparation might compensate for differences in support that parents or caretakers from high and low SES can provide their children with. Parents form high SES more than from

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low SES have completed higher education themselves in the Netherlands just like almost all other countries. When it was proposed, many school leaders and teachers were positive about the study house, but in practice it turned out hard to implement (e.g. Van Veen et al., 2005). Furthermore, although schools were free to implement the study house or not, many teachers did not feel they had a say in if and how this reform was implemented (Commissie Parlementair Onderzoek Onderwijsvernieuwing, 2008). Although the study house was not a success the narrative of “the teacher as coach instead of transmitter of knowledge” still is powerful in the educational policy and in teacher education programs (Richter et al., 2021). That means that the constructivist move in education, which is a transnational agenda, continues to influence Dutch education.

The Knowledge Society and Curriculum Content To keep up with Asia and the USA, in 2000 the heads of governments of the member states of the European Union agreed that by 2010, Europe should have “the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world capable of sustainable economic growth with more and better jobs and greater social cohesion” (European Parliament, 2000). Interestingly, in this aim also greater social cohesion is mentioned. The background of this for the Netherlands was the tension between globalizing forces and the preservation of national values in a context of voluminous and increasing immigration. This immigration transformed the Dutch culture into a multicultural society with tensions between groups with different ethnic and cultural backgrounds. Advisory councils of the government produced reports on this national identity in the context of ever stronger globalization already back in 1999 (Raad voor Maatschappelijke Ontwikkeling, 1999) and among others in 2007 (Wetenschappelijke Raad voor het Regeringsbeleid, 2007). These reports were published considering a continuous concern about losing the national identity. In the discussions on the content of the curriculum that will be reported on below this concern plays a continuous role. To achieve the goal of becoming a knowledge-based economy, innovation should become the motor for economic change, and European economies should transform from industrial into knowledge intensive. Although it is generally accepted that this ambition failed, the idea that European countries should transform their economies had its impact on the educational debate in the Netherlands, the fifth transnational influence. One of the issues was that students as the workers of the future should acquire “21st century skills”: a rather vague and wide-ranging label for a broad range of skills such as being able to learn independently and handle digital technology, being creative, entrepreneurial, communicative, and critical. After the publication in 2008 of the report of the parliamentary committee investigating the educational innovations in the previous decades, for some years no educational innovations were initiated by the government at all. However, 5 years later

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public and scientific pressure increased to “update” the curriculum following the transnational trend. A report was published by the Scientific Council for Government Policy (Wetenschappelijke Raad voor het Regeringsbeleid, 2013) on the need to strengthen the development of the Dutch economy into a “knowledge economy”. The council suggested that one of the tasks for the government was to reform the curriculum: A third task is to review the content of education. The Netherlands has a long tradition of educational freedom, which has the downside that there is hardly any public debate about what content education should convey. There is no national curriculum, and about the question of how much attention 21st century skills (learning to learn, taking initiative, perseverance, cooperation, etc.) deserve, there are circulating mainly individual opinions. A business approach is necessary here. This also entails a reorientation on the distinction between vocational education and education aimed at cognition (page 14).

One year later, the Education Council (Onderwijsraad, 2014) published a report on the innovation of the curriculum. This council concluded that no procedures were in place for initiating curriculum reforms aimed at incorporating twenty-first century skills in these curricula. In this same period, concerns started to increase about the quality of education, for which the annual reports of the Inspectorate of Education about the decline of the position of Dutch education in international rankings were one of the main sources. That same year, the ministry of education responded by starting the program “Onderwijs2032” (Education2032). The aim of this program was to advice the ministry about the knowledge domains and skills to be included in the curriculum. Based on an internet consultation aimed at involving the general public in the discussion about the content of the curriculum, a large number of meetings and discussions with stakeholders, scientific insights, and examples from other countries, the program management of Onderwijs2032 advocated in its final report (Platform Onderwijs2032, 2016) to start the development of a core curriculum (cf., Wetenschappelijke Curriculumcommissie, 2020). In this core-curriculum, amongst others, “broad cross-curricular skills” should be given a permanent basis. Also, citizenship education, national values, and digital literacy should have a place in this core curriculum. The recommendations of Onderwijs2032 (Platform Onderwijs2032, 2016) were fiercely debated in the media. In these debates, opponents often referred to the recommendations of the parliamentary committee on educational innovation, that the government should abstain from large-scale reforms when support from teachers was not guaranteed, and proper scientific evidence was not available. Despite the lack of support, a follow-up program was started to further elaborate the plans. In this program, “Curriculum.nu” (Curriculum.now), organizations of school administrators from primary and secondary education took the lead, together with organizations for students, parents, and subject teachers. In October 2019, the proposals of this program were published (Coördinatiegroep Curriculum.nu, 2019). Some months later, these proposals were discussed in parliament after hearings with proponents and opponents of the proposals. It became clear after the hearings that many controversies still existed and it was decided to pause the implementation of

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the proposals. First, a committee of scientists should review the proposals and advice the minister about follow-up actions. This committee was installed in September 2020 and has now advised to go ahead with some of the reforms, but in a far more modest form. These, until now, unsuccessful reforms of the curriculum were initially started because of concerns about the contribution of education to realize the ambition to develop the Dutch (and European) economy into a knowledge economy. Because the goals of the reforms were not formulated clearly enough, and the proposals were not supported by scientific evidence and because many teachers were not convinced of the necessity of the reforms, the process of the curriculum reforms has been delayed considerably. Also, in the debate about these reforms, the initial intention to contribute to the development of the economy of the Netherlands as a knowledge economy is hardly mentioned anymore.

International Benchmarking As in many other countries, international comparisons of the performance of the national educational system based on students taking the same test in many countries, have a strong impact on the perception of the quality of the Dutch educational system. This sixth transnational influence is one of the most visible transnational educational forces in the Netherlands. Before the turn of the century, international comparisons of the performance of educational systems, had always been rather favourably for Dutch education. In the 2000’s, however, the relative position of Dutch education started to decline slowly. This coincided with the increasingly negative public perception of the educational reforms that were started in previous decades, and described earlier in this chapter. To map the influence of international comparisons, we analysed the digitally available annual reports of the Inspectorate of Education on the state of Dutch education in the period 2006–2020 using the search-terms “International*; Pisa; Timms, Pirls”. These analyses illustrate the impact of international comparisons on the perception of the quality of Dutch education. Overall, the reports first mention that Dutch education is falling in the ranks because other countries are progressing. From 2012 onwards, it is observed that the level of performance itself appears to be declining in international comparative tests. This was reflected in articles in national newspapers with headings such as “The Inspectorate of Education rings the alarm bell, the Netherlands is losing its international top-position” (NRC, April 11, 2018) and “Better education requires a new war on education” (Volkskrant, January 8, 2020). In the last article, after referring to the Dutch scores on the PISA-tests, an editor wrote: Since 2000, school performance in all three areas (reading, mathematics, science) has steadily declined. Reading has gone downhill in the last six years, so that the Netherlands has fallen below the average of the rich countries. In 2012, the [best Dutch students] did not score nearly as well as those from New Zealand, South Korea, or Finland. The [less

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p­ roficient students] were the ones who kept the Netherlands afloat. But now precisely that group of students has cracked through the ice. […] Next to a parliamentary investigation, it will require a tough war on education to turn the tide.

On a more detailed level, in consecutive years several different issues are emphasised, and not always consistently. For example, in 2006 it is noted that the performance of Dutch education is satisfactory and stable in international comparisons, but there is concern about the low percentage of graduates (specifically female) in the science domain compared with other European countries. In 2007, however, concerns are mentioned about the percentage of young people with low reading skills, being high compared with other countries and there is also concern about declining basic arithmetic skills. In 2008, also falling math performance is mentioned as a problem, whereas in 2009 it is noted that Dutch students in math still test far above the international average. A topic related to performance that is mentioned consistently in several years, is the relatively small gap between low and high achievers, which is on the one hand considered a merit of the Dutch educational system because of the positive relation with educational equity, but on the other hand is considered a problem because it is interpreted as too little attention for the needs of high achievers. Looking at these reports over the years, it is clear that international studies have a strong influence on the evaluation by the inspectorate of the state of affairs in Dutch education, which in turn have a strong impact on the public perception of the quality of education. However, the use of these international studies seems not to be systematic or consistent over the years.

Concluding Remarks In this chapter we discussed six transnational developments that have considerably influenced Dutch education in the last 50 years. We aimed to show that transnational influences on Dutch education are amply visible. However, what exactly these influences bring about is not straightforward. For the influence of the role of evidence in education and the social constructivist turn in education, developments in the Netherlands seem to follow the transnational forces quite well with little national counterforces. For the New Public Management and school autonomy, fighting early tracking, and international benchmarking, we can see that national influences are competing with the transnational ones and at times even seem to be stronger. In the case of the schools’ autonomy, following NPM influences, the constitution might have hindered providing autonomy because of the phrase in it “taking into account the government’s supervision of education”. This responsibility of the government mentioned in the constitution might explain that the NPM initiated pursuit for more autonomy was only reluctantly followed by the government. In fact, all along the line, steps toward more autonomy were rather small and these were

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combined with many safeguards to prevent misuse of autonomy or unwanted negative effects on use of resources or pedagogy. The rather strict role of the inspectorate and the consequences of negative evaluations severely limited this autonomy. Thus, the specific national context may have made this transnational influence on schools’ autonomy less prominent in the Netherlands than in some other countries. When looking at the transnational trend toward equity in education it is striking that early tracking is still prominent despite several attempts to postpone the age at which students must be placed in a track. Here, another part of the constitution might have worked against this transnational influence. Robust counterforces, for example the Christian-Democrats whose electorate had a strong interest in freedom of education, argued again and again against an obligatory postponement of the age of tracking for all students. They did not oppose against a possibility for a later choice for students if parents or schools want that, but they wanted freedom of choice, no obligation (van Dijk, 2008). This reasoning is connected to the constitution with its fundamental right of freedom for school governing bodies to decide on the pedagogy. The transnational influence on the curriculum became more prominent because of concerns about the contribution education should make in realizing the ambition to develop the Dutch economy into a knowledge economy. These concerns were fueled by the declining position of Dutch education in international comparisons. This transnational influence was joined with nationalist forces that feared to lose national values and emphasized citizenship education (e.g., SLO, 2015). It is striking that initial more radical proposals to innovate the curriculum were heavily debated. This debate resulted in proposals for modest changes with little reference to the development of the economy. It is not far-fetched to refer again to the constitutional freedom of education as an important cause for the resistance against radical changes. This freedom seems to be the central underlying dimension to be taken into consideration when analyzing the impact of transnational forces on Dutch educational policies and practices. In this chapter, we focused on six specific transnational forces in education in the Netherlands, but we certainly do not claim that these are the only ones. An example of an influence that we did not describe in detail, is the impact of digitalization that was discussed extensively in the first chapter of this book. That doesn’t mean that this transnational force did not have an impact in the Netherlands. On the contrary, in particular during the COVID-19 pandemic, the digital infrastructure has become more important than ever in the Netherlands, increasing schools’ dependency on international (Ed)Tech companies. Regarding a second example, the commercialization of education, we could have described the huge influence in education of commercial publishers, who publish teaching materials that are used by nearly all schools. We could also have focused on the increasing popularity of “shadow education”: extra lessons provided outside the school by commercial institutions (sometimes one individual person). Estimations on the extent of this education differ, but probably between 20 and 25% of the students use such extra lessons.

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Even though we have not been comprehensive in our description and analysis of transnational forces in Dutch education, we hope to have illustrated that these influences have a strong impact, but that what exactly this impact is, is mediated by national and even local circumstances and cultures.

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Sahlin-Andersson, K. (2001). National, international and transnational constructions of new public management. In T. Christensen & P. Lægreid (Eds.), New public management—The transformation of ideas and practice (pp. 43–72). Ashgate. Schevenings Beraad Bestuurlijke Vernieuwing [Scheveningen’s deliberation on governmental innovation]. (1994). Gezamenlijke richtinggevende uitspraken van de vertegenwoordigers van de onderwijskoepelorganisaties en de minister van Onderwijs en Wetenschappen [Joint directional statements of representatives of the educational umbrella organizations and the minister of Education and Sciences]. Den Haag: Sdu. Simons, P. R. J. (2000). Towards a constructivistic theory of self-directed learning. In G. A. Straka (Ed.), Conceptions of self-directed learning (pp. 155–170). Waxman. Simons, P. R. J., van der Linden, J., & Duffy, T. (2000). New learning: Three ways to learn in a new balance. In P. R. J. Simons, J. van der Linden, & T. Duffy (Eds.), New learning (pp. 191–208). Kluwer Academic Publishers. Slavin, R. E. (2014). Educational psychology: Theory and practice (10th ed.). Pearson. SLO. (2015). Op zoek naar gedeelde waarden [Seeking joint values]. Enschede: SLO. Stevens, L. (2006). Niet nieuw of oud, wel anders [Not new, not old, but different]. Pedagogische Studiën, 83(1), 85–89. Surma, T., Vanhoyweghen, K., Sluijsmans, D., Camp, G., Muijs, D., & Kirschner, P. A. (2019). Wijze lessen: 12 bouwstenen voor effectieve didactiek [Wise lessons: 12 building blocks for an effective pedagogy]. Meppel: Ten Brink Uitgevers. van Dijk, V. (2008). Tussen Mammoetwet en Basisvorming; Het politieke debat over de middenschool, 1973–1977 [Between the Dutch Education Act and Basic Education; the political debate on comprehensive education]. Masterthesis Rotterdam Erasmus University. van Veen, K., Sleegers, P., & van de Ven, P. (2005). One teacher’s identity, emotions, and commitment to change: A case study into the cognitive-affective processes of a secondary school teacher in the context of reforms. Teaching and Teacher Education, 21(8), 917–934. von Glasersfeld, E. (1996). Footnotes to “The many faces of Constructivism”. Educational Researcher, 25(6), 19. Vossensteyn, H., de Boer, H., & Jongbloed, B. (2017). Chronologisch overzicht van ontwikkelingen in de bekostigingssystematiek voor het Nederlandse hoger onderwijs [Chronological overview of developments in the funding system of Dutch higher education]. Enschede: CHEPS, University of Twente. Vrieze, G., & van Gennip, H. (2006). Laat lump sum maar komen. Eindrapportage pilots lumpsum primair onderwijs [Keep lump sum coming. Final report on pilots lump sum primary education]. Nijmegen: ITS. Waslander, S. (2001). Marktwerking in het onderwijs, waar leidt het toe? [Market forces in education, what’s it add up to?] In M. van Dijck (editor), Marktwerking in het onderwijs [Market forces in education] (pp. 270–297). Den Haag: Onderwijsraad. Wetenschappelijk Raad voor het Regeringsbeleid [Netherlands Scientific Council for Government Policy]. (2007). Identificatie met Nederland [Identification with the Netherlands]. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. Wetenschappelijk Raad voor het Regeringsbeleid [Netherlands Scientific Council for Government Policy]. (2013). Naar een lerende economie: Investeren in het verdienvermogen van Nederland [Toward a learning economy: Investing in the earning capacity of the Netherlands]. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. Wetenschappelijke Curriculumcommissie [Scientific curriculum committee]. (2020). Kaders voor de toekomst; Tussenadvies 1 [Frameworks for the future; Interim report 1]. Amersfoort: CurriculumCommissie. Wineburg, S. S. (1987). The self-fulfillment of the self-fulfilling prophecy. Educational Researcher, 16(9), 28–37.

Part III

National Cases: Southern Europe

Chapter 6

French Education Policies and the PISA Paradigm: The Strong Republican State Absorbing External Influences Romuald Normand

Abstract  The neo-liberal turn within the French education system is difficult to define and interpret. The reforms carried out over the last few decades have been based on a republican nationalism hostile to the market and privatization, and even to management. To understand this French specificity, it is necessary to explain some buffering mechanisms of international influences by the Ministry of Education and its centralized technostructure. However, as the reception of the PISA survey shows, scientific and political networks are at work, in the shadow of the Ministry, through arrangements and alliances that borrow international standards to translate them into their own reformist and republican vision. The chapter first describes the features of this republican imaginary, which is the object of a fairly broad agreement among French experts and policy makers. It then shows how French policy-making has led to the adoption of soft accountability mechanisms and to adapt the Lisbon Strategy. The second part is more specifically devoted to some spaces of interest composed of networks and intermediary actors that have translated the Global Reform Movement. This study is based on the analysis of official documents and public discourses held by those intermediary actors. The aim is to make more visible some relations and types of authority specific to French policy-making and sometimes underestimated by the existing research literature. Keywords  France · Reforms · Republicanism · Policy borrowing · PISA · Networks

R. Normand (*) University of Strasbourg, Strasbourg, France e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. B. Krejsler, L. Moos (eds.), School Policy Reform in Europe, Educational Governance Research 22, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-35434-2_6

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Introduction Current research categories characterizing the neo-liberal turn are not completely relevant to explain French education policies.1 Indeed, the market, privatization, and managerialism are hardly accepted by French policy makers, educators, and researchers alike. They are all firmly committed to education as a public service putting private, religious, or economic interests at a distance, including those of parents. This ‘public’ character of education, as well as the French passion for equality, combined with the praise of French culture and language, is based on a long history since the French revolution. Some of these features will be explained in the following sections. Therefore, there is a ‘republican nationalism’ that resists globalizing influences and even makes French people relatively blind to international and European issues in education. Only the PISA survey has received a certain amount of public and media coverage, but the French debate is largely reduced to equality of opportunities, elitism, and biased meritocracy. However, some national forces have been at work for several years to convert French education policies to a transnational perspective. They mainly involve intermediary and statist actors in different scientific and political networks sharing a reformist agenda and framing educational issues (Normand, 2020a, b). In the second part of this chapter, a partial and beginning study of these networks is presented even if it simplifies an institutional, bureaucratic and relatively complex landscape. We consider the interplay between these national actors, their strategies and interests, their circumstantial alliances, and their capacity to mobilize and influence others. These networks have managed to translate the European strategy into the French policy-making. Following Stephen Ball and Sonia Exley, this chapter seeks to describe and analyse educational reforms in France, not only influenced by policy borrowing and lending mechanisms, but also by national reformist networks which have prepared the French ‘Third Way’ and the reception of the PISA survey (Steiner-Khamsi & Waldow, 2012; Ball & Exley, 2010). They correspond to policy assemblages, namely interactions between entities and their capacities, but also processing arrangements and power relations that make possible the political framing of global issues within the French context (Gorur, 2011a, b). Specific ways in which these entities are brought together determine properties and effects on a given policy or

 The chapter is based on first research findings from a collaborative project funded by the Maison des Sciences de l’Homme [House of Humanities and Social Sciences] of the University of Strasbourg, France, and the program “investissements d’excellence” [Investments of Excellence] of the French Ministry of Higher Education and Research. They are based on reviewing 380 documents (proceedings of conferences and seminars, official publications, laws and decrees, journal articles, books) which were classified and analyzed with the textual data analysis software InVivo, while the use of the network analysis software Gephi made it possible to establish links between more than 108 entities (individuals, groups) on the basis of their co-publications, hierarchical subordination links, political belongings and ideological affinities to the reformist Left or Right circles and networks. 1

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program without linear sequences between the policy design and its implementation. Indeed, policy assemblages are the result of heterogeneous discursive elements brought together in particular strategic and opportunistic relationships that have introduced a basic skills policy and its related PISA survey within the French education system as well as they have translated the Lisbon strategy (Carvalho, 2012; Normand, 2014, 2022; Sellar & Lingard, 2014). After opening the ‘black box’ of French policymaking and borrowing by using some concepts inspired by Actor-­ Network-­Theory, the end of the chapter points out some limitations and grey areas in the current French-speaking research that has studied this transnational turn.

 eeing Like the State in Education. The French Republican S Vision on Equality There is little discussion on global issues in the French education world, except a few comments in the media when PISA results are published. The reformist agenda led by ministries from the Left to the Right legitimizes deeply the republican heritage and a long-standing vision of equal opportunities, which makes education policies mainly focused on student guidance. This French patrimonial and egalitarian imaginery must be understood to better consider a relative blindness to transnational and European realities. Educators and policymakers are comitted to the comprehensive school and a national curriculum. Fundamentally French education policies are statist, but also anti-liberal and anti-communitarian. They have been developed throughout a collective and republican ideal despite its rationalization by a basic-­ skills framework and soft-accountability mechanisms.

French Imaginary and Republican Nationalism in Education The French education system is difficult to understand without referring to its heritage. The latter is still very enshrined in educational institutions and thoughts shared by policy makers and educators. This republican school vision overdetermines public discourses and it remains also the background for educational research and sociology. Born from the separation between the Catholic Church and the State, and institutionalized by a huge legislation, the republican school system embodies an imaginary that makes the Enlightenment the cradle of universalistic claims. It legitimizes a top-down transmission of knowledge praising humanities and sciences as the main way for the progress of Reason (Popkewitz, 2014). The French revolutionary past, even more than liberty, draws an emancipatory and egalitarian vision, a French passion for equality, as Alexis de Tocqueville wrote, that has been described by the French sociologist François Dubet as a “necessary fiction” (Dubet, 2004). Indeed, this passion is embedded in the French societal

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project, in the legacy of solidarism while the fear of social fragmentation that can also be found in Emile Durkheim’ writings. The republican imaginary celebrates philosophers such as Voltaire for his fight against religious obscurantism, Condorcet for his vision about the ‘progress of the human spirit’ based on mathematics and sciences, and Rousseau for his philosophy advocating a ‘social contract’ and a representation of interests by mandated spokesmen. Under the moral authority of the Republic of Letters and the Republic of Sciences, which strongly influence the national curriculum, the French school system promotes civic education and citizenship considered as the first step in childhood to belong to the “national community of citizens”. That is why the Republic denies differences related to social background, gender, but also race and ethnicity, and public discourses claim virulently against the rise of “communitarianism” or “social separatism”. Even if positive discrimination is accepted for the most disadvantaged students, particularly in priority education areas, the state intervention is mainly based on an egalitarian vision and a standardized redistribution. Education programs do not acknowledge ethnic or cultural differences and it makes a strong difference compared with Anglo-Saxon countries (Simon & Sala Pala, 2010). This ‘republican nationalism’, beyond its universalist principles for equal rights and opportunities, is not without contradictions when it comes to tackling controversial issues such as slavery, the colonial past, or the Algerian War. Even the “duty to remember” is regarded as a hot issue in school textbooks. To conclude this short and partial presentation, it is necessary to mention the Napoleonic order shaping the vision of the State (the French school system is a public service composed of civil servants recruited for life). It has institutionalized a statist and bureaucratic administration, governed by top-down legislation and regulations, and professional bodies which are recruited by “concours” (selective and competitive exams) based on their expertise and loyalty to the Republic (Normand, 2017). This led some commentators to describe the French education system as a ‘liner with a small rudder’ or a ‘mammoth’ because of its national, bureaucratic, top-down, and rigid policymaking while decentralization is relatively limited. In education, local authorities are only responsible for equipping and building schools as well as developing youth vocational training programs. This limited decentralization, compared to other countries, can be explained by concerns shared by most policymakers. Firstly, they fear that too much school autonomy would break down the equal provision for all students and families, leading to competition between schools, a policy solution opposed to republican principles which remain hostile to school choice and the market. Secondly, this resistance can be explained, beyond the Jacobin tradition inherited from the French Revolution (which was opposed to local powers), by influent and national interest groups (professional bodies, trade unions, national associations, members of the parliament). The latter would lose much of their capacity to negotiate with the State if some ministerial responsibilities were transferred to local authorities. Thirdly, the legal complexity of institutional arrangements that govern relationships between these different stakeholders would have to be undone and restructured. And even if some

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reforms are underway they take time and meet a lot of resistance from different professions.

 olicymaking from 1975 to 2001: The Cautious Move P to Equality of Outcomes Throughout a Soft Accountability System In France, the reform of the comprehensive school is often considered as a slow conquest by the Left, inspired by the Compagnons de l’Université Nouvelle [tr. The Companions of the New University], after the First World War, and then by the Langevin-Wallon plan, after the Second World War. It was followed by various legislative reforms to “democratize” the access to secondary education. But these official and scientific discourses often mask the influence of the OECD and the UK comprehensive school paradigm disseminated throughout the world (Pautler, 2018). After large and longitudinal surveys conducted by the INED (National Institute of Demographics) in the mid of 1950s, and the release of sociological surveys underlying the inequality gap between working class students and others, particularly those of Bourdieu and Passeron (1977, 1979), the time had come to abolish guidance streams, to limit selection, and to adopt a core curriculum (1975), as the UK education system had done a decade before. But while the Leftist government was backing off in the UK after the rise of neo-conservative thought and the adoption of the ‘back to basics’ motto, French policymakers, with Socialists accessing to power in 1981, continued their policy of ‘democratization’ and adopted a national priority education program that was abandoned abroad. As early as 1983, when the socialist and reformist left was facing “economic realities” and implementing a “policy of austerity”, the project of a “great reform of the public education service” annexing private education was abandoned, because of huge demonstrations by Catholic parents and rightist politicians. Jean-Pierre Chevènement, then Socialist Minister of Education, a fervent defender of secularism and social Republicanism, arranged a ‘school peace’ with Catholic schools’ representatives. However, the minister set a new stage in the democratizing school policy with a motto: “80% of the young generation who could access to the baccalaureate” (the obtention of the Baccalaureate at the end of French secondary education gives a direct access to universities without selection). In fact, the Ministry of Education’s first intent was to create technological and vocational baccalaureates to enlarge opportunities for working-class students often relegated into short-term vocational education tracks. But this policy was not understood by parents who continued to praise the access to general secondary education. Consequently, from 1984 onwards, secondary school enrolment increased sharply. It characterized a ‘second school explosion’ or “second wave of democratization” with no reduction in the inequality gap (Duru-Bellat & Kieffer, 2000).

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At that time, French policymakers did not yet fully grasp the impact of the economic crisis in the new era of globalization. They were still firmly committed, particularly at the Ministry of Education, to plan and adapt the training provision and guidance streams to meet employment requirements according to their planning vision. But the increasing number of students enrolled in the French education system led to additional costs and it required demographic forecasting. It explains why the Right, coming back to power in 1986, for a period of political cohabitation with the Left until 1988, created the Directorate of Evaluation and Forecasting (DEP: Direction de l’Evaluation et de la Prospective) at the Ministry of Education that began to develop regular statistics and data banks for better forecasting student flows and guidance within secondary education. Besides forecasting, evaluation had two objectives. The first was to institutionalize major surveys on student guidance and to gradually supplement data that measured inequality of access by national assessments at three schooling stages (third grade, sixth grade, tenth grade). Value-added indicators for high schools were added, while policymakers were worried by the emergence of school choice, but also by uncontrolled “league tables” in the press. The ministry wanted to stabilize a more ‘objective’ evaluation of inequalities of outcomes considering student social background. From a comparative perspective, the French Ministry of Education was simply joining the global movement of test-based accountability while borrowing recipes from the School Effectiveness Unit at the UK Department of Education. In fact, the DEP had been created after an international conference organized in Poitiers (a city in the West of France) by the French Ministry of Education, gathering policymakers and experts from the INES project, who were building OECD indicators in education and EUROSTAT lifelong learning statistics in the shadow of international surveys (Normand, 2010; Grek & Ydesen, 2021). However, it is only during the 1990s that the French Ministry of Education was eager to develop a ‘culture of evaluation’ (Thélot, 1993; Pons, 2020). For this, Claude Thélot, coming from the INSEE (National Institute of Economics and Statistics), was appointed head of the DEP. Then he played a key role in developing the French-style accountability system while he chaired the High Council for School Evaluation (Haut Conseil de l’Evaluation de l’Ecole: 2000–2003). Afterwards, the DEP regularly communicated school outcomes to the media, in controlling the publication of these school rankings. Reports were commissioned from expert groups to justify the need to develop accountability within the French education system and to participate in major international surveys and globalized accountability systems (Lingard et al., 2015). During these years, Reformers of the French comprehensive school were not considering ‘basic skills’. The ‘socle commun des connaissances, compétences et de culture commune’ [common core on knowledge, skills, and culture] was adopted only in 2005 through a compromise with trade unions (see below). Successive Ministers of Education, most of whom were socialists, created new laws and regulations to diversify teaching practices by curricular arrangements to fight against school failure. But this policy did not abandon student guidance (in limiting repetition, creating inter-schooling year cycles in primary education) and priority education programs. Finally, school organizations and their internal

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administration have hardly been modified. Despite successive reforms of teacher training they did not change teaching practices and student support. The main changes occurred after the declaration of the Lisbon Strategy (Duru-Bellat, 2001), as it is explained in the next section.

 fter 2001. Some Heterogeneous Policy Responses A to the Lisbon Strategy In 2005, the national basic skills framework was a milestone in the French education policy at the same time international surveys were becoming a benchmark for policy makers. These changes led to a major political and scientific mobilization in creating high councils and expert groups that legitimize a transnational turn as it is explained in the second part of this chapter. But beforehand, the path dependency that led French education policymakers to a composite arrangement, between nationalistic visions and European influences, must be clarified. First, they were major transformations in the national curriculum by a dedicated National Council (Haut Conseil de l’Education: 2005–2012) that translated the European key competencies framework while interest groups (inspectorate, experts in didactics, trade unions) were defending discipline-based school subjects and a certain ‘transmission of knowledge’. This epistemological stance, quite hostile to “learning to learn”, led French policymakers to link basic skills to guidance based on schooling cycles and pathways. Teachers were then required to diagnose and report student learning difficulties and progress without challenging their teaching practices. In France, the national curriculum is subjected to ideological struggles, and it is often the exclusive domain of the Minister of Education. The latter appoints chairs close to his/her ideology at the National Council of Curriculum. Similarly, although the Ministry had implemented national assessments at different schooling levels, they did not have much impact on teachers, who generally turned away from them in their teaching practices. In other words, the accountability policy had no major consequences in schools and classrooms. During president Sarkozy’s period in office (2007–2012), attempts were made to develop school choice, but it was resisted by trade unions but also by principals, while the policy was highly regulated with administrative priority criteria (twins, special needs, etc.). So, its impact was limited even if disadvantaged and ghettoized schools lose some of their best students. This school choice policy was then abandoned under the presidency of François Hollande (2012–2017). New Public Management principles had however been established with the 2001 LOLF Act (LOLF: Loi Organique relative aux Lois de Finances: this act restructured the regulation of public finances by imposing cost-benefit budgetary programs, indicators and targets designed by central authorities and implemented in all public administrations). But, during the 2000s, New Public Management hardly penetrated schools, and limited its influence on the ministerial technostructure. Neither did it challenge

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the bureaucratic governance within the French education system (Derouet & Normand, 2011). However, if decentralization remained limited as well as school market, accountability and New Public Management, French policy makers begun to align some of their policy programs on the European Open Method of Coordination and its indicators. First, under the socialist ministry Peillon (2012–2014) and his followers, while national guidance policy limited student retention, more attention was directed to school dropouts and early school leaving. Then, a national strategy for literacy and numeracy was implemented to complement with the basic skills policy, and to improve France in the PISA ranking. National assessments were put at the core of policymaking under the supervision of the newly created CNESCO (National Council for the Evaluation of the School System). A national strategy was also adopted to develop digital tools and skills. The aim was also to better include special needs students in schools. Following the OECD recommendations, the reform of teacher training colleges aimed at changing teaching practices and improving their quality. In parallel, while the minister Peillon was claiming for the “refoundation of the school system” that would reawaken the Republican heritage, he launched an ambitious program for reforming school time schedules. The objective was to reduce student workload and to develop cultural, artistic and sport activities in primary education. This reform was resisted and diverted by local authorities for budgetary reasons while trade unions wanted to maintain the status quo. Social mixing was also experimented within disadvantaged schools on a voluntary basis in municipalities. But locally elected officials were mainly reluctant to this national experiment and it met scaling-up difficulties. A proactive policy program did promote school climate and student well-being in the wave of French school effectiveness research that had proved that schools could “make differences” (Duru-Bellat, 2015; Debarbieux, 2015). The following Blanquer ministry, in the Macron government (2017–2022), broke with the former policy on school time schedules but it maintained the same focus on student guidance, basic-skills, national assessments and school climate. However, this new policy was more influenced by economists and neuroscientists in developing programs to reduce class sizes in disadvantaged elementary schools, disseminating evidence-based education and neuroscience research findings. For this, a National Scientific Council was created and a National Council of School Evaluation replaced the CNESCO.  The minister’s neo-liberal but republican vision led to implement boarding schools that diversified school provision and recruited talented working-class students. “Educative cities” were also created to sustain innovations and Private-Public-Partnerships under an excellence label. Quite different from US charter schools or UK trust schools, this type of public schools was an ambiguous response to inequality of opportunities experienced by students in deprived areas. Indeed, it did not challenge selective streams to colleges (grandes écoles) that characterize the French meritocracy and its dual system in higher education. The Ministry of Education was also committed to a major reform in human resources management to transform the civil service according to New Public Management principles. Bodies of inspection were merged into a single body, a status of school

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principal was created in primary education, a ministerial directorate of executives was created within the ministerial technostructure to change middle and bottom management in regions and districts, the initial and continuous training of principals and inspectors was revised to include more managerialist perspectives. This neo-liberal and managerialist vision challenging the French comprehensive school system comes with a neo-conservative and republican policy agenda. When he arrived at power, the minister Blanquer addressed criticism to pedagogical activists close to the Left (accused of pedagogism). Later he accused social sciences of “woke thoughts” while he was reaffirming republican principles and advocating for secularism against “multiculturalism”, “communitarianism” and “social separatism”. This ideological stance led to the creation of an Elder Council on Secularism (2018) and the implementation of specific educative programs, with the support of Leftist policymakers, and local “republican squads” to promote and defend secularism within schools. The minister organized also a “scientific” conference against the “cancel culture” at the University La Sorbonne (2021). It came in the context of Islamic attacks in France (notably the assassination of an history teacher, Samuel Paty) which troubled public opinion. But it corresponds also to the emergence of New Right and neo-conservative discourses lamenting the weakening of the State authority, affirming a national identity through a less open republicanism, in a time the extreme right was practicing nationalist outbid against immigration, globalization and Europeanization. This led to strengthening the control on private schools (particularly Muslim ones) and home schooling, under a new act against “social separatism” voted by the parliament. This comes throughout a public debate about “national identity” while some French policy makers assert a certain ‘nationalism’ by claiming the heritage of the Enlightenment and universalistic principles, and reaffirming the tradition of republican citizenship against all types of communitarianism. This kind of “nationalism” is however quite different from the vision promoted by the extreme-Right that was historically xenophobe, racist, and antisemitic against which all Republican reformists fought in the past. But it is true that this political pressure has led the reformist Left and Right to put more emphasis on citizenship and secularism in education, as shown by the minister’s willingness to put the national flag back in classrooms, to make students singing the national anthem, or to fight against inclusive writing. At the end, by analyzing French education policy in depth, it is possible to show convergences but also divergences with the European Strategy and the Open Method of Coordination defined after the Lisbon summit. France, while seeking to be a good European student, has constantly adopted a mix between its increasingly and consistent implementation of basic skills and accountability mechanisms, in following the OECD recommendations, and its republican vision. According to the European Commission new strategy for building a European education area by 2025, French education policy-makers have been committed to achieving European objectives: early childhood education, guidance policy limiting drop-outs and enabling disadvantaged students to reach the end of secondary education with a better inclusion into higher education, improvement of student basic skills in the light of the PISA results, inclusive education policy and the fight against gender inequalities, quality

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improvement in developing a school self-evaluation framework, foreign languages and multilingualism programs, fight against bullying focused on student well-being, ecological and digital transition in education, teaching profession and initial training, mobility of teachers and students through Erasmus programs. However, reforms reveal mechanisms that filter European recommendations in relation to national issues hotly contested in the public debate. This is the case for innovation in teaching practices based on new learning approaches or interdisciplinary skills to which some interest groups are opposed. Similarly, some notions of creativity, entrepreneurship, leadership and soft skills appear associated with neo-­ liberalism and managerialism. They are rejected by policymakers and middle bureaucrats who seek to maintain their corporatist privileges and Republican vision in the shadow of the State bureaucracy. The idea of continuous professional development also clashes with top-down training plans that are heavily controlled by those interest groups competing with each other for getting resources and advantages within the ministerial technostructure. The implementation of a digital action plan for education has itself encountered limitations. Firstly, because policy responsibilities are shared between the State (recruiting and training teachers) and local authorities (buying equipment and maintaining it). Secondly, the bureaucratic and top-down vision prevailed over pragmatism in implementing the national digital plan, as the COVID-19 crisis perfectly illustrated. Teachers were left to their own without resources or support. They had hastily to invent new pedagogical solutions with obsolete equipment. The Ministry had created a kind of ‘start-up service’ at the Ministry to promote digital innovation in schools, along with educational third places that could provide coordination and local mediation. But they did not exert much impact on schools. The ministry itself was mainly concerned with the production and protection of data. Pedagogical uses have not been much considered. The plan has been more a declaration of intent than a policy restructuring the school organization. The maintenance of the comprehensive school bureaucratic structure (one teacher/one classroom/one time slot) has not helped to transform teaching practices which remain mainly individualistic. The use of data, particularly for assessment purposes, leads teachers and principals to draw up diagnoses and to fill in reporting forms with no real impact on teaching and learning situations.

 Transnational Turn in French Policymaking Buffered A by National Intermediary Actors As we have seen in previous sections, the alignment of French policy with the Lisbon Strategy has been gradual, without abandoning the republican project focused on equal opportunities while maintaining a nationalistic and republican vision on education. The transnational and European turn is therefore relatively invisible in the French public and media space. Indeed, some trends are related to

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the ‘global reform movement’ but they are hardly put forward by policy makers or experts themselves (Sahlberg, 2016). That is why the second part of this chapter explores some buffering and framing mechanisms characterizing the implementation of the Lisbon Strategy and OECD recommendations within the French education system. It demonstrates the role of national high councils, working groups and experts, as well as parallel visible or shadow networks that influence French policymaking. In a centralized education system, where local authorities have limited powers, national interest groups are influent. Beyond traditional political parties, associations involved in education issues, some foundations, philanthropic associations and even think tanks are emerging in the public arena. But they still have little influence on policymaking, which remains largely subject to corporatist interests within the Ministry of Education technostructure (professional lobbies and trade unions). It explains why reformers need to mobilize allies to legitimize their decisions as well as expertise or governing sciences that depoliticize the public debate and circumvent some opponents.

 eformist Networks and Intermediate Actors Translating R the European Strategy French reformist networks in education, influenced by the transnational turn of education policies, reveal associations and relationships that can be mapped as spaces of interest (Fenwick, 2011). As Michel Callon and John Law explain, interest is the set of actions by which an entity strives to mobilize actors that have been identified to fit into its logic (Callon & Law, 1982; Desrosières, 1998). Interest is based on a common interpretation of what these enlisted and associated actors want together. The space of interest can be public and accessible to stakeholders or lay people as a publicising process. Or it can be limited in scope and includes only a few actors (containment). It can give rise to formal associations between entities (under the authority of an institution such as a ministry of education) or non-formal associations (a voluntary association, more opportunistic and flexible). Expert knowledge produced by these spaces of interest can be directed to policymakers (for example in reformist statements or reports) as well as data or instruments can frame and rationalize policymaking (for example national assessments or surveys). From this distinction, four spaces of interests are characterized below:

Publicicing process Containment

Formal association Forum of public policy Calculative centre

Non-formal Association Arena of expertise Invisible college

A calculative centre is a hybrid and collective agency equipped with instruments with the capacity to produce large scale metrics and data. The latter are formalized throughout survey procedures, then processed and analysed in different written or

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media supports. While policymaking requires the mobilization of allies and networks, educational reforms have also to rely on facts and statements established by science and expertise. Policy studies have shown how some epistemic communities or expert groups gives legitimacy to political discourses through knowledge production (Dunlop, 2009). Metrics also reveal inscriptions that involve specific intellectual and technical operations (Latour & Steve, 1979). These inscriptions are sent to a central agency where they are classified, transformed, and cross-checked and then capitalized. This is the role of calculative centres that equates these heterogeneous inscriptions with expert knowledge for policymaking (Gorur, 2011a, b). The DEPP (The MoE’s Directorate of Evaluation, Forecasting, and Performance) is a main calculative centre, a monopolized statistical knowledge for which complex metrics are developed from national assessments and international surveys. It is connected to other international and national calculative centres (internationally OECD, EUROSTAT). It empowers human capital economists and school effectiveness researchers, and it is very active in developing and using national statistics and assessments, providing the ministry with different data on student repetition, class size, school effectiveness, equity, and efficiency. The DEPP has participated in different public policy forums and arenas of expertise, and legitimized the policy movement to the PISA paradigm in the French education system.

 ublic Policy Forums Legitimizing OECD/EU Indicators P and International Surveys The public policy forum corresponds to an institutionalized space, governed by specific rules and dynamics, in which actors have open discussions and produce recommendations or reports that legitimize policymaking. A public policy forum institutionalizes the debate on reforms. It is used strategically by policy makers to set up policy agendas and to build a compromise with different stakeholders. An important public policy forum was the Great Debate on the future of the school system (2003–2004) organized by Claude Thélot, former head of the DEPP (1990–1998) and chair of the High Council for School Evaluation (2000–2003). This great debate, desired by the right-wing ministers Luc Ferry and Xavier Darcos, led to publish a national report that prepared the 2005 basic skills framework Act (Thélot, 2004). This national report, although presented by Thélot as “legitimate and democratic”, relied heavily on specific expert knowledge and research findings, namely those of human capital economists, school effectiveness research and major international surveys such as TIMSS and PISA. These sub-reports helped to justify a better connexion between the national curriculum, basic skills and national assessments and justified more accountability pressure on schools. Another public policy forum is related to three national conferences organized under the French presidency of Europe. The first one was held on November 6–7, 2008, at the National College for School Administration (Ecole Supérieure de

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l’Education Nationale), a department at the Ministry of Education. The conference was entitled “Governance and performance of schools in Europe”. It brought together European policy makers and international experts from the OECD and the European Commission. The conference concluded that schools need to get more autonomy and responsibility by developing evaluation, school leadership and local governance. The second European conference on November 13–14, 2008, gave the opportunity to justify regular and objective evaluation of reforms conducted in Europe with appropriate indicators. The French ministers of education and Higher Education were attending the meeting, with the head of the Directorate General for Education and Culture (European Commission). The conclusions claimed for a better use of available data from international surveys and national assessments. The same year, the General Inspectorate Seminar, under the French Presidency of Europe and the SICI (Standing International Conference of Inspectors in Education) brought together European inspectors and MoE officials to develop reflections on school evaluation. Later, the CNESCO (Centre National d’Evaluation du Système Scolaire: National Centre for the Evaluation of the School System), under the ministry Peillon, was another public policy forum that played an important role. It supported the MoE and operated as a platform by capitalizing and disseminating national and international research findings. Chaired by the sociologist Nathalie Mons, who had led the conference entitled “Re-founding the school system” (2012) with the minister, the CNESCO helped to prepare the minister’s new policy agenda. Introducing itself as an “independent and non-partisan centre”, the CNESCO produced numerous reports to support the current education policy on various topics: literacy and numeracy, guidance, teacher training, digital technologies, etc. In conjunction with the Ministry, it organized several international conferences and “consensus meetings”, inviting stakeholders, experts, and policymakers to promote a post-basic-skills reformist agenda. This was also an opportunity, beyond published reports, to promote PISA and TIMSS surveys to a wide audience (Bodin et al., 2016).

Arenas of National Expertise Buffering International Influences The arena of expertise is a networking space in which policymakers and experts meet to produce reformist statements that influence policymaking, They frame problems, and then define solutions shared with a larger audience. Alongside public policy forums and calculative centres, different arenas of expertise bring together policymakers and experts on a narrow scope to formulate policy statements and disseminate them. They together organize the public debate and raise some “hot” issues in meetings and journals to influence or justify the current policy agenda in gathering expert knowledge in the shadow of the ministerial technostructure. The AFAE (Association Française des Acteurs de l’Education: French Association of Education Actors), brings together French executives and senior civil servants for meetings and debates that confront their reformist visions. The

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association is largely managed by current or retired high rank civil servants who have held positions at the ministers’ cabinet, or in ministerial directorates, high councils, or as superintendent or general inspector. It provides a meeting place for those who want to reach the top in the ministry hierarchy through informal co-­ optation. They can also take advantage of a “revolving door” system that redistributes responsibilities and powers after a new minister is appointed. Thanks to its influential journal among professionals, and regular conferences coupled with thematic workshops, the association legitimizes ideological visions and reformist statements on the curriculum, citizenship, guidance, teaching, professions that disqualify alternative discourses. Another arena of expertise is the CIEP or Centre International d’Etudes Pédagogiques (International Centre of Pedagogical Studies) which changed its name recently in France Education International. Under the dual supervision of the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, it is a platform which defends and promotes the French-speaking world: French culture and language, exchanges, and cooperation with French-speaking or Francophile countries, organization of major European and international conferences by the Ministry of Education, linguistic programs. In short, an instrument of the French soft power. France Education international has a journal, La Revue internationale de Sèvres (Sèvres is the city close to Paris hosting the institution). The journal aims to develop thematic analyses on education about France and the rest of the world. One of the latest publications of the Sèvres journal was devoted to education reforms after a symposium held on June 12–14 of 2019 (De Ketele, 2020). The meeting, attended by the minister Jean-Michel Blanquer, had been placed under the patronage of the Ministry of Education. The aim was to discuss and identify main factors and conditions for successful policymaking. The symposium defines priority criteria in decision-making and in steering the education system but there were also exchanges about relevant information and data management. The organizing committee included OECD experts and French policy makers as well as the General Inspectorate members who reflect on ways to improve the efficiency and quality of the French education system. The minister Jean-Michel Blanquer justified the use of OECD international surveys as well as experimental evaluations led by economists that he considered as the “pragmatic” dimension of public policymaking. Just before, in 2018, the minister had created the Conseil Scientifique de l’Education Nationale (Scientifique Council of National Education), chaired by Stanilas Dehane, a neuroscientist close to him. The mission of this Scientific Council is to disseminate experimental research findings and international comparisons available to all; to issue recommendations that would enrich teacher initial and continuous training; to evaluate existing pedagogical tools and to propose new ones based on evidence; to disseminate a “true” research culture throughout the education system; and finally, to set up an ecosystem of applied research in education. The board includes school effectiveness researchers, experts in indicators and international surveys, human capital economists, and cognitive psychologists and neuroscientists. The Scientific Council defends a positivist epistemology, strongly inspired by evidence-based and “what works” research, taking the UK Endowment

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Education Foundation as a reference, with the idea of strengthening the scientific accuracy of national assessments and applying “best practices” from international research. This scientific council directly serves the minister’s policy. As a complement, the School Evaluation Council (Conseil de l’Evaluation de l’Ecole), chaired by Beatrice Gilles, a former superintendent appointed by the minister, aims to better institutionalize accountability at the core of the education system by developing school self-­ evaluation with audits by inspection, and ensuring better cohesion between national and international assessments. In addition to personalities coming from the civil society and politics, the council board includes experts from the OECD and UNESCO, the heads of the DEPP and Directorate of Schools, and the chief-­inspector at the MoE.

I nvisible Colleges Promoting a “French Third Way” Policy Agenda So far, we have presented the most public and accessible spaces of interest, which are often based on public discourses as well as writings in journals and semi-official documents. The framing of the reformist policy agenda, where left-wing and right-­ wing political networks cohabit, gives also place to “invisible colleges”. The invisible college gathers a limited number of experts and policymakers who meet informally to work together to produce expert knowledge and to influence policymaking in the shadow of public opinion and the media. There, expertise remains largely confined and people meetings are based on their personal links and ideological affinities. Beside think tanks as Terra Nova (socio-democrat Left) and the Montaigne Institute (conservative and liberal Right), these invisible colleges are behind the scenes of policymaking. So, they are more difficult to locate and study. The Collège des Bernardins, funded by a Catholic foundation, is an example of these invisible colleges. It presents itself as “a space of freedom that invites people to cross their views to understand the world and build a future that respects mankind”. Academics, theologians, and field workers meet at the foundation to provide concrete answers to contemporary problems. Fundamental questions are submitted to the combined “Light of Reason” and “Christian revelation”. Bernard Hugonnier, former expert at the OECD, was at that time co-leading the foundation. He was also professor at the Paris Catholic Institute, and adviser at the Institut Montaigne where he was leading the “school failure” working group. From this position, he organized two seminars titled “School Efficiency: A Stake in Justice and Competitiveness” (2012–2013) and “School and Republic seminar” (2014–2016). Discussions, bringing together national experts and policy makers, were focused on education reforms that could improve equal opportunities and enhance the education system efficiency. Beyond contributions mixing representatives from the Catholic and secular worlds (this kind of meetings are very rare due to the 1905 Act

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separating the Church and the State in French education), it was concluded that national and international surveys prove the deepening of school inequalities. So, a new system should be built on performance-based indicators, to set new reformist objectives such as local autonomy, restructuring the teaching profession, and developing digital technologies. During these exchanges, the PISA paradigm was widely promoted by former heads of the DEPP, international experts close to the OECD, but also two sociologists calling for the development of accountability and advocating a basic skills policy to fight against drop-outs. One representative from the McKinsey consulting group proposed to draw inspiration from the most successful systems to lead change by defining clear objectives and relevant indicators. Jean-Michel Blanquer, not yet Minister of Education but head of the Ministry’s Directorate of Schools, discussed with international experts about the worrying situation of the French education system and the need to develop accountability mechanisms to improve performance.

 olicy Studies on the International Turn in France: P Limitations and Grey Areas In previous sections, we drew inspiration from Actor-Network-Theory to analyse the transnational turn of French education policymaking, particularly in its reception of the PISA survey and implementation of basic-skills accountability. We showed that the French powerful centralized state and its intermediary actors tend to buffer some neo-liberal policy borrowing and lending effects, in hybridizing European and international standards into a national manufacture. This perspective runs against arguments assumed by some French speaking policy studies. First, the idea of sharing the same linguistic essence to establish a comparison between French-speaking countries is not sufficient (France, Belgium, Quebec) (Maroy & Pons, 2021). This homology is irrelevant considering different degrees of decentralization and autonomy, the place of bilingualism, cultural and religious differences, and the State technostructure in each country. From this point of view, Quebec, with its accountability system in a multicultural society and its local governance at district level, is quite different from France with its corporatist, centralized, top-down, and bureaucratic State. French-speaking Belgium is engaged in political and cultural wars with the Flemish part of the country/ Its pillarized society where different linguistic, religious, and ideological camps are confronting each other. It is searching for a national political unity but it develops market and school choice, as the opposite of France. It suggests more differences than similarities in policymaking within each country. Moreover, limiting the reception of the PISA survey to its publicization and mediatization, current policy studies on the French case consider only one type of expertise produced by the Ministry calculative centre: the Direction de l’Evaluation, de la Prospective et de la Performance (DEPP). In fact, it enshrines a technocratic

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expertise for decision-making, forgetting diverse types of expertise and modes of knowledge which, as Claudio Radaelli and Claire Dunlop have shown, are based on different learning and socializing processes (Dunlop & Radaelli, 2013). Moreover, the PISA controversy is reduced to its publicizing issue, while conditions for getting out expertise from its containment are not considered (Pons, 2012, Dobbins & Martens, 2012; Mons & Pons, 2013,) Indeed, defining and framing a public problem, if it leads to collective mobilizations, also reveals moral entrepreneurs or spokespersons, such as policymakers or experts, before the emergence of structured conflicts between interest groups. Moreover, these policy studies are relatively disembodied when they reduce public action to some visible entities (the Ministry, the DEPP, etc.), which make invisible other spaces of interests within state structures and institutions, such as invisible and unformal colleges or networks, characterizing a State Nobility according to Pierre Bourdieu’s theory (Bourdieu, 1998). This bias also hinders the possibility of better understanding the internal and technocratic division of labour as well as interpersonal links that shape education policymaking in France. Thus, these French-speaking policy studies analyse policymaking almost without actors through an implementation gap or a soft institutionalism. The latter is in line with the vision endorsed by policymakers to whom they are often close, rather than critically and reflectively exploring the extent of their relationships but also their shared tacit knowledge. In doing so, these studies also make invisible some investments of form that shape policymaking whereas they are focused essentially on its impact (Thévenot, 1984). They avoid questioning the costly setting of a stable relationship, for a certain duration, as an investment in governing tools (in national assessments or in the PISA survey) whose outcomes depends on previous cognitive categories and conventions developed by some people beforehand. Indeed, categorizations and classifications, tests, and items as a cognitive or instrumental infrastructure must be considered in the study of policymaking (Gorur, 2017; Thévenot, 2019). This means, as Alain Desrosières (1998) wrote, drawing and historicizing sequences of public policy, through several chronologically bounded tables, and problematizing simultaneously thoughts about education and society, modalities of action within them, and different modes of description, notably statistical, that requires an history of the present (Popkewitz, 2013; Normand, 2020b, 2021).

Conclusion In France, the transnational turn of education policymaking is made invisible by a methodological nationalism mainly focused on analysing inequalities at national level and maintaining a republican imaginary. These representations are also embedded in a vision of the curriculum and citizenship inherited from the Enlightenment. This explains the hyper dominance of discourses on equality related to the PISA survey based on a neo-republican story-telling shared by the new Left and the new

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Right. Some sociologists themselves have largely served this narrative to euphemize policy-borrowing and lending and the PISA effects in the French context. The Nation-State is also viewed as the organizing and modernizing principle in education. Modernization is assimilated, according to this great storytelling, to a specific French trajectory, or even sometimes to the return to the Republican school founding principles, since a patrimonial feature also feeds these public discourses. In this vein, the authority of science, and above all, data, must help to reach universalistic ends through a triumphant Reason. It is advocated against the idea of multiple identities and cultures that would lead, for Republicans, to social separatism and communitarianism, the great enemies of the Republic. The idea of progress is at the heart of this great storytelling, while politicians and journalists alike, in perfect alignment with some public philosophers, consider education to be a self-­ evident national community of citizens that calls for a shared national interest named “republican fraternity”. Another feature of this republican imaginary is the education system would be organized into a hierarchical chain of command with a powerful minister. Educators are then considered as subjected to top-down hierarchical lines from ministerial directorates to schools. Inherited from the Ancient Regime and royal institutions, as well as from the Napoleonic regime, this hierarchical structure consecrates an authoritarian representation of power relationships. Moreover, bureaucratic standardization and codification by the law remains at stake and maintains a tight control even if it is quite ineffective as it has been proved during the pandemic crisis. But this authoritarian dimension must be fully considered to explain the French epistemic governance of education. Indeed, as Pertti Alassutari and Ali Qadir demonstrate, authority is not only hierarchical (Alasuutari & Qadir, 2014). By constructing, using, and combining different types of authority and capital, some actors in French education policymaking can influence others according to different “assets” that legitimize a certain state of knowledge but also norms, values, and social imaginaries. Thus, authority corresponds to an individual or a political institution that is trusted because it is respected and obeyed, as an expert, a legislative text, or a decree. This authority embodied by moral entrepreneurs and spokespersons shape political discourses with the capacity to influence or persuade large audiences. In the French context where some intermediary groups are very active, notably with a strong capacity to mobilize trade unions, these different types of authority strongly influence French policymaking and politics in education.

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Chapter 7

Changing School Policies in Italy: From Welfare Equity Model to the New Public Management Instrumentations Paolo Landri

Abstract  By drawing on a socio-material perspective, the chapter describes the processes of alignment of school policies in Italy to transnational regimes. It is argued that the key passage in the complex transformation of the Italian system in the latest 20 years is given by the policy of school autonomy implemented at the beginning of the Millennium. School autonomy changed the direction of education policy of this country from the Welfare Equity model to the logic of New Public Management (NPM). Through a detailed historical reconstruction and several empirical findings from a long research program on school governance, the chapter illustrates that this shift develops under the ‘magister of influence’ of OECD and EU and gives rise to a nuanced NPM assemblage where centralism and bureaucracy live with the policy instrumentations of school improvement and effectiveness (large scale assessment surveys) and the digital governance of education. This assemblage shares a neo-liberal orientation, is supported by a wide bipartisan consensus, and marginalizes or tries to subsume pedagogical activism and professional cultures that were fundamental to the affirmation of the Welfare Equity model in the period of national reconstruction after the Post World War II.  These dynamics underline how movements between waves of standardization of education involve far from linear changing relationships between state (s), the professions, and the science of education. Keywords  Socio-material perspective · New public management · School governance · Standardization of education

P. Landri (*) Institute of Research on Population and Social Policies (CNR IRPPS), Rome, Italy e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. B. Krejsler, L. Moos (eds.), School Policy Reform in Europe, Educational Governance Research 22, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-35434-2_7

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Introduction This chapter analyses the changing directions of school policies in Italy in the latest two decades. It will illustrate the increasing involvement of its national education policy-making in transnational scenarios of standardization. School policies in Italy have been increasingly affected by European discourses, technologies, and policies since the end of the 1990s leading to a re-culturing of the education system (Grimaldi et al., 2016). Initially oriented in a welfare regime, school policies in that country have been interested in 20  years by many reforms or attempts at reforming their basic infrastructure, inspired by New Public Management and associated circuits of knowledge provoking a reconfiguration of the educational policy-making arena. Beyond the surface, the re-orientation with the transnational regimes reveals heterogeneous engineering of discourses, technologies, and competencies that leads to a temporary equilibrium and the silencing, or the putting in the background, of alternative policy knowledge. (Grimaldi, 2010; Landri, 2009, 2014, 2019; Serpieri, 2009). To grasp the complexity of this re-orientation, the chapter will draw on a socio-­ material perspective (Fenwick & Edwards, 2010, 2019; Landri, 2022) that is aimed at understanding how waves of standardization change the relationships between the state (s), the professions, and the science in the field of education. By problematizing the functionalist approach, this view is not interested in a better refinement of education standards but in analyzing how they are constructed, stabilized, and eventually discarded. This approach illustrates how they are contested multiplicities, work and coordinate activities at a distance, and can be entangled in diverse political arenas. Through this lens, standards are not matters of fact but matters of concern. The historical character of standardization is at the forefront, the way it captured a field of practice and the current alternative possibilities. Empirically, the chapter draws on an extended research program on the changing governance of education in Italy (Benadusi & Consoli, 2004; Grimaldi et al., 2011; Landri, 2000, 2004, 2018; Serpieri, 2008, 2012; Taglietti et al., 2021). This program provides ‘histories of the present’ by assuming a critical perspective that shows the dilemma, the paradoxes, and the effects of the dominant epistemologies. Such investigations were realized from the margins, in small projects, often in relation to a situated demand of producing local knowledge to give a sense of the current dynamics of educational policy-making. In the following, I will first introduce the characteristics of the Italian education system as they emerge from the post-war developments to the crisis of the welfare season. Secondly, I will pay attention to how the alignment to the transnational regime translated into new policy instrumentations made by the large-scale assessment testing and the digital governance of education. Finally, I will conclude by discussing how the current configuration of the governance of education in Italy is characterized in terms of a nuanced NPM re-assemblage in which the institutional legacy lives with the dominant epistemologies in policy knowledge.

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 Point of Departure: A Centralist, Bureaucratic, and Elitist A Model of Schooling After the Second War World, Italy was a nation to be rebuilt (Grimaldi & Serpieri, 2011). The 20-year Fascism regime left the country with an authoritarian state. The country was socially and economically divided into the advantaged regions of the North and disadvantaged region of the South (‘Mezzogiorno’). The Marshall Plan was very important in supporting the economy and paved the way for the economic miracle of the 1950s and 1960s. Italian governments followed Keynesian policies and developed the Southern European model of welfare in common with Greece, Portugal and Spain, whose traits are: (1) high fragmentation and polarization of income maintenance system (2) a weak universalism of the public services with the presence of private actors in social policies and (3) particularism and clientelism, i.e. a high vulnerability to manipulation and pressures of public institutions (Ferrera, 1996). In this scenario, the state confirmed its role as a central integrating force within society: its Napoleonic heritage in nation-building. Education had an essential role in this process, albeit it was a contested site between liberals and social democrats with opposite visions about the state’s role in education. While this contrast is common in other European countries, the specificities of Italy concern, however, two aspects: (a) the importance of the Catholic Church, which still exerts a relevant role in education policy-making through its highly influential system of private schools, supporting more the liberals, and in the contemporary age, neoliberal policy solutions (vouchers, private funding to school from the state, quasi-market regime, etc.); (b) the idealistic legacy that was shaped by the most important Italian education reforms, the Gentile Reform of the Fascist regime still influencing the school architecture and the educational debate, enclosed often in the dualism between culture and labour, education and vocational training, humanism and science. The highly selective school of Fascism was difficult to dismantle. The school was seen as a privileged locus for the elite. The Italian Constitution adheres rhetorically to social democratic values; in practice, the idealistic position was still strong both among the liberals and the social democrats, sharing a passionate defense of the elite-shaping role of education and of the role of ‘high culture’ threatened by the risk of the mass education. In that configuration, the governance of the education system was highly bureaucratic and centralistic. The Ministry of Public Instruction was the centre of the system. It was its core financially, operationally, and in terms of human management. Headteachers, teachers, and administrative staff were (and still are) directly linked with it. The Ministry had some peripheral offices (‘Provveditorati’) that made operational decisions taken nationally. A complex regulation concerning, in particular, the inputs of the education system were assumed to be applied uniformly in the country and granted wide professional freedom to the teacher in their professional agency (‘libertà di insegnamento’ is a constitutional pillar).

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The education system inherited from the Fascist regime remained the same until the 1960s. It envisaged three levels: primary (6–10), lower secondary school (11–13), and upper secondary school (14–18). The school was compulsory until 14. Students had to choose after primary school whether to choose handicraft or vocational tracks to enter low-income jobs or low secondary school to have further possibilities. Further tracking occurred with the shift to the upper secondary school, where students had to choose among four hierarchical ordered choices: (1) the Classical Lyceum, the most prestigious intended for the ruling class with the courses on Latin and Greek, (2) the Scientific Lyceum, less prestigious, by considering the status attributed to science; (3) Technical School, focused on applied knowledge and (4) the Secondary School specialized in teaching (‘Scuola Magistrale’), and mostly attended by women. In 1962 the tri-partite system of the lower secondary school was abolished, unified and made compulsory (‘Scuola Media Unica’). It was also the beginning of the season of the welfare reforms sustained by many experimentations enacted by several teachers and masters (Don Milani, Mario Lodi, Bruno Ciari, Alberto Manzi, Danilo Dolci, etc.), mixing pedagogy, activism, and research. The work of these masters was essential to provide the missing pedagogy for the new low secondary school and try to change the teaching in the primary schools. In the 1960s, the accelerated economic growth had opened the migration scenario toward the more industrial North: in the affluent regions, schools became more and more heterogeneous, and the Italian school architecture’s limits were clearer. The expansion of schooling revealed new educational needs, notably in teaching language, and the experimentations of these masters were, therefore, essential to make the Italian school more inclusive (Roghi, 2022). These experiences were influenced by the pedagogical activism of Dewey, who became a crucial reference in Italy, Freinet’s educational proposal, and later Gramsci’s thought. For the first time, the professional voices supporting the democratization of education and the introduction of new methodologies of teaching and learning were heard and started a debate on how to intervene in reforming upper secondary school. The 1968 global movement of students and progressive teachers amplified the winds of change. A claim emerged for a more equitable education system with the expansion of compulsory education, the development of an early childhood education system, and a reconfiguration of the hierarchical system of the upper secondary school to activate Gramsci’s idea of a unified intellectual and technical school. At the same time, the movement assumed a radical perspective against schools and any type of disciplinary institutions (prisons, asylum, etc.). The reformist approach proposing an incremental approach to school change appeared from the point of view of the movement as ineffective. The first government reaction was then authoritarian and repressive. Nonetheless, the vast mobilization of teachers, headteachers, schools, public intellectuals, and professional associations led to school governance reform (‘Decreti Delegati 1974’). Schools were designed as participatory spaces where parents, students, and teachers may have a say and collaborate in the process of

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education. School bodies were opened to participation and started a time of intensification of school life. Soon, it became more evident that the governance of the system was left untouched, and the opened spaces of participation appeared less important than was first initially imagined. At the end of the 1970s, the push to change was exhausted. The instability of the government and the conflicts between different positions left space only for small changes in the curriculum, administrative reforms and pilot programs in upper secondary schools. The dualism between theory and practice, abstract and applied knowledge diminished, new methodologies contributed to making the curriculum and teaching more structured in terms of objectives and outcomes, and a gradual shift toward the interdisciplinarity seemed to change the working of the Italian education system partly because of the increasing influence of the discourse of the knowledge economy conveyed by transnational organizations, like the OECD. However, a complete reform of the upper secondary school never occurred. The welfare season concluded with the reform of the primary school at the beginning of the 1990s, which was largely inspired by the principles and the experimentations made possible by ‘Decreti Delegati’. Drawing on Bruner and Piaget’s constructivism, it proposed the idea of education as a cooperative research process and tried to generalize collective teaching methods in challenging traditional settings. Here, the successful experiences of ‘Tempo Pieno’, an all-day school, were extended for proposing collaborative teaching and interdisciplinarity as structuring principles of the school organization. Even if it is not easy to take stock of this long and complex period, it is possible to conclude that the nation’s rebuilding process through education after the Second World War ended with a partial achievement of the objective of a more equitable and less polarized society. Participation in education developed significantly in 40 years, and there was an increase in educational degrees at all levels of education. Illiteracy is reduced to a meagre percentage. Primary and lower secondary education spread significantly, and successes were realized in improving this level of education in terms of quality and equity. It supported the population’s social mobility, notably those previously excluded from this possibility. Nonetheless, the elitist character of the system was far from being changed, and school continued to be a means for the social reproduction of the elite and the middle class. By considering the European benchmarks, Italy shares the status of low performer’ with the other countries of the southern welfare model (Spain, Portugal and Greece). Educational performances kept reproducing territorial inequalities that largely overlapped with the unresolved North-South issue. Even the experimentations of the school masters could not translate into new everyday school practices. They diffused partly in primary school without changing the overall architecture of the education system. From the end of the Second World War to the end of the welfare season, the horizon of the Italian education system has been mainly the nation-state rebuilding. The state has oriented its policies to allow an ordered development of mass schooling. The political scenario of standardization of education is interested primarily in the input and the process of education practice. The socio-materiality of governance

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draws on analogue policy instrumentations: it emerges in concatenations between paper technologies (books, documents, circulars, etc.), disciplinary knowledge (like law, pedagogy, psychology), and professional knowledge. A turning point in that history is the general reform of the state with Law 59/1997 (‘Legge Bassanini’). Following a set of unsuccessful attempts, this law originated from the process of harmonization of public administration in the EU. The principle of autonomy introduced by the law is a challenge to centralism and to the bureaucratic character of the education system. It gives a role to local authorities, and in particular, to Regions in educational policy-making and leads to a complex configuration of power and competencies between the state and the Regions. The emerging setting has triggered more than controversy and diverse interpretations about the possible developments in terms of effective federalism.1 The principle also promotes the idea of the school as an autonomous organization with substantial room in financial, management and educational matters by replacing the centralism of the educational bureaucracy with the principles of self-regulation and site-based management. In the case of Italy, however, it implied a strategy of de-concentration of the state through the delegation of tasks and responsibility to the school and local authorities rather than a complete decentralization that would have meant more profound transformations of the configuration of the state. Nevertheless, as I will illustrate in the next section, the policy of school autonomy has been a vehicle for a re-culturing of Italian education and the alignment to NPM.

 he Transnational Alignment of Italian School: New T Policy Instrumentations The process of re-culturing of Italian education that occurred in the latest 20 years can be seen as a complex re-assemblage of educational standards in the transnational regime. The education system is increasingly aligned with what comes to be defined in the transnational arena as the best condition for the education practice. In this process, the socio-materiality of education governance changes gradually. The repertoire of input standards is displaced by new policy instrumentations more oriented toward educational performances. The alignment with NPM provoked a short and intense period of writing normative texts intended to translate the idea of ‘school autonomy’ into practice. It regarded the rationale of school autonomy (DPR 275/99), school management (DPR 59/98), the role of local government in the education field, the reform of state government, and so on. Here, the discourses were framed by the organization’s  Here, it has not surprisingly fed the claims of Lega to take more control in the field of education, but it has also pushed the Centre-Left to think in terms of a collaborative regionalism that does not undermine the integration of the system while fostering the democratic participation to the making of educational policies. 1

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rhetoric, by the need to strengthen the organizational links, define the organization’s identity more clearly, introduce a hierarchy, valorize school management, and staff, and set closed organizational boundaries. New normative texts were vehicles of the classic management thinking hitherto unfamiliar in the educational field. By underlying its usefulness, they illustrated the similarities and established a relation of equivalence. Those texts also performed a displacement toward the management by objectives. They stated the centrality of schools in the education system and redefined the state’s role. In the devolved configuration of the education system, now made of an assortment of actors, the school is recognized as an independent entity, and the state assumes the task of setting new standards and checking their degree of accomplishment. In performing this role, the state intersected with the transnational dynamics where intergovernmental organizations, like OECD and EU, enact new spaces of comparability, such as the European education space. During the new millennium, the Italian education system aligned with two main political scenarios in the standardization of education: the making of the global society and accelerated digitalization. In those two scenarios, new policy instrumentations add to the repertoire of the Italian educational bureaucracy: (1) large-­ scale assessment testing and (2) digital devices. These technologies of control do not substitute completely bureaucratic centralism; they rather intersect with, transform and complement its materiality.

Introduction of Large-Scale Assessment Testing The uptake of the large-scale assessment testing illustrates the influence of transnational dynamics. In 2000, the publication of the first edition of OECD PISA survey provoked a moderate shock after the initial implementation of the policy of school autonomy. Nevertheless, Italy participated in the convergence of European leaders on the Lisbon strategy. The importance of discourse on the knowledge economy, the belief in the centrality of lifelong learning, and the agreement to make Europe the most competitive knowledge-based economy in the world accounted for the turn to an integrated policy European framework in education. The Lisbon agenda gave a set of objectives and a common method of work: the Open Method of Coordination (OMC). The method envisaged increasing cooperation among member states and the monitoring of progress. It was premised on a set of benchmarks to be fulfilled, that is, the translation of common objectives in performance standards and the ongoing exchange of best practices. These standards concerned early schooling leaving, the completion rate of upper secondary school, etc. and notably, the level of educational achievement in reading, mathematics and science measured by OECD PISA. A large amount of data available and the comparison with the educational performances of the other European countries suggested that the Italian education system had a problem with quality. This issue led the government to put greater emphasis on output controls, that is, to develop a national system of evaluation. The

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principle of school autonomy risked stressing the variability in the education system and carried the danger for a state that relied mostly on the Napoleonic legacy of the input standards of leaving space to school without instrumentations of control. There was a need to govern the fragmented unfolding of the school autonomy, tame the negative effects in terms of equity and set national education standards. The standard-setting activity changed directions and oriented toward a transnational discourse of competitiveness at the European and global levels. However, it took several years to constitute the national agency of evaluation, which will be called INVALSI (National Institute of Evaluation of the System of Instruction and Training). A key document here was the 2007 ‘Quaderno Bianco sulla Scuola’ (MIUR 2000) (White Paper on School) that contained a description of the situation of the Italian education system drawing on large-scale survey assessment (PISA, TALIS, TIMSS, etc.) and the national statistics (ISTAT). Moreover, it included several policy suggestions, such as the development of national standardized testing and the institution of a national agency for educational assessment. Since 1974, the European Centre for Education (CEDE) gave notable impulse to the research on evaluation in education in Italy. The institute was chaired by notable scholars in pedagogy, like Aldo Visalberghi and Giovanni Gozzer. At the beginning of the millennium, CEDE was transformed into the national agency for evaluation (INVALSI). Its first President of INVALSI was still an educationalist, Benedetto Vertecchi, who resigned 1 year later in disagreement with the newly elected government (President Berlusconi). The dismissal was a turning point as it accelerated the change of the scientific direction of INVALSI that abandoned the classic pedagogical research and mobilized the sciences of quantification, notably the economics of education, statistics, psychometrics, and quantitative sociology of education. After Vertecchi, all the presidents of INVALSI, nominated by the shifting governments, confirmed the new cultural milieu of the institute substantially. The members of the Scientific Committee aligned with the school improvement and effectiveness perspective and received bipartisan political support. The INVALSI became fully operational in 2007 with the Budget Law 296/2009. From 2008 onwards, standardized national testing was regularly repeated. The testing follows the model of large-scale survey assessment and notably shares the basic principles of OECD-PISA, but with some differences. First, PISA is sample-based, while INVALSI testing is census-based. Second, PISA involves 15 years old students at the end of the mandatory schooling to understand their capacity to draw on the acquired knowledge in reading, math, and science to solve problems in real life; INVALSI testing is oriented to understanding the achievement of the level of competencies as they are defined by the national curriculum and concern students of the elementary school (level 2 and 5), students of the first (level 8) and the upper secondary schools (level 10). Third, INVALSI testing, in comparison with PISA, has invested a lot (albeit recently, there is also PISA for schools) in making available the findings at the school level and helping schools to compare their educational outcomes with the average performances of school or classroom-like. Year by year, the contestations against INVALSI testing are always significant. However, there has been a substantial alignment to the model, so the discussion never provoked the lack

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of representativeness of the sample, even in the upper secondary school, where the ‘voice’ against the testing is usually stronger. The introduction of testing is not related to the development of a ‘high stake’ system of accountability. The debate on the testing and the description of the possible negative effects of the national test in terms of teaching to the test, cheating, etc., has led to the design of a more complex apparatus, the report of self-evaluation (called RAV), whose aim is school improvement. The refusal to accentuate the competitiveness between the school via the logic of ranking and comparison translated into a policy option for school-like comparison. Further, it enlarged the regime of visibility on school functioning by providing many data sources, not only the testing outcomes, to evaluate the educational performances. RAV provides an assisted process of self-evaluation made by data, protocols, and rubrics. Schools here are provided with a standard process to do it. It is a controlled self-evaluation where data are not only the testing but also other educational indicators. The underlying model is the CIPP evaluation framework (Stufflebeam, 2000). The national system of evaluation was codified in a Legislative Decree (n.80) and implemented in September 2014. It comprises (1) INVALSI, the coordinator; (2) INDIRE; which has the role of accompanying schools in their process of improvement; (3) the body of inspectors of the Ministry; (4) schools that play an active part in data collection and analysis. By following the decree, the activities of the system envisage (a) the self-evaluation report made by schools that are asked to do it with the data provided by the official statistics and the Ministry as well as by the guidelines prepared by INVALSI; (b) the external evaluation of school inspectors on low performing schools; (c) a plan for improvement, realized by schools in collaboration with INDIRE, professional associations, universities, public research centres; (d) the social accountability of schools. Discursively, the system of evaluation is oriented to improvement. In practice, it is not so ‘soft’ as it relates school evaluation to the evaluation of the headteachers. They are considered responsible for the achievement or the lack of fulfilment of the objectives as they are defined in the school plan. Moreover, on several occasions, there have been some attempts to introduce teacher merit pay salaries. Transnational pressures, here, have played an important role in strengthening the regime of accountability and suggesting the introduction of more consequential effects. Suffice to remember the correspondence with the EU during the dramatization of the financial and economic crisis that occurred in 2011. In August 2011, a letter signed by the President of the EU (Trichet) and by Mario Draghi (European Central Bank) was sent to the then President of the Italian government, Silvio Berlusconi, in the middle of the financial turmoil. There was the need to restore the reputation of the sovereign debt in a situation where some doubts were raised about the sustainability of the Italian public debt. The letter suggested some reforms to increase the efficiency of the public administration. The reforms concerned the adoption of indicators in health, justice, and schooling. In the letter of reply, there was an explicit commitment to reinforce school accountability through INVALSI testing, to intervene to raise educational performances of schools ‘below the average’ and to valorize the teaching profession. A link is established between school accountability, the

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quality of teachers (measured through testing), and the sustainability of the public debt (together with other reforms). The adoption of standardized testing and the related knowledge model have a more indirect effect: it can be seen as a process of re-culturing the education system. It influences the informational basis for educational policy-making and increases the exposure of the national agenda to the emerging topics of transnational waves of standardization. The current developments explain this model’s resilience and the growing sensitivity to transnational dynamics. During the pandemic, the overnight shift to digital remote teaching (in Italy, known by the acronym DAD) altered the form of schooling. For 2 years, the state of education emergency transformed the school setting and introduced a wide unexpected digitalization. It problematized the models of assessment and raised the issue of the feasibility and the opportunity of the INVALSI testing in a situation of emergency. The government decided, therefore, to suspend the national testing for the school year 2020–21. Notwithstanding the suspension, the public discourse was soon occupied by the question of the ‘learning loss’ that was provided by the OECD to provide a cognitive framework to make sense of the emergency. The school closure would have provoked a loss to be estimated based on the past model of knowledge and the outcomes of testing. The lack of testing was therefore filled with nostalgia and a sense of deficit to be remedied. It raises a need to speed up the school reopening to some extent. In the same period, a bill proposal for introducing non-cognitive skills in the national curriculum was discussed and approved in one of the chambers of the Parliament with a wider bipartisan agreement. Non-cognitive skills, here, explicitly relate to the increasing attention paid to measuring those skills in international research and intergovernmental organizations.

 he Sociomateriality of the Digital Governance of Education T in Italy In the middle of the second decade of 2000, the re-assemblage of educational standards was affected by the constitution of digital governance, that is, by the shift of the materiality of governance of education in the digital world. Apparently, the digital era appears to be a break with the educational bureaucracy and a move toward a post-NPM scenario. In practice, the case of Italy is a confirmation of continuities with the ‘old’ Napoleonic legacy and with the neo-liberal agenda. While digital technologies augment and accelerate the ‘temporalities of data collection, calculation, and communication’ (Williamson, 2016), they do not completely suppress analogue technologies and can be vehicles for the soft privatization of education (Cone & Brøgger, 2020). The story of the presence of the information and technologies of communication in the Ministry of Education dates to the 1970s when the first informative system was set up thanks to the expertise of a first multinational company. In the beginning,

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the system, called SIMPI, accompanied the government of the personnel and the circulation of information on the national state examination. The system’s architecture was highly hierarchical, involving the peripheral offices of the Ministry and then the school, the last level of this complex chain. During the 1980s and mostly the 1990s, SIMPI was a network hierarchy, and schools were just terminals of the bureaucratic machinery of the Ministry. As to the school curriculum, the circulation of ICT was limited to those secondary schools where ICT was a subject of teaching. Only during the 1990s the ‘digital’ become a resource for teaching and learning for all subjects (Landri & Serpieri, 2004). A strong impulse to the digitalization of the governance of education in Italy started with the policy of school autonomy, that is, at the beginning of the millennium (Landri & Serpieri, 2004). At that time, it became clear that the institution of a devolved environment would need a change in the informative system of the Ministry. School autonomy implied the shift from a hierarchy to a more open and distributed network. There is the birth of the first official website of the Ministry, and there is the development of software for the school secretary, provided partly by the Ministry and by several private companies that were born in response to the increasing demand for expertise. This shift suggests the unfolding of public-private partnerships and the consolidation of a niche-oriented market of technical solutions to schools both for administrative and educational tasks. Schools were free to choose between the solution offered by the Ministry and those by these new companies. In some respect, the bureaucratic pyramid was turned upside down. At the level of the Ministry, the first multinational company at the end of the 1990s gave birth to the official website that became in a few years a key reference in the Italian public administration; later on, the second consortium of companies with another multinational enterprise took over and substitute the first public-­private partnership in the complex management of informative system of the education system, even in the making of the website. It is, however, with the advent of the social web and the increasing importance of digital platforms and apps that the ‘digital’ would have become a worldwide standard for education policy and practice. On 3 November 2015, the press of the Ministry declared that ‘Scuola in Chiaro’ (SiC) is a significant achievement for the educational system. The official note from the Minister underlines how the new search engine brings Italy into the avant-garde in Europe. SiC is a web platform that makes available a massive amount of data and information on schools. Schools make themselves visible to external stakeholders. The policy instrumentation makes the principles of ‘transparency’ and ‘responsibility’ a reality. SiC also displays the school self-evaluation reports and school plans for improvement. The search engine emerges from a complex assemblage of people, technologies and policies. As a project, SiC started at the end of 2011, intending to order data and information on schools. It grew up as a data infrastructure fed by official statistics, the Ministry and the schools. Working as policy instrumentation, SiC collects data, makes it available in many ways on the Internet (list, table, maps, etc.) and sustains the process of school accountability and choice. Its realization is a further product of the private-public partnership responsible for the informative system of the Ministry. The price for the school visibility, here, is the opacity of the

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data infrastructure. The new policy instrumentation augments and accelerates datafication and standardization of education. While it is a window on schooling, SiC, however, does not provide any index for school ranking. Data and information are widely circulated, but there is no quick summary based on educational performances. The output list of schools is ordered on the criteria the users give as input for the search. Similarly, there is not any user profiling and advice on the navigational paths of the platform. Schools participate in SiC by furnishing additional information during the collection and the update of the data infrastructure. Nevertheless, they are not involved in their analysis; that is the task of the national agencies, the Ministry and notably, the INVALSI, the national agency of evaluation. The lack of school ranking was the outcome of a struggle with teacher trade unions that were successful in preventing the digital device from becoming a mean for increasing the competitiveness between schools and introducing merit-pay related to educational performances. The absence of indexes makes, however, SiC more of an archive of data and information that is hard to browse. In terms of user configuration, it privileges high expertise in educational policy knowledge. The policy of open data paved the way for the development of further platforms. Here, a very popular digital platform authored by the Foundation Agnelli was ‘Eduscopio’. The platform allows what SiC prevented, that is, school ranking according to an index. The index links educational and university performances: it correlates the marks at the national examination and the academic credits. Students’ university performances are considered a proxy of school quality. Likewise, educational performances are related to the possibility of finding a job where students opt for an active search in the labour market instead of engaging in a course at the university. Eduscopio does not involve schools in the making of the platform since data are collected from official sources and have no official consequences. Nevertheless, the school ranking activates a space of mutual surveillance and debate in public opinion with the publication of new editions every year (Landri & Vatrella, 2019). These platforms complement the logic of the educational bureaucracy by enacting spaces of comparability between schools according to NPM principles. Platforms, data and rules become the backbones of the governance of education finally. In 2020, the pandemic accelerated the digitalization of education in Italy and elsewhere (Grek & Landri, 2021). School closure was a measure of prevention. Italy was the first European country to be affected. As the pandemic hit severely, setting up a state of education emergency acted as a model for the other European countries. The need to intervene was conducive to suspending the European stability and growth pact, and member states assumed exceptional choices. Italy was not in the avant-garde of OECD countries in digital education. Teachers were reluctant to use educational technologies; technical infrastructures were not ready, etc. Government, media, and experts agreed to push overnight the educational activities online in the impossibility to keep on guaranteeing the standard model of schooling and at the same time preventing the spread of Covid19. In this situation, the model of emergency digital education, known by the acronym ‘DAD’,

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was invented. Many initiatives of solidarity started; the Ministry of Education’s Distance Education Initiative (DEI) was launched with the aim of spreading information about the possibility of distance teaching: webinar series, best practices, and guidelines were soon provided to schools. Three learning management systems became dominant as they were offered for free to schools that is Google Suite for Education, Microsoft Teams 365 A1 and We School, a platform provided by TIM, the most important Italian corporation in the field of information and communication technology. The rhetoric of disruption contrasted the chances of the new digital devices in comparison with the traditional pedagogies. Those companies provided solutions to the emergency and became key nodes in the technical infrastructure of schools. The pandemic acted as a catalyzer and permitted the experimentation of purely digital schooling and blended learning, raising discussion about the permanence or the contingency of the configuration activated (Taglietti et al., 2021). The swift passage to the digital in schools enhanced the entanglement of the Italian education system into private owned and commercial platforms (Cone et al., 2021; Landri, 2021). This process of soft privatization sets the condition for the enlargement of the technological market toward education. The state of education emergency acted as a promoter of the digital market.2 As a result, the platformization of education occurred through the uptake of learning management systems supported by complex public and private partnerships. These dynamics affect many countries and are restructuring the boundaries between ‘what is public’ and ‘what is private’ descriptively and normatively. While it is not sufficiently clear how this process will transform the form of schooling, the investment in digital education is confirmed by the Italian recovery plan presented to the EU. By sharing the aims of the Next generation EU program, the country is committed to realizing the common objectives that see the ‘digital’ as a key aspect of the European post-pandemic recovery.

Conclusion. A Nuanced NPM Re-assemblage By assuming a socio-material perspective, I have so far described the main steps of the process of re-culturing of the Italian education system during the last 20 years. Inspired by NPM ideas, the crucial move in Italy was the policy of school autonomy: schools become self-regulating entities in a devolved environment made of a set of institutions and organizations. Far from disappearing, the state assumes a diverse role in the new organisation field. It is less interested in being a ‘gardener’ and more in becoming a ‘gamekeeper’ to use the concepts provided by Baumann (1987). It is intended to regulate and monitor by engaging in the normativity of soft governance. While the educational bureaucracies were attentive to the detailed  In a popular video on the Internet, Google education, for example, describes its contribution to supporting the schooling during the pandemic and illustrates how its platform was recommended by the Minister of Italian education (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZrazpMx9mM) 2

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cultivation of their nation states through centralized, vertical, and hierarchical forms of control, the role of the state in a decentralized, horizontal environment is more setting standards, that is, proposing ‘recipes’ on the basis of the scientific and technical expertise of the field. The new role sees transnational regimes’ increasing ‘magister of influence’ (EU, OECD) in national education policy-making.

OECD and EU as Influencers During the last 20 years, there have been many examples where this influence was particularly visible. The publication of the first OECD PISA survey provoked a moderate shock in 2000, just after the implementation of the policy of school autonomy. Nevertheless, the Lisbon Agenda and the Bologna Process were important turning points. The Lisbon Agenda implied an increasing entanglement of the Italian education policy arena in the fabrication of the European space of education that would have led to the Constitution of the national agency for the evaluation. The open method of coordination, the idea of establishing benchmarks, collecting data, monitoring educational performances and comparing them over time and concerning other European countries, offered a theory of change. This idea considered ‘Europe’ as a ‘rescuer’ was widespread and also included in some studies addressing the reluctance of the welfare reforms (Ferrera & Gualmini, 2004). EU stimulated the modernization of the country. While education was still in the power of the state, by agreeing to participate in the Lisbon strategy, a new horizon of comparison could be beneficial to the renovation of school policy. This idea was promoted actively in Italy by some intellectuals, civil servants and politicians (oriented politically toward ‘liberalism’) who thought about how to circumvent the bureaucratic complexities of the Italian education system and introduce a system of education more aligned with the dominant discourse of the knowledge economy. Europe played the character of the ‘rescuer’ in at least two other important circumstances. In 2011, the letter sent to Silvio Berlusconi forcing the Prime Minister to resign confirmed the EU influence and, notably, the importance attributed to school accountability and then to the uptake of educational standards and systems of indicators even for the reputation of sovereign debt. In 2020, with the Next Generation EU Plan and the suspension of the European stability and growth pact during the pandemic as measures to the recovery of the country during the pandemic. Besides the EU, the direction of Italian educational policy-making is also influenced by the OECD. Here, there is a mix of indirect and direct pressure. OECD PISA is a model for the mechanisms of school evaluation. There are, however, several publications and studies authored by OECD on schools, etc., in which it is possible to analyze the situation of the Italian education policy on many indicators. The ongoing participation of Italy in the many studies promoted by OECD also has an effect on the education research and policy in the country. The recent attention to non-cognitive skills in Italy and the initiative to promote a law to introduce them in

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the school curriculum follows an international interest in measuring them. It is related to the popularity of works of the economist James Heckman and the leading psychologist Angela Duckworth made available in Italian. Here, a link between neuroscientists, psychometrics, genetics, and pedagogy is established. The OECD has tried to launch a project to measure social and emotional skills that found the attention of several Italian scholars and, at the same point, also of the national agency of evaluation. It means that the role of these intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) is not limited to the provision of statistics and indicators; they are active sense-makers as they provide knowledge of the educational present and future. It is worth remembering, for example, how, during the pandemic, the notion of ‘learning loss’ was able to catalyze the public debate on school opening and closure. In this respect, they affect the policy agenda of the country members by contributing to orienting the direction of policy-making. The re-culturing of the Italian education system was also captured by the transnational turn toward the digital world. Even if the story of the birth of the informative system of the Italian Ministry of education can be dated back to the 1970s, a decisive time for its restructuring happened with the school autonomy reforms. The movement toward a decentralized network means a diverse architecture of the system of communication. The development of digital technologies made available the possibility of the Internet and then the affordances of the social web. In this respect, we have witnessed the platformization of education policy and practice supported by the establishment and consolidation of public-private partnerships. Digitalization reinforced the datafication of education: it accelerated the collection, analysis and circulation of information, its visualization, and it made possible the realization of educational activities at a distance. The diffusion of platforms and apps does not substitute the classic Italian bureaucracy. It nonetheless opens spaces of visibility of school performances and activities by materializing principles of accountability and transparency. Search engines like ‘Scuola in Chiaro’ made schools open to external views. A platform like Eduscopio ranks secondary school and offers guidance to parents, teachers, stakeholders, etc. and supports informed school choices, according to NPM ideas. The pandemic gave an incredible impulse to the digitalization of school activities. School closures were compensated by investment in digital devices, computers, laptops, and digital infrastructures. It meant a speed training of teachers and headteachers that were not particularly willing to use digital devices and infrastructures and opened a season of possible transformation of the school form. In those dramatic events, the state facilitates the unfolding of a pandemic network of institutions, companies, associations, and schools, acting partly as an entrepreneur and sometimes as a standard setter, trying to fix a regulative framework. It helped to provide techno-solutions in the emergency time, checking that the platforms were offered for free and complied with the regulation of privacy (GDPR). The effect was the increasing involvement of the education systems in private owned and commercial platforms.

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Smooth Alignments Can we conclude that the Italian education system is completely captured in the wave of standardization and that there is no way to escape from transnational regimes? Partly so. Undoubtedly, the shift to school autonomy was a decisive move away from the welfare configuration, where the state maintained its hierarchical centrality. As education increasingly becomes a European and global issue, its national governance is discussed and defined in transnational regimes. In the new configuration, the state changes its role and becomes a concurrent standard setter. This shift, however, does not imply the complete demise of centralism and educational bureaucracy; it develops, rather, a nuanced NPM re-assemblage where the Napoleonic legacy (centralism and bureaucracy) cohabits with the circuits of expertise and the policy instrumentations of school improvement and effectiveness and the techno-­ solutionism of the digital world. Far from being stable and peaceful, this configuration shares a neo-liberal orientation and has wide bipartisan political support. For tactical reasons, this re-assemblage permits a ‘smooth’ alignment with the transnational regime: it involves incremental changes to centralism, bureaucracy, and elitism without provoking big gaps with the past. An important reform project is now discussed, intended to accelerate the decentralization in the field of education with a more important role attributed to Regions. It remains to be seen whether it will provoke a significant rupture in the system’s governance. There is, nonetheless, more than a preoccupation that the core idea of this project (‘autonomia differenziata’, that is ‘differentiated autonomy’) can emphasize a competitive regionalism, risking fragmenting the centralistic character of the system. Our analysis suggests that the alignment to transnational regimes occurs through processes of re-assemblage that display uniformities but also differences. The OECD PISA surveys set the model for the process of evaluation. INVALSI then adopted the large-scale survey assessment as a technology for control. While OECD PISA measures students’ achievement level at the end of compulsory school on a set of skills that are considered very important for life and work in the knowledge economy, they do not necessarily teach in schools. INVALSI testing is designed to measure the level of achievement of competencies to be developed according to the national curriculum. OECD PISA is sample-based, while INVALSI testing is census-­based. The latter offers information on many steps of the student careers (primary, low and upper secondary schools). While INVALSI testing is pervasive, it has been oriented to develop a soft regime of accountability. There is no school ranking on the basis of testing and an orientation toward school improvement. It means that schools are accompanied by a self-evaluation process through cascades of rubrics, data and protocols aimed at helping to make sense of the information on educational performances and to sustain processes of school change to meet the national benchmarks. Of course, the dividing line between ‘low’ and ‘high’ stake accountability can be problematic, and there have been several attempts to change the orientation to have a stronger impact on the education system, but with ups and

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downs. At the moment, only the evaluation of the school principal is related to the fulfilment of the school improvement plan. Recently, there have been some attempts to design a system of evaluation for teacher training, but this is still a project under discussion. The same shift to the ‘digital’ reveals that the process of re-culturing does not imply a complete disruption and entails rather nuanced remediations. Digital technologies can be inscribed in many ways. The passage to school autonomy meant the movement towards a more decentralized flow of information. Search engines, like ‘Scuola in Chiaro’, arose with the aim of ordering the datafication of education policy, controlling the informational basis of education policy and making it available for a wider public. It celebrates NPM’s ideas of transparency and accountability, but it adds to the policy instrumentations of educational bureaucracy. Therefore, the digital governance of education in Italy is neither a complete break from the past nor a step forward in NPM’s logic. The platformization of education seems to follow the same trajectory. The digital acceleration with the pandemic did not produce a complete disruption: it failed to problematize the forms of traditional teaching that could reproduce thanks and the preference for synchronous video tools (Zoom, Teams, etc.) acting as a proxy of the widespread frontal lesson. At the same time, the re-assemblage reinforced the soft privatization of the Italian education system and its entanglement in privately owned and commercial platforms. Nonetheless, the alignment with the transnational regimes and the wave of standardization affected the regime of truth in the education field. The events leading to the birth and the consolidation of the national agency of evaluation are crucial. A new knowledge configuration, in which the economy of education, or the knowledge oriented to quantification, puts in the background pedagogy, sociology, and philosophy of education. The resignation of the first president INVALSI (an educationalist), and its substitution with an economist closer to the Bank of Italy, gave the sense of a new epistemological scenario. Two cultures of educational research confronted, and finally, the more aligned with the transnational regimes set the validity conditions for the generation of educational policy knowledge. The alignment is unfolding in a time of declining pedagogical activism and the weakness of the professional cultures in Italian schools. Highly valorized in the welfare age, it declined in the new knowledge architecture. Professional knowledge that had been of the impulse of the welfare reforms in Italy, activating interests and exchange of experiences, even at the international level (think, for example, the case of Reggio’s schools, Montessori, Don Milani, etc.), became ancillary or subordinate in the emerging knowledge set-up. Evidence-based research and the perspective of school effectiveness and improvement dominate the informational basis of education policy. The pandemic challenged but did not problematize this knowledge configuration. INVALSI testing was put on hold during the school closure, but it was reprised soon when it was possible. The ‘learning loss’ rhetoric was mobilized to accelerate school opening in the making of post-pandemic scenarios. The new law, calling for the introduction of socio-emotional skills in the national curriculum, backed by a bi-partisan constituency, confirms the alignment with the new waves of

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standardization, and notably with research programs oriented to the emergent sciences of learning, made by a composite collaboration between neuroscience, psychology and genetics. The emerging assemblage established an unexpected alliance between conservative and progressive educational agendas. Overall, the concatenations with the transnational regimes tend to silence other research programs (even transnational) and introduce a distrust of the professional knowledge repurposed if it complies with the dominant framework.

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Chapter 8

Multi-scalar Interactions and Educational Reform: The Trajectory of School Policy in Catalonia Within the Spanish State Antoni Verger, Edgar Quilabert, and Mauro C. Moschetti

Abstract  This chapter combines insights on the singular nature of policymaking in the context of federal states with a policy trajectory approach to examine the evolution of educational reform in a setting characterised by complex multi-scalar interactions, namely the Catalan region within decentralised Spain. Drawing on interviews with key actors and a thorough document analysis, this chapter focuses primarily on understanding how and to what extent Catalonia has been able to use its margin of political and administrative autonomy within the Spanish (quasi)federal state to promote a singular approach to educational policy. The results are presented according to four different reform stages. The policy trajectory described shows how educational reform has been shaped by the constant interaction between the Catalan and Spanish governments in a context in which the division of competencies is ambiguous and constantly renegotiated. The chapter argues that the singularisation of the Catalan policy model is politically contingent. Despite the Catalan education system has been rethinking itself for a long time, its ‘desire to be’ intensifies when territorial conflict and political disagreement with the Spanish state intensify. The territorial conflict has direct effects in the singularisation process, but also important indirect effects such as facilitating the emergence of new influential policy actors and ideas. Nonetheless, scalar tensions tend to be constrained to specific areas such as the language of instruction, and do not necessarily result in divergent policy approaches to school governance. Policies on school autonomy, evaluation, leadership, and competencebased education have been encouraged by the Spanish legislative framework since the 1990s. The singularity of the Catalan education policy lies more in the fact that it has pioneered the instrumentation of such policy ideas embedded in a broader NPM approach to education, and in its more recent assemblage with pedagogic innovation ideas. Keywords  Education policy · Multi-scalar · Federalism · Policy trajectory · Decentralisation A. Verger (*) · E. Quilabert · M. C. Moschetti Autonomous University of Barcelona, Bellaterra, Spain © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. B. Krejsler, L. Moos (eds.), School Policy Reform in Europe, Educational Governance Research 22, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-35434-2_8

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Introduction Education policy in Spain has been the object of an avalanche of change since the end of the long Franco era (1939–1975). This includes the professionalisation of teaching, the widening of educational expansion and system comprehensiveness, the constitution of a large-scale Public-Private Partnership (PPP) for educational provision, and a profound, yet multi-speed territorial decentralisation process. These structural reforms, initiated in the 1980s, evolved in parallel to a double re-­ scaling shift in the policy process: upward re-scaling through increasing integration of the Spanish state into European transnational collaborations on schooling, and downwards through the more active participation of Spanish Comunidades Autónomas—i.e., regions—in educational policy activity. Catalonia, with other so-called ‘historical regions’, got its competencies in education devolved earlier than other Spanish regions. As a territory with strong national identity, language, and self-government aspirations, Catalonia has been eager to define its own education governance approach. In the 2000s, as part of this singularisation process, Catalonia pioneered, within the Spanish context, the adoption of a broad range of regulatory changes inspired in the tenets of New Public Management (NPM). The first Catalan Education Act, passed in 2009, featured ideas such as school-based management, professionalised school leadership, and the promotion of strategic planning and a stronger evaluation culture within schools. More recently, public education policy in Catalonia has emphasised the promotion of pedagogic innovation as a main policy framework. Innovative teaching practices in the Catalan education system have been strongly encouraged by non-state actors’ initiatives, echoing policy discourses and recommendations from international organisations. These initiatives have been very successful in terms of school reach and media impact and quickly scaled up after being absorbed by the public administration as a vertebral educational policy. In this context, educational innovation has become a catch-all policy that has allowed the Catalan government to do school policy by, for instance, promoting new school improvement logics and curricular change. As a programmatic idea, and despite recent but increasing opposition by teachers’ organisations, the innovation narrative has seduced an important number of key education stakeholders and fed the singularisation of Catalan education policy. The objective of this chapter is to analyse the trajectory of school policy reform in a context subject to intense multi-scalar interactions, such as the Catalan context within decentralised Spain. Specifically, we are interested in analysing how and to what extent, Catalonia has been able to use its margin of political and administrative competencies in the educational sector within the Spanish (quasi)federal structure to promote a singular approach to educational policy, and how inter-scalar interactions have shaped such trajectory.1 The chapter shows that the Catalan education  This study is part of a larger research project (REFORMED; ref. GA-680172) aimed at studying the trajectories of school autonomy with accountability policies and their enactment in four 1

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policy trajectory is shaped by an incomplete decentralization process in which the division of competencies between the federal and the regional level is ambiguous and constantly renegotiated. The chapter also argues that the singularisation of the Catalan policy model is politically contingent. Despite the Catalan education system has been rethinking itself for a long time, its ‘desire to be’ is especially evident in periods when territorial conflict and political disagreement with the Spanish state intensify. The territorial conflict has direct effects in the singularisation process, but also important indirect effects such as facilitating the emergence of new influential policy actors and ideas. Methodologically, we draw on interviews with key informants, especially to better illuminate the most recent reform processes, and a thorough document analysis. Ten interviews were conducted with key actors from across the education sector in Catalonia, including incumbent and former government officials from the Department of Education and representatives from civil society organisations with a say in education. The interviews were based on a semi-structured questionnaire that included questions organised into five modules: interviewee background, policy formation, enactment and implementation, ideational sources and narratives, and a closing section (see Fontdevila, 2019 for more details). The document analysis included a detailed examination of 39 normative policy texts and 5 policy briefs produced between 2009 and 2021 by the Catalan and Spanish governments. All data were analysed following a flexible coding strategy (Deterding & Waters, 2021), which allowed us to use both theoretically informed categories defined a priori and emergent themes identified during the analysis. The chapter is structured as follows. First, we present a theoretical framework that combines theories of policymaking in federal states and policy trajectories’ theory. We then examine the period 1980–2021 with a focus on the last two decades. To this end, we distinguish between four different school reform stages: (i) the restoration of democracy and the democratisation of education in Spain (1980s and 1990s); (ii) the regulation of NPM (2000s); (iii) the conservative modernisation approach to educational policy (2010–2015); and (iv) the pedagogic innovation policy stage (2016–ongoing). In the last section of the chapter, we discuss our findings and conclude.

 heoretical Framework: The Politics of Education Policy T in Multi-scalar Systems School reform is increasingly subject to multi-scalar dynamics and, as such, needs to be seen as the product of intra-, inter-, and supra-national interactions. Globalisation has contributed to consolidating a policy scenario that is highly conducive to cross-national policy movements and the configuration of transnational countries, one of them being Spain.

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policy networks. In this context, a wide range of actors can play a relevant role in structuring education agendas and influencing policy decisions on school reform. In the case of federal—or highly decentralised—states, these dynamics take a new direction. Federalism, as a form of state organisation, opens new spaces to intervene in external reform pressure and interpret and adapt global policy ideas (Savage & Lingard, 2018; Wallner et al., 2020). Previous research on federal education policy views federalism as a political organisation that is prone to countries engaging, internally, in policy transfer, borrowing and lending (Kerber & Eckardt, 2007), and adopting new policy instruments for central steering (Savage, 2016). More than mere policy transmitters, regions are spaces of policy struggle and singularisation that often engage in conflicting scalar interactions within the federal government. From this perspective, regions and, more specifically, their governmental and non-governmental institutions operate as political subjects with their own policy priorities and interests, who relate to different political scales through cooperation, but also negotiation strategies and power games. Indeed, federalism is conducive to dynamics of political differentiation and decoupling of different administrative units and scales (Swenden et al., 2006). Conducting policy research in federal systems means looking at how scalar policymaking is produced by different forms of agency with different political logics and to what extent certain policy actors aim to use—or even produce—scalar tensions to their own advantage (Papanastasiou, 2017). Inter-scalar tensions may be the result of ideological reasons and partisan politics—for instance, when governments at each level have clashing political ideologies. This type of tensions tends to exacerbate and transcend party politics in countries with a background of territorial conflicts. Competition dynamics tend to be longstanding in decentralised contexts where identity politics permeate scalar interactions. In countries such as Spain, contemporary territorial conflict cannot be disentangled from a long history of political competition, contestation, and the construction of policy boundaries (Gallego et al., 2017). Such tensions, which are particularly tangible in relation to historical regions with self-government aspirations such as Catalonia, permeate and give new meaning to the politics and economics of educational reform. Regions can develop their political agency by advancing singular policy approaches, but also by actively looking for the recognition of the international community. The concept of ‘paradiplomacy’ has been coined to depict how stateless nations tend to develop their own international public relations and networks, usually for political reasons (Lecours, 2002). Not coincidentally, regions with national, linguistic, and cultural singularities, such as Quebec, the Basque Country, Catalonia, or Flanders, tend to be more active in international fora. In increasingly globalised policy spaces, these regions resort to scale-jumping strategies, not only in the search for better policy solutions, but also to gain political legitimacy and power (Peck, 2002; Peck & Theodore, 2010). Thus, despite the self-government aspirations of some regions being frequently challenged by the strong interdependences generated with globalisation, the global polity also provides them “with new opportunities for the promotion of their peculiarities at the international level” (Kuznetsov, 2014, p. 77).

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Education Policy Trajectories in Multi-scalar Settings In federal countries, regional educational systems have the capacity—and often political incentives—to develop their own and singular policy approach, despite being exposed to similar reform pressures, regulatory frameworks and policy discourses. The analysis of the development of educational policies in these settings requires capturing the complex interplay between policy agendas, institutions and actors operating at multiple scales, and thus the potential factors, forms of agency, and related contingencies affecting policy. The concept of policy trajectories can contribute to disentangling how these dynamics shape policies over time. A trajectory perspective aims to elucidate how and why certain policy options are chosen at a particular moment and how the instruments, techniques, and tools related to these policy options evolve as relational, contingent, and bounded processes (Bezes, 2007; Kassim & Le Galès, 2010). In this vein, Maroy et al. (2017) operationalise the concept of policy trajectory, which they see as constituted by three main interrelated mechanisms. The first mechanism is path dependence, which means that any reform attempt depends on past decisions, institutions, and legislation in force. Preceding decisions forge the path, either restricting or widening the spectrum of future choices. Due to the path-dependent nature of educational systems, educational reform tends to advance through layering and sedimentation processes, in which old and new policy instruments coexist and combine in novel ways. Arrangements previously in place tend to be (re)negotiated and (re)signified over and over rather than being totally dismantled and replaced (Mahoney & Thelen, 2009). This is related to the second mechanism, bricolage, which considers that policymaking, rather than a purely innovative process, usually evolves as an assemblage of heterogeneous elements that are not necessarily designed to be fixed together (Maroy et al., 2017). Through bricolage, “existing elements are combined inventively and oriented by an instrumental logic of efficiency and/or by a symbolic search for legitimacy and social acceptance” (Maroy et  al., 2017, p.  4)—e.g., to satisfy or content relevant actors. The third mechanism is policy translation, that is, the way policy ideas are modified when crossing jurisdictions, sectors, and/or territories (Mukhtarov, 2014). Translation entails the reinterpretation of external concepts and their hybridisation with existing institutions and instruments (Maroy et al., 2017). Translators are policy actors who, while brokering between different policy spaces and/or political scales, are involved in the construction of a common understanding of policy proposals to make them transferable in new contexts (Hassenteufel & Zeigermann, 2019). Translation, as it happens with bricolage, is far from technical or neutral. The policy actors involved in translation transform, distort, and/or modify the meaning of policy according to their own preferences, agendas, and interests—whether political, professional, and/or economic. In what follows, we apply this perspective to analyse education reform in a quasi-federal polity where inter-scalar conflict has fluctuated but mainly followed

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an incremental trend in the last decades. To capture the nature and direction of recent policy developments in the Spanish and Catalan educational contexts, we organise our data into four different historical stages. Although the first stage is important for understanding the main governance features of the Spanish education system, we present in greater detail the changes that have occurred since the turn of the millennium.

 tage 1: Structural Reforms After the Democracy Restoration S (1980s and 1990s)  n Intermediate Decentralisation Process with a Large-Scale A Public-Private Partnership During the dictatorship period (1939–1975), the educational system in Spain was highly centralised and regional self-government aspirations were totally suppressed. The centralisation of power was an inherent feature of the authoritarian regime in its attempt to use education as an instrument of social control (Hanson, 1997). School governance was also hierarchical and non-participatory, with school principals being directly appointed by Franco’s dictatorship for many years. However, at the same time, and somehow paradoxically, the state did not have a proactive role in education delivery and delegated this responsibility to other institutions—mainly the Catholic Church. It also invested poorly in education and devoted little regulatory effort to administer the educational system (Bonal et al., 2023, forthcoming). Yet, in the last stage of Francoism, the regime adopted a more technocratic orientation and was more open to the international community. The human capital theory was flourishing, and the idea of increasing economic competitiveness through the improvement and massification of education gained currency (Gómez-Escalonilla & Martín García, 2021). With the democratic transition in the late 1970s and the beginning of the 1980s, a structural reform process created the backbone of the Spanish contemporary education system. This reform geared around two main pillars: the adoption of a public-­ private partnership (PPP) scheme for educational delivery and the decentralisation of the educational system. The role of the Catholic Church in school provision was central to the educational debates of the democratic transition, which would derive in the adoption of one of the widest-scale PPPs in education in Europe. In fact, the first federal education reform act (ERA) passed with the restoration of democracy mainly focused on keeping the scheme of public funding for private schools and protecting religious education (LOECE, 1980). This law, which was approved with the votes of all the conservative parties in the Spanish Parliament, including the Catalan conservative party, never came into force, but reflected that all conservative groups agreed on the protection of freedom of instruction and private/religious school provision (Sevilla Merino, 2016; see Table 8.1).

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Table 8.1  Spanish Educational Reform Acts since the restoration of democracya

Education Reform Act LOECE/1980 (Never entered into force) LODE/1985 LOGSE/1990, complemented by LOPEG/1995 LOCE/2002 (Repealed in 2004) LOE/2006

LOMCE/2013 (Partially repealed in 2016) LOMLOE/2020

Governing party/ coalition in Spain [years in power] Conservative party (UCD) [1977–1982] Social-democratic party (PSOE) [1982–1996]

Conservative party (PP) [1996–2004] Social-democratic party (PSOE) [2004–2011] Conservative party (PP) [2011–2018] Social-democratic party (PSOE) & left-wing progressive party (UP) [2018–now]

Vote of Catalan parties in the Spanish Parliament Voted in Voted favour Abstentions against Catalan conservative party All Catalan parties All Catalan parties All Catalan parties Catalan Catalan left-republican conservatives party (although voted initially in favourb) All Catalan parties Left-­ republican party

Catalan conservatives

Source: Own elaboration a We focus on the laws that refer to compulsory education b They changed their vote because the law incorporated a last-minute change to introduce more public control in PPP schools Note: UCD Unión de Centro Democrático, PSOE Partido Socialista Obrero Español, PP Partido Popular, UP Unidas Podemos

In 1985, an important federal education reform act was passed, but this time with the government of Spain in the hands of the social-democratic party (LODE, 1985). In the debates prior to the reform, many progressive voices were in favour of dismantling the system of subsidies for Catholic schools, which they saw as anachronic in a country pretending to be laic, and a barrier to educational modernisation. However, the social-democratic government saw the PPP alternative as a pragmatic way to achieve a much-needed educational expansion cost-efficiently, as well as to comply with the principle of ‘freedom of instruction’ included in the recently approved Spanish Constitution (1978) (González-Moreno, 2019; Olmedo, 2013). As a result, the Catholic Church and other private education entities would be acknowledged as legitimate school providers through long-term contracts with educational authorities.

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The decentralisation process in Spain was part of a state modernisation agenda and was also seen as a way to overcome the authoritarian state model that prevailed with Francoism (Erk & Gagnon, 2000). The process started with the regions with historical national and self-government aspirations, the so-called ‘historical regions’: Catalonia and the Basque Country, followed by Galicia and Navarre (Máiz & Losada, 2010). Other regions went through a much slower decentralisation track and did not get their educational competencies devolved until the 2000s. Currently, all the 17 Spanish regions have similar educational competencies. The main difference is that historical regions have had more than 40 years to develop their own educational institutions and policy approaches. Nonetheless, the devolution of competencies to regions has not been full, which is the reason why Spain has been characterised as an ‘intermediate decentralisation model’ (de Puelles, 1993). In education, the competencies transferred to the regions are those related to the administration and funding of the system; ownership of public schools; planning of the educational supply, including the creation, expansion, or suppression of school units; and the selection, training, and appointment of teachers, principals, and other managerial positions (Hijano & Ruiz, 2019). In its part, the central government retains responsibility for establishing the general legislative framework of the system, defining the system architecture—including educational levels, modalities, stages, cycles, and specialties of teaching—and setting the basic structure and content of the national curriculum2 to be developed together with the regions (de Puelles, 2002). To a great extent, the Spanish educational decentralisation process has advanced much more in terms of the administration of the system than in terms of political control. The distribution of some competencies has been intentionally ambiguous, and this ambiguity has contributed to some authors considering that Spain is a sui generis federal state (Erk & Gagnon, 2000). Although this ambiguity was a necessary condition to make decentralisation politically viable in the turbulent transition period, it has also been a source of constant tension, especially in periods of mistrust and territorial conflict in Spain.

 evolution of Educational Competencies in Catalonia: D From Reform Fidelity to the First Conflicts In January 1981, educational competencies were transferred to the Catalan government, which faced the challenge of managing a system with important deficits at all levels—i.e., infrastructure, personnel, teachers’ training, coverage— (Pedró et al., 2008). During the 1980s and the 1990s, the Catalan government was uninterruptedly in the hands of the Catalan nationalist conservative party-coalition.

 Historical regions are allowed to define a higher proportion of the school curriculum, especially for linguistic reasons. 2

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Despite the different political orientations of the Spanish and Catalan governments in that period, school governance regulations in Catalonia did not differ substantially from those prevailing at the Spanish level. The 1985 federal ERA promoted a mix of bureaucratic and democratic perspectives on school governance (LODE, 1985). Among other measures, there was an attempt to promote democratic and horizontal school governance, with active family participation in the school board, and the principal being a primus inter pares among the teaching staff. This regulatory commitment to democratic and horizontal school governance was seen as a reaction to the authoritarian approach that had prevailed during the Franco era (Viñao, 2004). Nonetheless, the new participatory approach was combined with highly bureaucratic governance features such as the centralised allocation of teachers, and an inspection system that mainly focused on rule compliance and on helping non-­ professional principals to manage the school, in detriment of its school evaluation function (Tiana, 2018). In Catalonia, the most emblematic educational policy in the 1980s was the adoption of Catalan as the language of instruction with the objective of avoiding the concentration of students with different mother tongues in different schools. The implementation of this linguistic policy had very broad political support at the time of its adoption, but later would become an arena of ideological struggle (Bonal et al., 2023, forthcoming). The Catalan government also resorted to the emerging Spanish PPP framework to encourage private school provision, and it did so with more emphasis than in other Spanish regions. It was indulgent to provide public subsidies for private schools, even elite private schools—some of which segregate students by sex.3 Paradoxically, despite the linguistic policy of the Catalan government being seen as a success when it came to avoiding segregation for reasons of language, its PPP policy exacerbated social and sexual segregation between schools. Education reform in the 1990s focused on the expansion and democratisation of education and the building of a more comprehensive educational system. A new federal ERA, passed in 1990, altered importantly the architecture of the educational system, and made all students follow a single track of compulsory education until the age of 16 (LOGSE, 1990). The educational reform also emphasised pedagogic and curricular change, with the embracement of constructivism as the official pedagogy and the promotion of school and community involvement in curricular adaptation. LOGSE (1990), once complemented by another federal law (LOEPEG, 1995), also covered aspects of school leadership and evaluation that were not included in the previous laws. The reform approached school evaluation as a quality assurance and accountability instrument, and conceived it as a multidimensional process that goes beyond learning outcomes (Tiana, 2018). These reforms were implemented with high fidelity in Catalonia. Key Catalan education stakeholders supported the main elements of the reform, and the Catalan Minister of Education at that time even secured extraordinary public funding to implement it (Pedró et al., 2008).

3  See https://portaldogc.gencat.cat/utilsEADOP/PDF/723/9630.pdf and https://tinyurl.com/2p 9zb7bt.

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This climate of cooperation changed in 1996 when the Spanish conservative party (Partido Popular) took over the government of Spain. The first clash of great significance between Catalonia and Spain occurred in 1996, when the Spanish government tried passing the so-called ‘Humanities decree’ to recentralise how history was taught in Spanish schools. The Spanish conservative party also attempted to advance a controversial ERA that aimed to impose Spanish as the vehicular language of instruction in all regions (LOCE, 2002). The conservative reform also promoted other policies, such as early tracking and religious education. Neither the decree nor the law prospered, but these reform intentions would inaugurate a time of great mistrust between Spain and several historical regions, including Catalonia.

 tage 2: Experimenting with New Public Management Ideas S in Education (2000s)  he Pendular Dynamic, Yet Equity-Driven Legacy, T of Educational Reform in Spain The contemporary education reform in Spain has evolved into a highly pendular and ideologically charged process. Seven federal educational laws have been promoted since the restoration of democracy, with these changes almost relating to perfection with the alternation of the dominant parties—conservatives and social democrats— in power (see Table 8.1). Nonetheless, the reforms that have enjoyed more political support and have been sustained for longer have been those approved by social-­ democratic governments. For this reason, the Spanish legal educational framework tends to be perceived as equity oriented. Nonetheless, in the 2000s, economic competitiveness and school effectiveness became central drivers of reform in Spain. The influence of international organisations, such as the EU and the OECD, especially through the PISA programme, penetrated official discourses and thus started to permeate legislative initiatives (Bonal & Tarabini, 2013; Engel, 2015). Ideas such as school-based management and results-based accountability started gaining traction and bi-partisan support in that decade. Competence-based education was one of the main contributions of the ERA approved by the Spanish social-democratic government in 2006 (LOE, 2006). This reform was strongly informed by European Commission recommendations on “key competences” and the EU Lisbon Strategy 2010, which aimed to convert the EU in “the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world” (Toribio, 2010). In curricular terms, this reform eliminated the obligation for schools to offer religious education hours. Despite Spanish-level regulations are not prescriptive in matters of school governance, the federal legislation passed in 2006 encouraged regions to adopt the necessary measures to favour school autonomy in different areas—pedagogy, organisation, and budget—and to overcome what was seen as an excessive level of

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uniformity among public schools. The Spanish legislative framework also opened the possibility for public schools to receive more funding if they had special educational projects or open job positions with specific teacher profiles (Estruch, 2012). Some of these policy ideas fit uneasily with previous reforms that forged a school governance approach that combines bureaucratic and horizontal rationales. One of the main features of this approach is that public schools’ principals do not have the capacity to influence the choice of the school teaching staff, and that teachers, together with other members of the school community, democratically elect the school principal among the teaching staff. Against this background, however, New Public Management (NPM) policies have penetrated some Spanish regions (Olmedo, 2013), with Catalonia being one of the regions that has gone the furthest along this pathway.

 Historical Political Shift, and the First Catalan A Education Law In 2003, a broad progressive coalition—including social-democrats, left-wing greens, and left-wing Catalan nationalists—took over in Catalonia, after 23 years of uninterrupted regional government in the hands of the Catalan nationalist conservative party. This power shift coincided with the adoption of a new Catalan Statute of Autonomy in 2006. With the new statute, Catalonia sought to reinforce its identity and cultural particularities and to obtain a greater degree of self-government in areas such as culture, taxation, and education. The process towards the approval of the new autonomy statute encouraged intense and multi-stakeholder educational debates. The high level of participation in these debates was partly motivated by the ambition to rethink the educational model, but also by the growing concern with the course adopted by the Spanish educational policy since the conservative Popular Party had taken over the Spanish government. Against this political scenario, key stakeholders in Catalonia saw the need to think about education policy “from a radically different approach” (Farré, 2009, p. 20). This period of educational debates concluded with the approval of the National Agreement on Education in 2006, a document signed by numerous teachers’ unions, families’ associations, so-called “pedagogic renovation movements”, and private sector entities, and endorsed by the government. Among other lines of action, this agreement emphasised the importance of promoting school autonomy and the involvement of local governments in education as ways to modernise the Catalan educational system and make it more equitable. The National Agreement on Education provided the foundation for what would be the first Catalan Education Reform Act (LEC, for its acronym in Catalan), which was passed in 2009. The LEC (2009) expanded on the ideas of autonomy and evaluation that had a great acceptance among the educational community but were ambiguously defined, so the Catalan ERA was able to give these principles a new

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managerial perspective. The Catalan Minister of Education at that time—Ernest Maragall—and his closest advisors openly embraced the main principles of NPM in education, advocating results-oriented and hands-on management in schools, and being openly critical of the civil service and hierarchical nature of public education (Longo, 2007; Maragall, 2009). The central articles of the LEC would thus focus on strengthening the governance of schools through the promotion of NPM-like ideas, such as schools becoming more autonomous managerial units, the professionalisation of school leadership, strategic planning and strengthening the evaluation system. Although the LEC received important input from domestic debates and local stakeholders—among them, an association of school principals that actively lobbied for the professionalisation of school leadership—, it was also inspired by OECD ideas on school governance, accountability, and distributed leadership, and, in fact, benefited from the direct technical advice of OECD staff. This was the era in which PISA results had the largest media impact, and many of the decisions taken had the improvement of Catalonia’s PISA results as a main benchmark (Verger & Curran, 2014). It was also the time when the OECD more strongly advocated coupling school-based management with performance-based accountability as a main driver of educational effectiveness, based on PISA data (see, for instance, OECD, 2011). The LEC foresees the creation of an independent evaluation agency that should be able to evaluate a broad range of dimensions of the educational system, many of which have not yet been systematically evaluated, including teacher performance (Bonal & Verger, 2014; Collet-Sabé, 2017). In 2009, the same year that the LEC was passed, census-based standardised tests started being administered more systematically. The main goal of these tests is to measure the basic skills of students in core subject areas to improve and inform instruction and policy (Resolution EDU/1037/2009). These instruments have become, de facto, a way to evaluate schools, although are not conceived to entail generalised consequences, and the publication of school scores is discouraged by the LEC itself. Other important innovations of the law include a commitment to increase educational funding by 6% of the GDP and strengthen the role of local governments in education. The most controversial aspect of the law—which was strongly criticised by teachers’ unions, but also by the left-wing green party—was the role of the private sector in school provision. The LEC acknowledges the public-private mixed nature of the Catalan educational system and favours the equivalent treatment between public and subsidised private schools as a way to advance towards a more genuine type of PPP. For this purpose, the private sector is expected to adopt public sector values such as equity and inclusion by enrolling a higher percentage of vulnerable students, whereas public schools—through the renovated emphasis on school autonomy and hands-on professional leadership—are expected to adopt managerial techniques and logics from their private counterparts. However, whereas the ‘endogenous privatisation’ of public education has been clearly developed through a wide number of decrees and other legal instruments, the ‘publification’ of subsidised private schools started much later, and only timidly (Zancajo et al., 2022). Overall, the LEC was conceived as a set of instruments to reinforce both the effectiveness and equity of the educational system, but also to advance its

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singularisation within the Spanish context. However, this singularisation was far from being approached confrontationally. As stated in the white paper of the LEC, the law was expected to “assume and develop” the legal provisions included in the Spanish educational laws, “without repeating them unnecessarily” (Departament d’Educació, 2007, p. 10). This resulted in the Catalan education law assuming the main principles of the Spanish regulatory framework, and in developing some of them, among which the school governance model stands out, with much more level of detail and in line with the postulates of NPM. Despite this, the conservative party took the LEC to court for breaching the Spanish Constitution and, as a result, 10 years later, 10 articles of the law would be withdrawn. The Catalan linguistic model was part of the complaint, but the court did not declare it unconstitutional.4

Stage 3: The Conservative-Modernisation Agenda (2010–2015)  he Selective Implementation of NPM in a Period of Budget T Cuts and Conservatism The LEC (2009) met the fierce opposition of teachers’ unions—which organised several massive strikes before its approval—and even the green-left party, which was part of the government coalition, did not vote for it in Parliament due to its flimsy support for public education. In contrast, Catalan conservatives, in the opposition at that time, voted in favour. This meant that the law was approved by the largest left-wing and right-wing parties in Catalonia at the time. In contrast to the polarisation that Spanish educational laws have tended to exhibit, the process of defining the Catalan law, by securing wide partisan support, had legal stability in its sight (Farré, 2009). Nonetheless, the ambition to enact a legal framework that lasts in time came at the cost of political definition. The LEC operates as a ‘hinge law’, in the sense that it accommodates interests and preferences from different ideological groups. The Act is broad in coverage and allows governments to selectively develop its dispositions. This is precisely what happened when the Catalan Conservative party regained power in 2010. The new government discouraged the adoption of some of the LEC’s most important initiatives, as for example creating an independent Education Evaluation Agency, deconcentrating power in local governments, and the distribution of disadvantaged students across public and private subsidised schools. In contrast, the conservative government advanced those policies that required less budgetary effort and that fitted better with its ‘conservative modernisation’  The court ruled against some of the LEC articles because invaded Spanish competencies, but, paradoxically, against other articles because they reproduced the Spanish legal framework too faithfully and without incorporating any novelty. See: https://www.lavanguardia.com/ politica/20190425/461855186936/tribunal-constitucional-avala-regimen-linguistico-lec-ley-de-­ educacion-­cataluna.html. 4

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agenda—a policy approach combining pro-market and managerial ideas in the domain of governance, and conservative notions of teaching and pedagogy (see Apple, 2009). Among other measures, they continued to strengthen the figure of school principals by giving them a greater say in staffing matters. Decree (39/2014) allowed principals to choose part of the teaching staff through a selection process that included job interviews, something that in a highly centralised system of teacher allocation, was a major change. All teachers’ unions opposed it, which they saw as undermining democratic governance in schools, and opening the possibility of nepotism. The Catalan government also modified the school direction decree in a way that reinforced school principal qualifications and removed the priorities given to teachers to become principals in their own schools (Decree 29/2015). These were changes that pleased the Catalan association of school principals, which by that time had become very influential in the Catalan education policy. This association was very active in the promotion of educational debates at the dawn of the LEC approval, and some of its most relevant members were appointed influential positions in the Catalan Department of Education (Verger & Curran, 2014). The Catalan government applied severe budget cuts in education following the global financial crisis and encouraged by a Spanish decree aimed at promoting austerity in public-sector spending (Decree 20/2012). This meant an increase in pupil-­ teacher ratios and a drastic reduction in professional development resources for teachers and support staff.5 Despite the severe cuts, one of the slogans of that period was the promotion of ‘educational success’ and, for this purpose, the Catalan government recentralised control through instructional and assessment interventions. Among other initiatives, it promoted common curricular standards in mathematics and literacy; inspection services acquired new areas of competence in school assessment through new programs aimed at intervening underperforming primary schools and promoting merit-based policies for teachers and principals (Verger et al., 2020). Arguably, the reluctance of this government to create a separate evaluation agency is also in line with its ambition to maintain a more direct control of national assessments. The conservative government also introduced new school admission criteria, including enrolment preference for the children of alumni—a policy discriminating against immigrant populations and newcomers—and encouraged the expansion of catchment areas in cities such as Barcelona, as a way to promote school choice (Bonal & Verger, 2014). Finally, one of the last changes brought forth by the conservative government during this period was the competence-based reform of the curriculum. With this, the Catalan government attempted to develop and shape the pedagogical dimension of school autonomy and re-direct teachers’ pedagogical practices towards a more competence-sensitive way of teaching core subject areas. The legislative text was aligned with the Spanish federal education act (LOE, 2006), although it rather  Between 2010 and 2015, the budget for teacher professional development was reduced from €8 million to €100,000. From 2016 onwards, an attempt was made to recover this item, setting it at €2.5 million. Since then, it has been progressively increased to 5.3 million euros in the 2022 budget. 5

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substantiated in the European Union’s recommendations on core competences (2006/962/EC; 2009/C 119/02; European Commission, 2012).

The Conservative Modernisation Agenda in Federal Reform At the beginning of the 2010s, the conservative modernisation reform agenda had also penetrated the Spanish regulatory framework with a new federal ERA, approved by the government of Spain, in the hands of the conservative Popular Party since 2011 (LOMCE, 2013). This federal law, among other changes, promoted managerial forms of school autonomy and the professionalisation of schools’ management teams. It also shielded the public-private partnership scheme by establishing the obligation for the state to subsidise private schools if there is demand for them. And it advanced the creation of a national assessment framework and encouraged the publication of schools’ test scores to inform parental choice (Bernal & Vázquez, 2013; Parcerisa, 2016). The reform also gave full academic validity to the teaching of religion,6 leaned for the recentralisation of the curriculum, and attempted to reduce the use of regional languages in schools as the language of instruction. Another main ‘curricular battle’ consisted in the Spanish government trying to monopolise the content of subjects such as history and geography, since it considered that some regional governments were using their curricular autonomy to promote a biased version of history and generate disaffection with Spain. The Minister of Education at that time, José Ignacio Wert, made a famous statement in the Spanish parliament in which stated that the reform was intended to ‘Hispanicise’ Catalan children.7 To contextualise these controversies, this was the era in which tensions between Catalonia and Spain had started to accentuate. The Catalan conservative party started to embrace pro-­ independence ideas for the first time under the argument that, in the context of the financial crisis, independence would drive economic prosperity. The Popular Party—which had a marginal presence in the Catalan Parliament—did not have any interest in defusing the conflict because it received substantive electoral gains in Spain by repressing any claims of self-government in Catalonia. The LOMCE (2013) reform was highly controversial. Not only did all parties in the opposition vote against it, including all Catalan parties in the Spanish Parliament (see Table 8.1), but it was also contested by many civil society actors and by a large part of the educational community—including the most representative teachers’ unions. The Catalan government was critical of the reform, especially with the curricular and linguistic changes implied. However, it also spotted in some aspects of the reform an opportunity to continue transforming schools’ governance along the lines of the ‘conservative modernisation’ agenda. The approval of the

 To do so, it incorporated grades in religion into the students’ academic record.  See https://elpais.com/sociedad/2012/10/10/actualidad/1349859896_604912.html.

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above-mentioned ‘staffing decree’ that reinforces the role of school principals as chief of staff is a good example of the opportunities that the new federal regulatory framework offered to reinforce school-based management in Catalonia.

 tage 4: Governing Schools Through Pedagogic Innovation S (2016–Ongoing) A Bottom-Up Initiative that Became a Core Public Policy In this last stage, still in progress, public education policy in Catalonia has placed an unusual emphasis on discussing pedagogy and instructional improvement under the umbrella of educational innovation. In fact, some of the most emblematic managerial instruments of the previous period, such as the auditing of underperforming schools, pro-school choice measures, and the evaluation of teachers’ productivity, have been either abandoned or reframed using the language of innovation. The rapid innovation shift in Catalan education policy has been produced by the Department of Education in the hands of the left-wing nationalist party, which governs in coalition with a new political party that includes the pro-independence faction of the former Catalan conservative party.8 This policy shift was forged in 2016, when an alliance between a Catalan NGO associated with UNESCO, a private foundation that promotes equity in education, the philanthropic organization of a bank, and an online university launched the Escola Nova 21 program (EN21), an initiative that aimed to function as a ‘catalyst’ to modernise the Catalan educational system and align it with the so-called ‘21st century skills’ framework (e.g., Saavedra & Opfer, 2012). The program advocated for a radical change in a system that was portrayed as pedagogically outdated and in urgent need of a clearer focus on competence-based teaching practices and assessment. The EN21 pedagogic discourse also stressed the importance of schools engaging in the adoption of the necessary organisational changes to put children at the centre of learning processes, and the importance of enacting school autonomy in all areas—pedagogical, managerial, and organisational. The program relied on the idea that ‘good innovation practices’—drawn from a core group of already ‘advanced’ both public and private subsidised schools—could be disseminated across the system by means of school networks (Vallory, 2019). The launch and initial steps of the initiative were strongly endorsed by the local media and loud-voiced throughout the educational community, with almost 500 schools from all over Catalonia—representing 25% of the total—applying to join the program during its first year. Different conjunctural factors intervened in EN21 gaining this unprecedented momentum. To start with, the severe budget cuts in  As we were writing this chapter, in October 2022 the coalition of nationalist parties governing Catalonia broke up, leaving only the left-wing party in the coalition to govern alone. 8

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education, which were particularly impactful in teacher professional development, contributed to EN21 gaining legitimacy by generating numerous spaces for pedagogic debate and training among teachers. Furthermore, in those years, the political tensions between the Catalan and Spanish governments had exacerbated, with the Catalan government unilaterally organising an independence referendum, and the Spanish government decided to stop such event from happening by all means.9 During this turbulent period, the public action of the Catalan government was monopolised by the territorial conflict, and thus, sectoral policies such as education were totally side-lined. Worth noting, the Catalan Minister of Education at that time resigned, only to be substituted by a new minister with the single purpose of opening the schools as vote centres for holding the independence referendum. This policy vacuum left by the Catalan government opened a window of opportunity for non-governmental actors such as EN21 to engage in education policymaking and gain visibility. From its inception, the EN21 program drew on transnational educational discourses and international organisations’ recommendations. The program responded to UNESCO’s call for the participation of all sectors in an “inclusive process of improving education”.10 Apart from the Incheon Declaration, which was unusually referenced in an industrialised country, one of the international documents more frequently cited was UNESCO’s Rethinking Education, which urged policymakers to redefine “the purpose of education and the organisation of learning” (UNESCO, 2015, p.  10). However, to operationalise how innovation should be understood and achieved, EN21 mainly relied on OECD sources. Of particular relevance was the Innovative Learning Environments report (OECD, 2015), which developed an actionable framework for innovative organisations aimed at raising school performance and improving equity in education systems. EN21 also forged its raison d’être, as well as argued for its viability, by arguing that its proposal fits well within the prevailing Catalan regulatory framework, and particularly with the school autonomy and leadership policy promoted by LEC (2009) and the competence-­based curriculum approved in 2015. In 2017, while EN21 was in full swing, the Catalan Department of Education published a document attempting to conceptualise innovation in education along the lines of competence-based and student-centred learning (Departament d’Ensenyament, 2017). Not content with assuming EN21’s discourse, by the end of 2019, the Education Department absorbed the entire EN21 program and, since then, ‘educational innovation’ consolidated as a flagship educational policy. The Department’s political priority in this period has consisted in achieving ‘the transformation of the system’, advanced particularly through innovation programs aimed at reworking schools’ educational projects, fostering networking between schools, and through open calls to officially certify teachers’ and schools’ innovative  The referendum ended up being carried out on October the first 2017, but it was harshly repressed. See: https://www.cnn.com/2017/10/01/europe/catalonia-spain-independence-referendum-result/ index.html. 10  https://www.escolanova21.cat/escola-nova-21-en. 9

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practices. It is worth noting that the innovation turn is advanced by different administrative units within the Catalan Department of Education, which have been renamed after the innovation and transformation mottos in an arguably performative tour de force. The administrative unit in charge of the curriculum, for instance, has also been allocated under the general directorate for innovation.11 Apart from educational innovation, other areas of intervention have been school inclusion (Decree 150/2017) and distributing vulnerable students more evenly across publicly funded schools (Decree 11/2021). The Department also aims to re-­ launch the idea of creating an independent education evaluation agency, promoting digitalisation, and launching a teachers’ induction program as a way of instilling ‘new teaching methodologies’—i.e., student-centred, competence-based—and signalling new forms of school organisation—i.e., schools as learning organisations. School inspection processes have also been revisited to better accommodate the innovation mandate, and the promotion of ‘innovation plans’ among low-­performing schools. Against this background, school-based staff recruitment, as contemplated in the 2014 staffing decree, is considered essential to enable principals to build more cohesive teaching teams, an allegedly necessary condition for schools to sustain educational innovation approaches in time. Notably, however, the promotion of school autonomy through different innovation programs and legislative initiatives faces bureaucratic and political obstacles. The enactment of school autonomy regarding staffing decisions is challenging not only because it fits unwell with the governance tradition in public schools, but also because some schools perceive it as administratively cumbersome, it meets regulatory barriers and legal complaints, and the recent massive stabilisation of teaching staff – mandated by the EU – reduces principals’ margin to choose from the pool of temporary workers.12 Furthermore, recent innovation interventions are challenging the very idea of teacher autonomy because of their strict prescription of the appropriate teaching methods. Thus, the fact that ‘innovative’ pedagogies are being intensively conceptualised, legislated and somehow standardised contributes to some teachers perceiving their professional autonomy as increasingly constrained. This is especially the case among secondary school teachers, who have a more academic discipline-based background and are more inclined to use teacher-centred pedagogies.

 See https://educacio.gencat.cat/ca/inici/nota-premsa/20220331-decret-reestructuracio.  See, for instance, https://diarieducacio.cat/el-tsjc-anulla-alguns-articles-del-decret-de-plantillesque-el-departament-considera-que-regulen-­temes-menors/?hilite=decret+plantilles. 11 12

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 e-aligning Education Policy, But Tensions Between Catalonia R and Spain Do Not Vanish The passing of the latest federal ERA in Spain in 2020 by a progressive government coalition has decompressed the tensions between the Catalan and Spanish governments in education (LOMLOE, 2020). The new federal ERA, among other characteristics, encourages a more ambitious approach to competence-based education in the curriculum, multidisciplinary and innovative approaches in education, and favours stricter regulation of private education—which are all, as we saw, policy priorities of the Catalan government. In addition, religion, as a subject, has stopped counting for the average grade of the academic record. The progressive coalition governing Spain is also more open to linguistic diversity in the education domain. It considers that all students in Spain have the right to be taught both in Spanish and in other co-official languages, but does not impose Spanish as the vehicular language of instruction. However, rather than disappearing, the linguistic conflict has moved from the government to the legal sphere. Instigated by Spanish nationalist right-wing parties in the opposition through lawfare and, in fact, based on the interpretation of the new ERA, the Catalan Supreme Court has ruled in favour of an increase in teaching hours in Spanish—something that the Catalan government and many other key stakeholders see as a frontal attack on the Catalan linguistic model, in place since the 1980s. In response, the Catalan government has required higher levels of Catalan language qualifications for teachers, and the enactment of more sophisticated linguistic plans and linguistic coordination tasks in schools. As summarised in Table 8.2, this specific conflict in language affairs contrasts with the absence of tensions and contradictions in other dimensions of educational governance regulations between Catalonia and Spain. In relation to school autonomy, accountability, instruction, and curriculum, contemporary policy—but also in previous stages—in Catalonia is strongly aligned with the Spanish education regulatory framework, as well as with international recommendations on educational reform.

Conclusions Sui Generis Spanish Federalism and Education Policy Spain’s incomplete decentralisation process—or, as Erk and Gagnon (2000) call it, sui generis federalism—has important implications for educational governance and policy. The quasi-federal structure offers a singular topography for educational politics and educational reform, which acquire a specific dynamic in a context characterised by a long history of territorial tensions, as the one analysed in this chapter. When analysing the education policy trajectory of Catalonia, within the broader Spanish educational context, we have identified different reform stages in which the

Structural reforms (1980-2000)

High reform fidelity and low-level of political conflict in education until 1996, when tensions over the curriculum and language of instruction emerge

Adoption of Catalan as language of instruction

Alignment in school governance and provision policies

Decentralisation process in public administration Adoption and expansion of the PPP in school provision

Alignment in overarching school governance policies

Spanish conservatives bring the Catalan ERA to court

Areas of alignment: the Catalan government applies strict budget cuts in education as encouraged by Spanish regulations and the EU, and reinforces school leadership, as also contemplated in the new Spanish ERA

Areas of conflict: Spanish conservatives recentralised education and diminished regions’ competencies in curriculum policy; language of instruction re-emerges as an arena of struggle

Catalan reform act adopts and develops concepts and instruments included in the Spanish legal framework, such as school autonomy and evaluation, and impinges them with a NPM emphasis

Incremental territorial conflict Very severe financial crisis and austerity policies

Catalan Conservatives (2010-2015)

PP (2010-2018)

Conservative modernisation agenda (2010-2015)

Approval of a new Catalan Statute of Autonomy in 2006, which was highly contested by the Spanish conservatives – in the opposition

Progressive coalition (2003-2010)

PSOE (2004-2010)

New Public Management (2000-2010)

Conservative party (PP) (1996-2004)

Catalan conservatives (1980-2003)

Social-democratic party (PSOE) (1982-1996)

Source: Own elaboration

Multi-level interactions in education -

Events influencing the politics of education

Catalan government

Spanish government

Ruling parties:

Stage:

Table 8.2  Educational policy trajectories and relationship between Spain and Catalonia

The innovation emphasis of Catalan education policy finds echo in new federal regulations on the curriculum

Education policies realign, but conflict over language of instruction continues through lawfare

Higher level of political dialogue since the progressive coalition took over in Spain

Burst of territorial conflict. Catalan government holding an independence referendum in 2017 forbidden by the Spanish state

Pro-independence bipartisan coalition (2015-ongoing)

Progressive Coalition (2018-ongoing)

Innovation as school policy (2016ongoing)

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main policy emphases and priorities vary. With the turn of the millennium, Catalonia became an early adopter of policies on school autonomy, accountability, and competence-­based curriculum within the Spanish context, and, more recently, it has actively promoted innovative teaching methods at compulsory education levels. This policy trajectory has been shaped by the complex interaction between Catalan and Spanish regulatory efforts in a context in which the division of competencies is ambiguous and constantly negotiated. Nonetheless, these scalar tensions do not necessarily result in diverging policy approaches. Policies on school autonomy, evaluation, leadership, and competence-based education have been contemplated in—and, in fact, encouraged by—the Spanish legislative framework since the 1990s. The singularity of Catalan education policy within the Spanish system relies more on pioneering the instrumentation and calibration of these policy ideas - and on the NPM emphasis that impinges on them – rather than on offering an alternative policy approach to school governance. In education, the conflict between the Catalan government(s) and the Spanish state mainly crystallises in the domain of the language of instruction and, at specific junctures, in relation to politically sensitive curricular contents. However, the educational conflict is mainly tangible when the interlocutor in Spain is a government in the hands of the conservative Partido Popular – although, it is worth noting that this party, in several occasions, has also been able to tense Catalan education policy through lawfare even when in the opposition (see Table 8.2). The evolution of the Catalan conservative party’s role in federal education reform is illustrative of the main triggers of territorial cooperation and conflict in Spanish education. The Catalan conservatives, together with the Spanish conservatives, supported the first Federal ERA of the democratic period in what was a natural alliance to promote freedom of instruction and private/religious schooling. However, soon after, the Catalan conservatives distanced themselves from the Spanish conservatives and got closer to the education reforms of the Spanish social democrats. Despite the latter tend to introduce stricter regulations for private schools and limit the presence of religious education—something that apparently goes against conservative ideals—, they are also more open to territorial and linguistic diversity. The Catalan conservative party has thus given priority to the territorial cleavage over the ideological cleavage in federal education debates and turned its back to the reforms the Spanish conservatives have unfruitfully attempted in the last two decades (see Table 8.1).

A Policy Trajectory in Constant Search of Singularity The current education policy framework in Catalonia is the result of the layering of different policy instruments that do not always fit easily. Some policy ideas have been tried but selectively enacted or soon abandoned for governments to join the next trend. However, instead of being replaced, the instruments in question remain in the regulatory framework for an eventual reframed revival. In the latest reform

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stage identified, ‘educational innovation’ has become a catch-all policy program that allows the Catalan government to promote school-level changes through broadly engaging and normatively desirable, yet more discursive than well-­ resourced. In this process, the Catalan government, together with other key stakeholders—including non-state actors, which have played an unusual and unprecedented role in agenda-setting —have actively engaged with international policy discourses and networks to build legitimacy. The escalation of the political conflict between the Catalan and the Spanish governments in the mid-2010s had an important indirect effect in the promotion of educational change and, in turn, in the singularisation of Catalan education policy. By monopolising the political attention and reducing governmental action on education policy to the minimum, the territorial conflict opened a wide political opportunity window that a non-governmental campaign advocating pedagogic innovation took advantage of. This critical juncture contributed to education policy in Catalonia taking a new course of action. At this juncture, an NPM trajectory—which was already more erratic and politically contingent than incremental—deviated towards a scenario in which educational innovation has been portrayed as both the main goal of educational reform and the key solution to main educational problems. The contemporary emphasis on educational innovation does not represent a path-departing policy change but rather an ingenious exercise of bricolage between ideas and concepts coming from the management, governance, and pedagogic fields. In fact, the emphasis on educational innovation provides the Education Department with a renewed policy framework to continue along the path of some of the NPM ideas embraced with the first Catalan ERA (LEC, 2009), such as school autonomy in hiring teachers, management by objectives, and professionalised school leadership, in a way that might be more sound to the teaching community. This bricolage between the management and pedagogic fields in turn contributes to reinforcing the singularity of Catalan education reform within the Spanish context. Nonetheless, this trajectory may soon shift towards new horizons. One the one hand, pedagogic innovation has emerged as a key component of the federal government’s current curricular policy. This shift favours a closer alignment between the Spanish and Catalan education policy frameworks. In fact, if this new curricular policy successfully promotes pedagogic innovation as a desirable standard, it could attenuate the singularity of Catalan education policy in the instruction domain. On the other hand, innovation, as a school governance approach, is meeting increasing opposition, and not only from conservative parties. Educational experts and teachers’ unions advocating traditional (teacher-centred) forms of teaching and more discipline in the classroom have gained unusual popularity—especially among secondary education teachers. Teachers’ opposition to the innovation push can also be interpreted—and some have expressed it this way—as a consequence of an accumulation of excessive top-down government interventionism in core areas of the educational process, which is something that directly contradicts the very idea of school autonomy. The emergence of an anti-innovation coalition is challenging what appeared to be a consensus in the field of education—i.e., the desirability of competence-based curriculum and active learning methods. Future research needs

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to analyse how this new source of conflict is politically managed and with which implications for future policy developments. Indeed, depending on how the conflict is addressed, certain meanings and forms of school autonomy will prevail over others, and this can have long-term implications for both the teaching profession and the trajectory of educational policy.

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Part IV

National Cases: Central & Eastern Europe and the Western Balkans

Chapter 9

School Policy and Reforms in Poland in the Light of Decentralisation: Between Democratisation and Centralisation Joanna Madalińska-Michalak

Abstract  The chapter discusses various aspects of school policy and reforms in Poland since 1945 with particular emphasis placed on a number of profound changes in the system that started with the political transformation (the fall of the communist regime) in 1989. The discussions especially focus on school policy and reforms in Poland in the light of the decentralisation of education that emerged from this, as yet, incomplete transformation. The historical complexities and diversity of Polish school policy and reforms are central to the analyses presented. After a series of radical reforms made in the 1990s, a decade of more evolutionary changes followed – a decade in which more emphasis was placed on developing practical solutions within the existing frameworks of the system rather than root and branch revision. But the deeper reform tendencies have not gone away. Consequently, within current school policy and reforms we find tensions relating to changing normative imperatives of political power as these reflect in the process of education in schools. The findings of the analysis presented indicate that after 30 years of transformation the system of education in Poland is currently neither fully democratic (despite the fact that since the beginning of the 1990s, at least in a discursive aspect, it was heading in this direction), or fully centralised – thanks to an ongoing decentralisation of the structure of the units responsible for functioning of schools. Keywords  Decentralisation of education · Funding of education · Governance · Reforms in Poland · School policy

J. Madalińska-Michalak (*) University of Warsaw, Warsaw, Poland e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. B. Krejsler, L. Moos (eds.), School Policy Reform in Europe, Educational Governance Research 22, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-35434-2_9

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Introduction Decentralisation is a complex, multi-faceted phenomenon. The specific forms that decentralisation should take to be beneficial will vary across countries with different, political, social, historical, cultural, institutional, and fiscal characteristics. Discussions on decentralisation of public services – including the decentralisation of education – point to both benefits relating to adopting a decentralized model of governance, as well as associated risks, myths, and challenges (Proudhomme, 1995; Smoke, 2003). The role of decentralisation was unique in the countries undergoing post-­ communist transformation due to the fact that autonomous local authorities “were restituted in these countries only at the beginning of the 1990s, as a part of the fundamental political project of rolling back the compromised governing institutions and empowering local leadership” (Herbst & Wojciuk, 2017, p. 121). Like many countries in Europe and around the world, Poland has sought to create or strengthen subnational governments in recent years. From the fall of communism in 1989 to the year 2000, Poland handed democratically elected local governments the responsibility for managing 35,000 kindergartens, elementary school and secondary schools. At the same time, the government substantially changed the structure of education, reformed the principles of management and the manner of its financing. These changes, as presented below, took place quickly despite difficult economic conditions then affecting Polish education and the country as a whole (Levitas & Herczyński, 2012, p. 55). In this chapter various aspects of educational policy and practice in Poland since 1945 are analysed. This helps to provide a more nuanced look at the emerging system that better takes into account the complexities and diversity of Polish educational policies, in the longer view. Arguably, the legacy of a socialist past and exposure to Western ideologies led to the specific models of educational policy and practice that have been developed. The considerations presented in this chapter offer a view into the profound changes in a number of core aspects of education in Poland, including the structure, organization, governance, school supervision, funding systems, and teacher autonomy  – all seen in the light of the decentralisation of the education system that started in 1989. The documentary and materials foci of the analysis are the official regulations constituting the shape and functioning of the school system, available data sets relating to the education system in Poland, as well as scientific reports and analyses relating to the state of the Polish education system.

Poland: A Contextualization Poland as a country situated in Central-Eastern Europe has had a unique socio-­ political experience under the post-war domination of the Soviet Union and during its more recent post-Communist transition. In Poland, as in other former Soviet

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Bloc countries, profound changes regarding political, social and economic transformation began in earnest in 1989. The first free and democratic elections were held in 1991. A shift to the principles of a modern European democracy, based on human rights and the market economy, affected the State, society and individual citizens. The rebirth of parliamentary democracy led to the creation of many political parties and the development of independent mass media. The decentralisation of public authority continued along with the local reforms. The introduction of the market economy limited State intervention in the economy and, crucially, initiated systemic restructuring and an associated privatization processes. In the 1990s Poland chose a path leading to closer integration with Western Europe and the geopolitical West, more generally. In 1991 the State became a member of the Council of Europe and concluded an Association Agreement with the European Community, which was ratified by the Accession Treaty signed in Athens on 16 April 2003. Poland’s cooperation with the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) was initiated in 1989 as a part of expert assistance in the process of transformation of the Polish economy system. In 1991 Poland, alongside Hungary and the Czech and Slovak Federal Republic, was included in the OECD Partners in Transition programme, which resulted in technical assistance during the implementation of socio-economic changes in the country. Poland signed the OECD Convention on 22 November 1996. When Poland joined the OECD, the institutional framework of the Polish economy was gaining maturity. At that time, OECD membership was for Poland more a sign of confidence in the country’s potential than a confirmation of institutional efficiency in different sectors. The Polish affiliation to the group of developed countries in OECD had special significance for the transforming economy and the emerging democratic structures. In the face of growing economic interrelations between countries and progressing globalisation, involvement in the work of OECD resulted in acquiring relevant experience for the enhancement of cooperation by Poland with other countries and groupings. The acquired practices have been especially valuable in the process of Polish integration with the European Union. The Polish education system between 1961 and 1990 could be characterized as societally conservative and command economy focussed. Essentially the system prized the primacy of collective education over individual education. It valorised information (understood as a set of facts) over skills, framed teaching by academic areas, assumed only a limited educational role for the school, lacked partnership with the pupils’ home, and  – above all  – championed narrow-specialization and long-duration vocational training. The achievements of education in Poland noted in the first two decades of the twenty-first century were connected with a series of education reforms that began in the late 1990s and challenged almost every aspect of education system. Polish education policy has been being influenced profoundly by contacts and collaboration with partners in the West and such international organisations as the Council of Europe, the European Union, the OECD, and the World Bank (see: Białecki et al., 2017). From 2004 on, following Polish accession to the European

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Union (EU) education policy in the country has been elevated to a priority on the reform agenda. OECD and EU recommendations have been invariably taken into account by the Polish government in the process of reforming the education system over the past two decades. For example, the key policy issues that have been highlighted by OECD indicated that Poland should continue its efforts to: (i) increase participation in early childhood education, particularly in rural areas to improve equity in education; (ii) reduce the skills mismatch in the labour market and continue to strengthen its VET system, while further increasing numeracy and literacy skills of adults and strengthening adult learning; (iv) improve conditions for teachers and support their professional development to enable them to apply innovative practices and provide individualised support to students, particularly disadvantaged students; (v) facilitate evidence-informed policy development based on various sources of information; (vi) build capacity at all levels of administration; and (vii) foster equity and quality in higher education (OECD, 2015, p. 4). Regarding these key issues, it is possible to observe a lot of significant policy responses that embody OECD and EU recommendations. Starting in 2009, the age of entry into primary education was progressively lowered from 7 to 6. Entry into primary education at age 6 became compulsory in 2015. Enrolment in early childhood education became compulsory for 5-year-olds in 2011. Fees for pre-primary education were limited. To strengthen the VET system, several reforms and initiatives were implemented. The radical and far-reaching curriculum reform of 2008 and modernisation of the national qualifications framework and fostering closer links with employers were also introduced against the backdrop of such recommendations. Performance in reading, mathematics and science has been rising across Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) cycles for more than a decade. Poland achieved above-average scores in mathematics, reading and science in PISA 2012. The impact of students’ socio-economic status on mathematics scores (16.6%) was around the OECD average (14.8%). Literacy and numeracy proficiency among adults (16–65 year-olds) was below the average of OECD countries participating in the 2013 OECD Survey of Adult Skills, while younger adults (16–24 year-olds) performed at around the OECD average in numeracy and above the OECD average in literacy. Poland has achieved one of the best results in Europe in terms of participation of young people aged 15–24 in education at the ISCED 1–6 levels (from primary education to doctorate programmes), the number of young people holding upper secondary qualifications, and the reduction in the number of early school leavers, which was one of the key objectives of the Europe 2020 strategy. Between 2000 and 2011 Poland made the most rapid progress in the EU with regard to increasing the number of young adults holding higher education qualifications in the 30–34 age group. Taking into account data from the PISA 2015, the National Skills Strategy Project for Poland has been developed. This project showed that even though Poland’s youth performed relatively well in the school year, and an increasing number

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completed tertiary education, Poland  – like much of the developed world  – still faces several challenges regarding complex skills. Three main themes emerged from the background work towards the Strategy: (i) Equipping students with skills for the future; (ii) Developing a culture of lifelong learning in Poland, and (iii) Strengthening co-ordination between governments. On the basis of data from the PISA 2015 and the National Skills Strategy for Poland, the OECD and the Government of Poland identified four priority areas for improving Poland’s skills performance: (1) Making the education system more responsive to labour market needs; (2) Fostering greater participation in adult learning of all forms; (3) Strengthening the use of skills in Polish workplaces; (4) Strengthening the governance of the skills system in Poland (see: OECD, 2019).

The Polish Education System: Key Figures and Legislation The organisation of education in Poland centres on a school education system that covers preschool/pre-primary education to post-secondary non-tertiary education, and a higher education system that covers university and other third tertiary provision. Each aspect is governed by separate legislation. Childcare institutions for children aged 0–3 years (including crèches, kids clubs, and day-cares), are supervised by the Minister of Family and Social Policy and are not part of the formal education system. Additionally, there is no single or integrated adult education system.

Key Figures In the school year 2019/2020 there were 25,895 schools registered in Poland, comprising 20,494 public and 5401 non-public schools across the school system. In these schools there were 4,893,386 pupils. Of these 4,380,404 pupils (90%) were in public schools. and the balance in private institutions. In 2019, a total of 621,409 teachers were employed in public schools, of which 509,315 were female (82% of the total). As elsewhere, women working in teaching positions were therefore in the vast majority and this applies to all levels of school education – formal and informal. The disproportion between women and men working in the profession was highest at the pre-school level, where women accounted for as much as 98% of all teachers employed. The average age of teachers in Polish school education institutions in 2019 was 45 years (Madalińska-Michalak, 2021, pp. 73–74). In the academic year 2019/2020 there were 392 higher education institutions, including 130 public and 262 private higher education institutions. There were 93,139 academic teachers, with 82,759 (89%) academic teachers in public higher education institutions and 10,380 (11%) academic teachers in private/non-public ones. There were 1,230,254 students in first-, second- and long-cycle programmes, and 39,269 students in third-cycle programmes (GUS, 2019).

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Key Legislation The post-communist period of political transformation has brought about new legislation, which has become the basis for changes in education at all levels and across all sectors. The main legal basis for the school education and higher education systems is provided by the Constitution of the Republic of Poland, adapted 2 April 1997. Its provisions referring to fundamental freedoms and citizens’ rights state that every person has the right to education and education is compulsory until the age of 18 (Art. 70). The obligation to continue education until the age of 18 is met either in school (full-time compulsory education) or non-school settings (part-time compulsory education). Education in public schools and higher education institutions (HEIs) is free of charge and parents are free to choose schools other than public ones for their children.1 The Constitution of the Republic of Poland (1997) guarantees that public authorities ensure universal and equal access to education and, to this end, the state provides financial and organizational support to pupils and students, regardless of sector. Citizens and institutions have the right to establish primary, lower secondary, upper secondary and post-secondary schools, as well as the Higher Education Institutions and childcare centres. The school education system and higher education system is governed by Acts of Parliament and Regulations overseen, in particular, by the Ministry of Education and Science (until October 2020, the Minister of National Education was responsible for school education and the Minister of Science and Higher Education for higher education). Essentially, in the light of the existing laws, institutions of higher education form a separate tertiary system or sector. The most recent tranche of reforms of the Polish school system has been underway since 1 September 2017. The main legislative instruments driving this are the Law on School Education and The Provision Enacting the Law on School Education. These now regulate all key aspects of Polish education from preschool to post-­ secondary education, including: the structure of the school education system; school governance and funding; matters related to the organisation of education and school curricula; admissions, assessment and certification; support for pupils; education for foreign nationals; and qualification requirements, employment conditions and professional promotion arrangements for teachers.

 In line with the educational law, schools can be of two types: public (state) schools, which offer free education within the framework of the core curricula, and non-public schools (the Education System Act of 7 September 1991 with further amendments). Non-public schools can be civic (community), church or private ones, and they are financed with fees received from parents. Funds can also come from private enterprises and foundations. Non-public schools with the rights of public schools are eligible for a grant calculated according to the number of pupils, which equals 100% of the average cost of educating those pupils in a public school. Non-public schools in Poland have the right to issue school certificates that are recognized by all other schools and by the universities. They may be distinguished from public schools by their individualized teaching programmes, and by a wider range of curriculum choice. 1

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Post-1989 Decentralisation and the Education System The purpose of this section is to take a closer look at the transfer of responsibility for education to local governments during the first decade of post-communist transformation in Poland (1989–2000). The centralized system of Polish education before 1989 is briefly discussed initially in order to contextualise both the motives for decentralising and the basic structural problems that local governments faced. After this introduction, the focus turns to the process of transferring responsibility for the different levels of education to the local governments and the tensions which emerged from this process in the context of democratisation and centralisation of the system of education in Poland.

The Legacy of the Past Between 1947 and 1990, Poland’s education policy was subordinated to the principles of central planning along with the entire national economy by the Polish United Workers’ Party (Polska Zjednoczona Partia Robotnicza, PZPR). In the 1950s, the PZPR attempted to increase the number of children of workers and “peasants” in general secondary schools and universities, in order to reduce the influence of the hitherto “bourgeoisie” in all areas of social life. Pupils from smallholder and agricultural labourer families and the families of industrial workers, received scholarships to attend high schools and were entitled to additional points “for origin” in university entrance exams. Above all, however, they created numerous narrowly specialized vocational schools for the training of workers based on the econometric calculations of 5-year plans (Levitas & Herczyński, 2012, p. 56). The Ministerstwo Oświaty (Ministry of Education) administered universities and primary and secondary schools through a network of provincial education offices – school superintendents, who set school budgets, hired teachers and school principals, exercised strict curricular and ideological control over teachers and schools. In the 1960s, the PZPR began to limit the increase in the number of students as, in its opinion, Poland did not need so many highly educated people. At the same time growing economic stagnation and waning revolutionary fervour meant that the party paid less attention to the number of socially disadvantaged students, and to supporting the education of children from neglected backgrounds. As a result, by the time the system collapsed, only 10% of rural children attended high schools (licea) and less than 5% of this category went on to receive a master’s degree (Golinowska & Rumińska-Zimny, 1998). Despite the PZPR’s instrumental approach to education, a number of mechanisms continued to positively influence the level of education in Poland. These include a tradition of competitive entrance exams to universities and secondary schools, the survival of pre-Second World War traditions in many teaching circles, and the relative opening of Poland to the West. Nevertheless, party propaganda

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distorted teaching (especially of history and literature), while the centralised establishment of school curricula and budgets did not leave much room for diversity and innovation at school or class level. This certainly excluded teachers from most opportunity to exercise autonomy over curricula and methods. At the end of the 1960s, Poland successfully extended of primary schooling to 8 years, but further plans for the introduction of 10-year schooling in 1973 did not succeed. This reform was formally abandoned in 1980 under pressure from Niezależny Samorządny Związek Zawodowy “Solidarność” (the Independent Self-­ Governing Trade Union “Solidarity”). Their demands for the full modernisation of the Polish educational system far outstripped the increasingly outmoded Ministry plans of the time. NSZZ Solidarność championed instead the need to simplify school administration, fully modernise the curricula and teaching methods, and to increase spending on education significantly. Moreover, it was emphasised that low teachers’ salaries had led to negative selection into the teaching profession (Bochwic, 2000) and that this needed to be addressed. It is worth noting that neither NSZZ Solidarność nor the PZPR saw a link between educational reform and decentralisation to local government. There was no historical justification for such a link. Even in the inter-war period Poland did not have a tradition of local government participation in school management. The conviction that local self-government was an indispensable element of the future democratic order did not have many supporters either. The link between school reform and local-government reform along with a related decentralisation of education provision and finance did not appear until the 1990s.

 he Politics of Decentralisation: The 1990 Reforms T and the Emergence of a Legal Basis for those Education Reform From February to April 1989, representatives of the PZPR and the NSZZ Solidarność held Round Table talks. The aim of the negotiations was to find a peaceful way out of the political and economic impasse in which Poland found itself. The negotiations covered all spheres of social and political life. At the educational sub-table, NSZZ Solidarność obtained the consent of the PZPR to the principle of ideological neutrality of schools and the weakening of state control over the education system. Teachers were given the right to choose textbooks, the subject “knowledge about society” (with its ideological programme) was removed from secondary school final exams, and parents and teachers gained the right to establish independent community schools. As a compromise between the demands of NSZZ Solidarność (school principals being elected by teachers) and the party’s aspirations (leaving the selection in the hands of school superintendents), it was agreed the creation of independent competition committees to select school principals. The government promised to radically increase spending on education: from 4% to 7% of GDP. It is worth noting that this promise was never fulfilled. Neither side

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argued for raising the role of local governments in education, and the work of the sub-tablets on education and local governments were not finalised during the negotiations. The main result of the Round Table talks was the historic agreement on conducting partially free elections to the Sejm (the Polish parliament) in June 1989, the re-­ registration of NSZZ Solidarność, as well as the secret agreement that guaranteed irrespective of the election results any incoming government would not burden the party with criminal responsibility for the communist period (the so-called policy of “thick dash”). In September 1989, the NSZZ Solidarność camp formed the first non-communist Polish government since the Second World War. On the basis of new legislation and in a move that few commentators say coming, responsibility for education was transferred to local authorities because NSZZ Solidarność saw decentralisation as the fastest way to dismantle the communist state. The subsequent educational reform was, therefore, shaped by two opposing aspirations. On the one hand, the reformers sought to transfer ownership and financial responsibility for schools to local governments in order to break the power of the old political apparatus. On the other hand, they tried to retain central control over education to radically reform curricula and teaching methods (Bochwic, 2000; Żurek, 2000). Essentially, the proposed institutional and structural reform was in tension with the ideational aspects – with predictable enough results. The early 1990s saw the first serious debate within the NSZZ Solidarność camp about the transfer of education to municipalities. The Municipal Self-Government Act and the Act on the Distribution of Tasks and Powers Specified in Specific Acts came to defined public education as a municipality task. The ownership rights to school buildings and control over school finances were to be transferred to municipalities, which was confirmed in 1991 by the Education System Act of that year. In response to the demands of education reformers, the taking over of primary education by municipalities was postponed until 1993. Until then, municipalities had the right to take over on a voluntary basis some or all of their primary schools, and some or all of their secondary schools. Legal articles and agreement around principals of subsidisation guaranteed that municipalities would finance schools taken over in the form of a subsidy for municipality tasks, determined in accordance with the principles adopted for the calculation of financial resources for this type of institutions financed from the state budget. In particular, Article 13 of the Distribution of Tasks and Powers Specified in Specific Acts covered the revenue obligations of municipalities and the principles of this subsidisation. The municipalities were also expected to finance the maintenance of kindergartens and, in addition, transport of children to schools, from their own revenues and without targeted support from the central budget. The justification for the different treatment of pre-schools and primary schools was the fact that compulsory education included schools, while parents were not obliged to send their children to kindergartens. In reality, local governments were obliged by law to provide pre-school care for all six-year-olds. Education specialists were strongly opposed to imposing on the municipalities the obligation to finance kindergartens from their own

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revenues, as they feared that local governments would underestimate the importance of education of the youngest. In line with the role of the Ministry, the new Education System Act of 1991 strengthened the control of the Ministry of Education over the school superintendence system. It also confirmed the right of the school superintendencies to inspect the conditions in schools, to analyse the effectiveness of teaching and make recommendations to school principals. In fact, the superintendencies were given the right to make recommendations not only to school principals, but also to local governments if, in their opinion, local government schools were not functioning in accordance with the law or were not providing students with proper education. The tasks of school self-governments were limited to the management and financing of schools, with the right to finance additional educational offer. Local governments could not directly interfere in the pedagogical decision-making of school principals. Moreover, they did not obtain the right to hire or even unilaterally dismiss principals. In accordance with the Round Table, the law mandated the creation of independent competition committees to select school directors for five-year terms. As a result, school principals were (and still are today) formally appointed to their position and paid by local governments, but are not elected by them. These solutions were enshrined in the Education System Act (1991).

 he Necessity for Comprehensive Reform of the School T Education System in the 90s The government of Jerzy Buzek took a hard look at reforming the state structures and public administration arrangements of Poland. On 1 January 1999 four major reforms were introduced, substantially changing the structure of healthcare, education, the pension system, and local government administration. The extent of the changes and the fact that all four reforms were initiated on the same day can be considered as representing a symbolic final step in the Polish socio-political and economic transition which had started in 1989. The most important reasons underlying the necessity to carry out a comprehensive reform of the Polish education system in 90s included the following: (i) the lack of capacity within the education system to adapt to the pace and scope of economic, social and cultural change; (ii) a crisis in the educational role of the school resulting from the lingering predominance of the transmission of information over the development of skills, competences and the shaping of personality; (iii) the lack of equal opportunities for gaining access to education for all at all its levels, and the low percentage of young people completing secondary and higher education; (iv) the necessity to adapt the education system to the provisions of the Constitution and the system reform of the State; (v) the necessity to adapt vocational education to the changing needs of the market economy; and (vi) the need to establish closer links

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between schools at all levels and the family, as well as the local community (Michalak, 2005, p. 141). The objectives of the school reforms were formulated as follows: (i) to decentralise education, (ii) to raise the level of education in society through the dissemination of secondary and higher education, (iii) to provide equal educational opportunities, (iv) to foster the improvement of the quality of education understood as an integral process of upbringing and education, (v) to reduce the number of young people attending basic vocational schools, and (vi) to increase the number of students in secondary schools (MEN, 1999). Such objectives were in accordance to the key policy issues that were formulated by OECD for Poland in order to improve quality and equity of the system of education in Poland (OECD, 2015).

Schools Policy and School Education System Reforms in the 90s The general shift from government to governance in Poland has been seen as the result of new public management policies that Poland, like most OECD countries, introduced in the wake of the neoliberal reform movement of the 1990s. This shift created a new role for the state, new ways of regulating the education system, and new tools for generating, or alleviating, reform pressure. The school reforms introduced on this basis featured a decentralisation of decision-making authority from the central to the local level in Poland – particularly as this related to financing and restructuring. The principal reference points for the reforms were the solutions observed in the other countries. Additionally, a special role was ascribed to the OECD which emerged as an increasingly important source of expertise and authority for the Polish government when planning and making the socio-economic reforms in the 90s. Within education, the flagship legislation for this radical reconstitution was the Education System Act of 7 September 1991, with subsequent amendments to its Article 2. Completing the reforms was to be assisted by the introduction of a new schooling system from the school year 1999/2000. The system comprised pre-­ school education for children aged 3–5/6 years (organised into kindergartens, pre-­ school classes in primary schools and other pre-school settings, including pre-school units and pre-school centres),2 6-year primary schooling3 (ISCED 1), 3-year  For children aged 3–4 pre-school education has been voluntary and was subject to parental decision. In 2010/2011 the attendance rate for children aged 3 amounted to 49.8% and those aged 4 to 64.1%. The increase in the participation of children in pre-school education was one of the government’s priorities (GUS, 2012, pp. 58–61). Therefore, since 1 September 2004 a one-year compulsory preschool education for six-year-old children has been introduced, and as of 1 September 2012 this compulsory education also applied to five-year-old children (the Act on Education System of 7 September 1991 with further amendments, 2004, Article 14). 3  General education in primary school was divided into two stages: (i) the first stage of education including grade 1–3 of primary school (early school education), and (ii) the second stage of education including grades 4–6 of primary school. 2

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gimnazjum providing lower secondary schooling (ISCED 2), and then pathways that allowed 3-year (upper secondary) basic vocational schooling or 3-year general upper secondary schooling and/or 4-year technical upper secondary schooling (ISCED 3). This was supplemented by 1- to 2.5-year post-secondary schools (ISCED 4). Under this broader service reform agenda, the principal education system reforms proceeded in two stages: –– Stage 1: primary schooling was shortened to 6  years and the new gimnazjum model providing 3-year lower secondary school was introduced to prepare more pupils for upper secondary education. –– Stage 2: the attendance requirement for all secondary schooling was reduced by 1 year. At the same time, these schools (general secondary schools and the vast majority of secondary vocational schools) were to be transformed into new specialised secondary schools that complemented and supplemented the work of the new gimnazjum arrangements. It is worth noting that before 1999 there was no distinction in the Polish education system between lower and upper secondary schooling. Lower secondary schooling was included in the 8-year single secondary structure. Under the new arrangements, gimnazjum offered 3-years, full-time general lower secondary education for pupils who have completed the reformed 6-year primary schooling. It was compulsory for all pupils, and it covered grades 1–3 (pupils aged 13–16). The gimnazjum experience concluded with an external exam giving access to upper secondary education. The introduction of this lower secondary level obviously necessitated the restructuring of the upper secondary school system (ISCED 3). It was argued that the creation of the new level of lower secondary school aligned the Polish school system with the similar school systems of other well developed economically countries.

Governance and School Supervision The reform of the State administration system4 and the post-1999 education structural reforms resulted in the devolution of all duties and responsibilities relating to the administration of education and the running of schools, pre-school institutions and other educational establishments to the local level. Only responsibility for national educational policy was retained centrally. New, legal obligations regarding the administration of public kindergartens, primary schools and gimnazjum was delegated – as noted earlier – to the municipalities. It became the statutory responsibility of the powiats (districts) – as middle, second level administration − to administer  Since 1999 the administrative division of Poland has been based on three levels of subdivision: voivodeships (provinces); voivodeships are further divided into powiats (counties or districts), and these in turn are divided into gminas (communes or municipalities). Poland currently has 16 voivodeships, 380 counties, and 2478 municipalities (GUS, 2018). 4

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upper secondary schools, artistic schools and special schools. The voivodships (provinces) have a more coordinating function, and they are responsible for pedagogical supervision and implementation of national education policy. Schools employ teachers directly and have limited decision-making options at the site level. The inspection of teaching standards in schools comes directly under the Ministry of Education and Science5 and is assigned to the kuratorium oświaty (a regional administrative body). In line with the division of the country into 16 autonomous provinces, there are 16 Regional Education Authorities (REAs). The underpinning intent of decentralisation of education in Poland from the very beginning was the division of roles and functions between the government and local authorities: the central government remains responsible for the overarching educational policy and process (and thus for the quality of education), while local governments are responsible for managing and directly financing educational provision and infrastructure. In the first decade of the twenty-first century, this division of functions and roles became increasingly problematic. This was partly due to the fact that local governments when making decisions about school financing could not ignore the issue of spending efficiency, especially since the education budget always constitutes a very significant share of total local government expenditures. Moreover, parents judge and hold local governments accountable not only for the condition of school infrastructure but, above all, for educational outcomes. The post-1999 system struggled increasingly with having to balance what was financial possible against rising expectations. However, there were changes also on the government side. In particular, the government’s approach to school quality control policy had evolved considerably (Herbst & Levitas, 2012, p. 138). In short, pressure for further and far-reaching change returned to the system. The change in the role of the school superintendent concerning pedagogical supervision is a good example of these changes – and of their shortcomings. The current arrangements within the pedagogical supervision system were put in place in the school year 2009/10 by the Regulation of the Minister of National Education of 7 October 2009. The pedagogical supervision system existing before 2009 was modified on the basis of regulations of the minister responsible for school education adopted successively in 1999, 2004, and 2006. As detailed in the Regulation of 1999, pedagogical supervision involved mainly two elements: checking the school’s compliance with the requirements concerning its statutory tasks, and supporting school staff. The 2004 Regulation introduced the concept of evaluation  – understood as assessing the relevance and effectiveness of educational activities in relation to their stated aims, and with regard to potential improvements. Finally, the Regulation of 2006 provided for compulsory evaluation of educational activities undertaken by schools. However, it did not define clearly any specific tasks within pedagogical supervision or rules and tools for quality assurance as part of  Central government ministries were restructured in October 2020. As of January 2021, the Ministry of National Education and the Ministry of Science and Higher Education have been merged into one ministry called the Ministry of Education and Science. Previously decision making rested mainly with the then Ministry of National Education. 5

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pedagogical supervision. As a result, external pedagogical supervision continued to consist mainly of checking schools’ compliance with the law. Clearly this did not focus sufficiently on the quality evaluation to schools of their work and it did not provide proper support to them in improving the quality of education and implementing improvement and development plans. The post-1999 reforms and the later changes relating to the Regulation of 2004 and 2006 were in a sense only partial and lacked sufficient coherence. The reforms that followed the Regulation of the Minister of National Education (2009) were more substantive and very much more comprehensive. The reasons behind an extensive, policy-led and far-reaching modernization of the pedagogical supervision system in 2009 included: (i) the lack of a uniform, comparable system of the pedagogical supervision across the country, (ii) the ineffectiveness and the limited usefulness for improving quality in schools of the previous system and its inability to respond to the pace and scope of changes and educational needs of the society, (iii) insufficient efforts taken by schools and their managing bodies in order to improve the quality of education (this resulted in educational inequalities related to pupils’ or students’ background which pose problems in less developed regions of the country), (iv) the need to gather reliable information to design the national education policy and education policies at regional and local levels, and (v) the need to provide pupils and teachers with opportunities for comprehensive personal and social development in line with their aspirations and capacities. The arrangements put in place by the Regulation of the Minister of National Education (2009) were aimed at establishing a pedagogical supervision system which could contribute more effectively to better quality of education based on comparable data drawn from across the entire education system. The new arrangements were intended to build an integrated system of internal and external quality assurance, covering both early childhood and school education, and both public and non-public schools. The superintendents in performing their roles were now required first and foremost to work with the local government authorities in the development and implementation of regional and local education policy in line with state education policy. At the same time, the superintendents were expected also to interact with the local government authorities in the formulation and development of the material base of schools and educational institutions. It is worth noting that, superintendents are appointed and dismissed by province governors (the head of the government administration in the region) upon the consent of the Minister of National Education. Thus, the heads of the Regional Education Authorities are not independent from the national authorities. Pursuant to the amended Educational System Act (1991), the heads of the Regional Education Authorities exercise pedagogical supervision over public and non-public schools within their provinces. These tasks are performed in accordance with detailed guidelines laid down in the Regulation of the Minister of National Education of 7 October 2009 on pedagogical supervision, the aims of the national policy in the area of pedagogical supervision and an annual pedagogical supervision plan adopted by the minister.

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In short; the role of school superintendents as envisioned in the earlier legislation and reforms proved to lack the necessary coherence to combine the function of control (to enforce compliance with the law), the function of assessing the quality of schools and the school system and the remedial function of advising schools and professional development programs. Over the past 20 years, the balance between these three functions and the way of their implementation by individual superintendencies has changed substantially. The superintendencies have slowly lost their authority to override the decisions of school principals and local government units on many key issues (see: Madalińska-Michalak, 2014) – including that of pedagogical supervision.

 unding Poland’s Schools: The Challenge of Equitable F Resource Allocation This section addresses the changing nature of school funding, financial support, and resource allocation post-1989. It looks specifically at the reforms in this area that have happened since the fall of communism in Poland and the challenges that the emerging system has had to navigate. As we have seen above, changes in the financing of education in Poland after 1989 drove a departure from a uniform, central subsidy approach towards a decentralisation of governance and related financing of the education system. A differentiated central subsidy approach has been created and the possibility of supplementing the budget from non-governmental sources has been opened up. To a point, equity in resource allocation has been ensured through intergovernmental transfers. As we have seen also, the reforms in financing of the education system are directly connected with the administrative division of Poland, and the introduction of the three levels of subdivision: voivodeships, districts, and municipalities.

From a Block-Grant System to per Student Funding Until the devolution of day-to-day funding operation to the local level, funds for all aspects of the operation of these education units (current expenditures and investments) were transferred from the state budget through a system controlled by superintendents of education. This, as noted earlier, was a centralised and highly bureaucratic system and consistently proved inefficient. Additionally, the funds transferred were inevitably inadequate. School principals at various levels of the system constantly ended the year in financial deficit and were still being called to appear before the public finance commission as recently as the early 2000s. Obviously, this situation needed to be rectified. After 1989, following the diversification of entities running and co-financing educational units, the state had to rethink

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the system of distributing public funds to schools and educational institutions while maintaining the principles of equity, equality, and adequacy. This represented a major shift in terms of thinking regarding the socio-economic, legal, and political principles on which schools were funded. This thinking was not, however, always matched by the realities on the ground. For instance, when kindergartens transferred to municipality control in 1990 transferring funds emerged immediately when the first municipalities took “ownership” of their schools: the system was largely unready for the scale of change involved. The fundamental challenge concerned how devolved authorities – the provinces, districts, and municipalities – allocated funds to individual schools and educational institutions at their own discretion. This was the first stage of a democratisation in the financing of educational tasks. However, decisions were made by local (regional) councillors for which they might not always have been well prepared. More recently, this has improved somewhat as the system matures but it is still far from issue-free. The second stage democratisation in the financing of education was (and is) related to equipping school principals with the capacity to manage a school as a budget unit of public finance. Under the new arrangements, principals faced the necessity of taking into account the opinions of the collegial bodies of the school (school council and pedagogical council) while preparing an appropriate annual financial plan, and then implements this under the supervision of the relevant local authorities. This stage is widely regarded as a success and their financial competence is now seen as a definitely characteristic of the Polish principal. This differentiates them from the majority of public school principals in European countries.

Sources of School Education Public Funding and Expenditures The main sources of public, school education funding include the general State-­ budget subsidy, targeted State-budget subsidies and grants (e.g. for preschool education, textbooks and learning resources, and financial support for pupils), and local government contributions from their own resources. Other sources include additional public funds (e.g. the Labour Fund and budgets of central government agencies allocated for the training of specific occupational groups), and European Union (EU) funds. There are also multiannual government programmes in specific areas (e.g. development of infrastructure and ICT skills of pupils and teachers) and various other funding is provided to public and non-public institutions which fulfil certain requirements set out in national legislation – for instance in relation to areas of special interest and those facing major socio-economic disadvantage. Education in schools is funded primarily from public sources (88% in 2012, compared to the OECD average of 83%), while the share of private expenditure (12%) is below the OECD average (17%). Private expenditure is highest at the tertiary level (22%, compared to the OECD average of 30%) (OECD, 2015, p.17).

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Poland’s overall investment in educational institutions at most levels of education was below the OECD average (4.8% of GDP, compared to the OECD average of 5.3%). Only at post-secondary non-tertiary level was investment in educational institutions equal to the OECD average (0.1% of GDP). Between 2000 and 2012, expenditure on education as a percentage of GDP decreased by 0.1 percentage points (compared to the OECD average of an increase of 0.4 percentage points). From 2005 to 2012, public expenditure at primary, secondary and post-secondary non-tertiary level increased by 15% (above the OECD average of 14%), and at the tertiary level increased by 14% (below the OECD average of 33%). Private expenditure at primary, secondary and post-secondary non-tertiary level increased by 38% (just above the OECD average of 37%) and at the tertiary level it decreased by 7% (compared to an average increase of 26% across OECD countries) (OECD, 2015, p. 17).

Funding: Achievements and Challenges In Poland, like in several other European countries, the expansion of public schooling has allowed more children than ever before to have access to education (European Commission/EACEA/Eurydice, 2021, p. 69). This has led to a reduction of inequality in educational attainment (Roser & Ortiz-Ospina, 2016). Public funding of schooling implies a redistribution of wealth in favour of families with relatively lower incomes, and it is often expected to ‘level the playing field’, and so reduce the effects of socioeconomic background on student participation and performance (European Commission/EACEA/Eurydice, 2021, p. 69). In Poland, central level transfers were traditionally allocated in the form of lump sum to cover resources for a range of public services including education. More recently, education funding mechanisms have been transitioning to a per capita (i.e. per student) funding basis. In the main, this is proving to be a more equitable and efficient way of financing communes to discharge their educational responsibilities than the previous block-based system. According to Levačić (2011, pp. 240–241) per student funding is a strong incentive for the decentralisation of the financial administration of schools to democratically elected local governments. However, she also cautions: …while per student funding can provide a stimulus to internal efficiency, this is considerably blunted when, in the context of declining student numbers, efficiency is inconsistent with other social objectives, in particular preserving rural schools and placating a strong teachers’ union. By itself per student funding is a relatively weak tool for promotion efficiency: to do this it has to be accompanied by other measures which will not materialize unless there is a political will to pursue the internal efficiency of the school system at the expense of other objectives favoured by specific political interests (Levačić, 2011, p. 241).

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Teacher Autonomy in the Light of Changing Education Law In Poland the issue of teacher autonomy has a short history. Until the end of communist rule curricula were determined by the state, the same was true for textbooks, and a tight rein was kept on teachers’ methodical activities. Of course, not all educators blindly followed the instructions and responded to the expectations of the authorities. Most, however, did. Nevertheless, between the 1940s and the 1980s, an unofficial educational network of sorts existed in Polish schools  – despite the restrictions placed on their teachers, students learned about literature not published officially in Poland (often published underground). They learnt about the crimes of Stalinism and became familiar with elements of non-socialist economics, learned the differences between capitalism and socialism, and so on. The system’s ban on non-public schooling made any recourse to autonomy more difficult, and those non-­ state schools that still functioned in the 1950s, such as Catholic schools and schools for other faiths, were systematically closed or nationalized (Małachowski, 2005, pp. 45–73). In a real sense then, there was a need for a different type of school free from indoctrination both in the practices of teaching and in terms of its functions regarding social formation. The fall of communism facilitated the emergence of such schools: in 1989 the first mould-breaking community school was opened (Warsaw) and 3 years later the first private school (1992, Krakow) was founded. It was through these new schools that teachers began to gain independence in terms of curriculum and working methods. At the same time, during the PZPR and NSZZ Solidarność Round Table Talks (1989),6 work was underway on the reform of the school system and the need to introduce autonomy in curriculum was decreed. However, progress has been slow and although the underpinning reasons may have changed, to this day the state continues to exercise control over the prescription of core curricula for individual classes, on the basis of which teachers develop their own schemes and use one from the range of textbooks approved by the Minister of Education. Certain words and phrases appear in guidance and legal texts such as: freedom to choose and use resources and textbooks, and teacher-led decision making on the curriculum – which is seen to provide scope for curriculum action and methodological innovation. However, while there has been shift in rhetoric, in practice, teacher autonomy remains limited and constrained both by enduring traditions and by legislation. For instance, under the provisions of the Teachers’ Charter Act, 1982 (Article 12, paragraph 2), teachers nominally have freedom to use such methods of teaching and upbringing that they consider the most appropriate from among those recognized by modern pedagogical science, and to choose from among the

 https://www.sejm.gov.pl/sejm9.nsf/stenOkrStol.xsp; Round Table participant M. Bartosik during the first day of the deliberations of the subcommittee on science, education and technical progress said: “I mean a school that is democratic internally and externally. Internally, where the subjectivity of both teachers and students is the dominant factor, and externally through preparation for life in a democratic society” (transcript, pp. 46–47). 6

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textbooks and other teaching aids approved for school use. The reality is that the systems in place make it difficult to even contemplate teachers exercising this level of autonomy. Other legalistic provisions within the Education System hold out some hope that this may change in time. Under the Education System Act, 1991 (Art. 22a, para 1) a teacher or a team of teachers can present a school education programme or a general curriculum specification to the school principal who, after consultation with the teaching staff board, can authorise its use. In the same way, a teacher may decide to implement the curriculum with or without the use of a recommended textbook, instructional approach, or practice material. In this way, the teacher, in the performance of their official duties regarding the implementation of the curriculum, has the freedom to apply such methods of teaching and education as he/she considers the most appropriate, within limits. Essentially, the teacher may choose freely and autonomously among textbooks and other teaching aids approved for school use (Art. 22aa). Although it is worth noting that in the spirit of the Act (Art. 22ab), the choice of textbooks for pupils is not made by the individual teacher, but by the full team of teachers at the school teaching at the appropriate level, after consulting with the full pedagogical council within the school and the parents’ council. Additionally, a curriculum may also be developed implemented with the use of specific devices, equipment and/or software where this takes directly into account the educational needs and psychophysical capabilities of pupils (Art. 44c, para. 1 and 2). At the legalistic levels, it is difficult not to view these powers as anything other than a well-conceived exercise in educational democracy. After all, decisions are made as close to the student as possible – by his/her teachers and parents. On the other hand, the curricular content contained in the Regulations (Minister of National Education, 2017) does not easily facilitate the teacher’s right to determine the curricular content independently, presumably assuming that the statutory authorization (Act, 2016, Article 47(1)(1)(a, b, e, f and h)) is sufficient. There is a tension here that would seem particularly difficult to resolve. The process of student assessment can also be viewed as problematic and challenging in terms of teachers exercising autonomy. According to the relevant Act (1991) assessment of student behaviour involves recognition by the class teacher, teachers and students of the extent to which the student respects the principles of social coexistence and ethical standards, as well as the obligations set out in the school statutes (Article 44b, paragraph 4). At the same time, the assessment process must include the formulation by teachers of particular mid-year and annual grades educational requirements  – particular in compulsory and additional educational classes, as well as determination of criteria for grading behaviour (Art. 44b, sec. 3). It should also be remembered that assessment of a student’s educational achievements and behaviour takes place within the framework of interschool grading. In line with the requirements of the Act (1991), teachers are obliged to inform students and parents about the educational requirements necessary to obtain particular mid-year and annual grades in classes. These rubrics should be derived from the curriculum implemented by the teacher in tandem with ways of checking students’ educational achievements (Art. 44b, para. 8). Similarly, the class teacher is expected

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to provide information on the conditions, method and criteria for grading behaviour, as well as on the conditions and procedure for obtaining a higher than expected annual grade for behaviour (Art. 44b, paragraph 9). All of this presents significant challenges to realising the ideals and rhetoric of teacher autonomy. In conclusion, it is worth noting that the global debate on this issue also frequently emphasises the concept of teachers’ professional autonomy and especially the degree to which they can make autonomous decisions about content and teaching methodologies. Poland has yet, arguably, to engage in building this culture at scale – even though there have been provisions inscribed in education law concerning options and possibilities to support their doing so, in place now for the best part of 20 years.

Prawo i Sprawiedliwość Driven Education Reform, Post-2017 In 2015, Prawo i Sprawiedliwość, PiS (the Law and Justice Party) became the first party to win an overall majority in a parliamentary election and therefore became the first party to govern alone since the beginning of the transformation in Poland. After winning the 2015 parliamentary elections, the PiS government began to implement its electoral programme. Regarding education, the election programme of the PiS included commitment to a comprehensive overhaul of the national education system, in which – among other things – the party pledged to reinstate compulsory schooling from the age of 7. This pledge read: There is no reason to go against the great mass of Polish parents. Six-year-old children, when this is the will of the parents and when they meet the developmental requirements, will of course be able – as before – to start school.

The post-1999 introduction of lower secondary schools, which, according to party politicians, failed to meet expectations, was also criticised (Prawo i Sprawiedliwość, 2014). Consequently, the main proposals for change in PiS’s education policy focused on a reorganization of the school system that rolled-back much of the work and activity of the previous 15 years. On 1 September 2017, a new agenda for reform of the education system was introduced by the PiS government and the then Ministry of National Education. In December 2016, two key Acts were passed by the Parliament: the Law on School Education (2016) and the Provision Introducing the Law on School Education (2016). These acts have largely replaced the School Education Act (1991). The main aims of the new reform agenda have been to strengthen general education as the basis for further personal development of pupils, to increase the flexibility of the vocational education system (thus extending opportunities for vocational school pupils to continue education), and to address the evolving needs of today’s labour market. One of the main changes of the reform has involved replacing the previously existing 6-year primary school and 3-year lower secondary school (6 + 3), with the

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single 8-year primary school and proportional extension of the duration of education in (upper) secondary schools to 4–5 years. This change has partly re-established the model that was in place in Poland before the school system reform of 1999/2000. Additionally, these structural changes in the system have been combined with curricular reform. New arrangements have been also put in place for pre-primary education and vocational education and training. New types of secondary schools have been operational since the 2019/20 school year for graduates of 8-year single structure primary school. These reforms essentially reinstitute single structure education in Poland like in Sweden, Norway, Finland, Denmark, Iceland, Portugal, Bulgaria, Serbia, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovinia (European Commission/ EACEA/Eurydice, 2021, p. 7). In this model, all students follow a compulsory common curriculum providing general education, and there is no transition between primary and lower secondary education  – students progress instead to secondary education at the conclusion of this extended primary years provision.7 The reforms of 2017 were and are controversial and met with much criticism from the moment the plans for its introduction were announced in early 2016. The reason for this is undoubtedly due to the nature of the reform. It concerns not only selected areas of school functioning, external examinations, curriculum, pedagogical supervision system and others, which were subject to changes in previous years, but it reconfigures once again the structures of the whole system of education in Poland after only 18 years – since the last such extensive reform of the education system was implemented in 1999. The main feature of the 2017 reform is the abolition of lower-secondary school (gimnazjum) and the return to a system of 8-class primary school and 4-year secondary schooling. Due to the scale of the reform, debates on the validity of the reconfiguration and its potential effects have been held all over the country. Numerous communities have sent appeals and open letters to the Ministry of Education with demands concerning the nature and likely impacts of the reform. Demonstrations and even strikes by opponents of these reforms have been organised. The Ministry responded by publishing materials and organising conferences aimed at convincing citizens of the validity of the revised school system and arguing that its implementation is efficient and without side effects for students (Dorczak, 2019). Regardless of the merits or otherwise of the current tranche of reforms, one point is clear; the public debate on educational reform in Poland has been far from an ideal and open communicative situation. This is a worrying conclusion because it  In European countries we can identify three main organizational models of primary and lower secondary education (ISCED levels 1 and 2): (i) single structure education with no transition between primary and lower secondary education; (ii) common core curriculum provision: after successfully completing primary education (ISCED 1), all students progress to lower secondary level (ISCED 2) where they follow the same general common core curriculum; (iii) differentiated lower secondary education: after successfully completing primary education, students follow distinct educational pathways or specific types of education, which start either at the beginning or in the course of lower secondary education, and at the end of their studies, students receive different certificates (European Commission/EACEA/Eurydice, 2021, p. 7). 7

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may indicate that the polarisation of attitudes towards the reform will grow. The lack of open debate on this most important area in the functioning of the state, in which different voices are heard and taken into account, and in which participants show mutual respect, is a negation of the idea of democracy and civil society. Additionally, indications that the authorities increasingly less concerned with convincing citizens, and more willing to impose solutions on society are deeply concerning. This is a way of communicating which is difficult to judge positively (Dorczak, 2019, p. 93). Most concerning of all, political analysts are now starting to observe the prospect of PiS becoming entrenched as the established party of government in Poland. As Kulesza and Rae note (2017, pp. 7–8): It is possible that … [PiS] could repeat the experience of Hungary, whereby a conservative right-wing party is able to marginalise the liberal opposition and weaken the left, whilst successively gaining more power over the levers of the state and creating a more authoritarian form of government in the country. What is different in Poland is that the government is in alliance with and is partly reliant upon the Catholic Church. This institution holds huge power and sway over a section of the electorate and is seeking to entrench Poland’s conservative shift.

Conclusions The analysis presented in this paper indicates that Poland, as a country with a unique and diverse political history, has for almost three decades put a strong policy emphasis on decentralisation of the education system – a stance motivated by the belief that the specific educational needs of Poland’s citizens can be better addressed by their local representatives than by country-level agencies. The devolution agenda has not always been as careful and methodical as it should perhaps have been but it has been achieved. Beginning with the transfer of kindergartens to municipalities in 1990, followed by the transfer of primary schools on a voluntary basis in 1993 and on a compulsory basis in 1996, the assignment of authority and responsibility has been broadly welcomed by teachers and communities throughout the country. Fundamental reforms concerning the financing of education continued throughout the years 2000–2010. And indeed the years 2000–2010 and subsequent years were undoubtedly a time of stabilisation of the Polish education system in terms of its financing and division of management competencies between state institutions and local governments, and for the emphasis placed on developing practical solutions within the existing frameworks of the system. However, stabilization did not mean that all the fundamental problems of education management in Poland had been resolved in some final sense. On the contrary, society changes, the world we live in changes and all education systems have to face challenges that, to a large extent, result from this reality. Additionally, policy work is only ever partial and gaps and omissions inevitably emerge from previous reform activities.

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After 30  years of transformation, the Polish system of education is currently neither fully democratic (despite the fact that since the beginning of the 1990s, at least in a discursive aspect, it was heading in this direction), or centralized – thanks to the decentralisation of authority and responsibility for the functioning of schools. Regarding current school policy, we need to acknowledge the changing normative imperatives of political power as these reflect in agendas for education in schools and in the process of creating the condition for that education. In Poland – as elsewhere – these reflect and embody unique political, social, historical, cultural, institutional, and fiscal characteristics of the country (Zamojski, 2018). Unfortunately, we should therefore not expect a resolution of the tensions between democratisation and centralisation within our education systems any time soon, or an imminent end to the debate on decentralisation and other far-reaching education policies.

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Levačić, R. (2011). Per capita financing of general education in Poland: A case study. In J. Diego Alonso & A.  Sánchez (Eds.), Reforming education finance in transition countries. Six case studies in per capita financing systems (pp. 198–251). World Bank. Levitas, A., & Herczyński, J. (2012). Decentralizacja oświaty w Polsce 1990−1999: Tworzenie systemu [Decentralisation of school education in Poland 1990−1999: Creating a system]. In M.  Herbst (Ed.), Decentralizacja systemu oświaty [Decentralisation of the school system] (pp. 55−117). Ośrodek Rozwoju Edukacji. Madalińska-Michalak, J. (2014). Pedagogical Supervision and Superintendents in Poland: On the Way to the Quality of Education. In A. E. Nir (Ed.), The Educational Superintendent: Between Trust and Regulation An International Perspective (pp. 55–74), Nova Series: Education in a Competitive and Globalizing World. Nova Science Publisher. Madalińska-Michalak, J. (2021). Pedeutologia. Prawno-etyczne podstawy zawodu nauczyciela [Pedeutology. Legal and ethical foundations of the teaching profession]. Warsaw University Press. https://wuw.pl/data/include/cms//Pedeutologia_Madalinska_Michalak_Joanna_2021. pdf?v=1630564867528 Małachowski, R. (2005). Catholic secondary education in Poland and selected European countries (1945–2000). Zielona Góra University. MEN. (1999). Ministerstwo Edukacji Narodowej o reformie programowej − gimnazjum, Biblioteczka Reformy 9 [Ministry of National Education on curriculum reform – junior high school]. MEN. Michalak, J.  M. (2005). The priorities of polish educational policy. Fostering teacher professionalism in schools. In S. Kiefer & T. Peterseil (Eds.), Analysis of educational policies in a comparative educational perspective (pp.  141–165). Pädagogische Hochschule des Bundes Oberösterreich, Institute of Comparative Education. Minister of National Education (2017). Rozporządzenie Ministra Edukacji Narodowej z dnia 14 lutego 2017 r. w sprawie podstawy programowej [Regulation of the Minister of National Education of 14 February 2017 on the core curriculum]. Journal of Law 2017, item 356. OECD. (2015). Education policy outlook. Poland. Paris, OECD. OECD. (2019). OECD skills strategy Poland: Assessment and recommendations. OECD. Prawo i Sprawiedliwość (2014). Program wyborczy partii Prawo i Sprawiedliwość. Zdrowie, praca, rodzina [Law and justice party election programme. Health, work, family]. Accessed: http://pis.org.pl/dokumenty. 6.08.2018. Proudhomme, R. (1995). The dangers of decentralisation. The World Bank Research Observer, 2(10), 201–220. Roser, M., & Ortiz-Ospina, E. (2016). Financing education. [Online] Available at: https://ourworldindata.org/financing-­education. Accessed 10 Jan 2022. Rozporządzenie Ministra Edukacji Narodowej w sprawie nadzoru pedagogicznego z dnia 7 października 2009 roku [Regulation of the Minister of National Education of 7 October 2009 on pedagogical supervision]. (2009). Journal of Law, 2009(168), item 1324. Smoke, P. (2003). Decentralisation in Africa: Goals, dimensions, myths and challenges. Public Administration and Development, 23, 7–16. The Constitution of the Republic of Poland (1997). Konstytucja Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej z dnia 2 kwietnia 1997 [Constitution of the Republic of Poland of 2 April 1997], Journal of Law, 1997/ (78), item 483. Ustawa Karta Nauczyciela z 26 stycznia 1982 roku [The Act of 26 January 1982 Teachers’ Charter]. (1982). Journal of Law, 1997(56), item 357 with further amendments. Ustawa o systemie oświaty z dnia 7 września 1991 roku z późniejszymi zmianami [The Act on Education System of 7 September 1991 with further amendments]. (1991). Journal of Law, 2004(256), item 2572.

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Zamojski, P. (2018). Cultural codes and education in Poland  – A plea for a new educational imaginary. Policy Futures in Education, 16(4), 416–433. https://doi.org/ 10.1177/1478210317739488 Żurek, J. (2000). Wybór źródeł do historii solidarności oświaty i wychowania 1980–1989 [A selection of sources for the history of solidarity in education 1980–1989]. TYSOL.

Chapter 10

Czech School Reforms: Between East and West Petr Novotný, Dominik Dvořák, and Michaela Dvořáková

Abstract  The chapter on Czech school policy reforms in the context of Central and Eastern Europe examines the role of local actors and international influences within individual school reforms. It describes and analyses examples of policy decisions and network-driven school reform initiatives through the series of school reforms that took place in the second half of the twentieth century and two decades of the present century. The central part of the chapter presents the post-socialist school reform transformations and the interplay between local and transnational actors. The chapter then discusses whether small and medium-sized countries such as Czechia are in a position to create an original functional school education model. Keywords  School reforms · Actors · School policy · Post-socialism · Czechia

Introduction The post-Soviet and post-socialist countries of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) have come to the fore again in recent months and years. Russia’s repeated aggression against Ukraine is the culmination of a prolonged trend, with the post-socialist transformations in many countries stuck or even backsliding. This also applies to a large extent to education policy. Most analyses of the internationalisation of European school policy describe the functioning of the institutions that emerged in Western Europe. The first part of the chapter describes a series of school reforms that occurred in the former

P. Novotný (*) Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic e-mail: [email protected] D. Dvořák · M. Dvořáková Faculty of Education, Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. B. Krejsler, L. Moos (eds.), School Policy Reform in Europe, Educational Governance Research 22, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-35434-2_10

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Czechoslovakia1 under the influence of the Soviet Union. The development of education in the Soviet bloc countries can also be seen as an example of a specific type of internationalisation or harmonisation of education policy. Here, too, we find both continuity with older trends and the often enforced, and yet sometimes selective, adoption of the models coming mainly from the centre of the Soviet empire, but also from other global actors as the countries under communist rule took part in organisations such as UNESCO and the Iron Curtain was more permeable during some periods. The second part of the chapter presents the difficult – and still not completed – process of transforming the post-socialist education system through school reforms, and the interplay between domestic and transnational actors. Through this perspective, we analyse key state-driven school reforms, such as the radical decentralisation of the formerly uniform system and introduction of quasi-market mechanisms, curriculum reforms, and inclusive education, as well as examples of policy decisions and network-driven school reform initiatives.

Setting the Stage: Communist School Policy and Reforms One of the problematic starting points for the post-socialist transformation of the education system was a biased or partial evaluation of previous developments. The changes in 1989 took place under the slogan “Back to Europe” and Grudzińska-­ Gross (2014) highlights its pitfalls. The “back” carried the risk that the long decades of development of the school system under communist rule – and thus its specific modernisation – would be rejected in its entirety. Similarly, “back” could simultaneously lead to a somewhat false perception of the pre-socialist school (or, more generally, the political system) as an ideal model, which indeed has been common in Central European countries (Snyder, 2018). Today, it is becoming increasingly clear that the current form of school education in post-socialist countries is also strongly influenced by a much older heritage, whether it acted as a normative ideal or as an institutional constraint during the transition. “There is also growing evidence that structural factors […], geographic neighbourhoods, and contingent events such as […] the involvement of external actors may greatly influence the outcomes” of transitions (Ekiert, 2015, p. 327). Indeed, at least for some time after the fall of communism, both social transformation in general and education policy implicitly or explicitly considered the national (in fact, multinational) Czechoslovak state before the Second World War and its education system to be the “reference society” (Rákosník et al., 2018). There is no doubt that Czech schools in the years 1918–1938 were of very high quality, and were governed by liberal democratic ideals. Alas, the view of the interwar

 On January 1, 1993, Czechoslovakia split peacefully into two independent countries: Czechia and Slovakia. 1

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period as a golden age obscures the deep ethnic and social divides, which manifested themselves strongly in particular after the onset of the Great Depression. If we do not take these problems into account, we cannot understand the relatively smooth application of the Soviet educational model in Czechoslovakia after 1945. Similarly, in the early phases of the transformation the dominant narrative, as regards the four decades of communist rule in Czechoslovakia (1948–1989) and its impact on the school system, was determined not only by those who fought against communism (dissidents) or by those who wanted to prove their loyalty to the new democraticregime (former fellow-travellers or Party members) but also by the logic of the Cold War (anti-communism) itself. However, this narrative may not correspond to the lived experience of some groups within the CEE countries or it may well clash with the perspective of left-wing forces outside the Soviet bloc. The communist (or socialist) school system is constantly being researched and re-evaluated, recently with a focus on the voices of different actors and their (everyday) experience. The socialist model affects contemporary education in the post-Soviet space because of path-dependency. However, it has also been influential in the Western, and, more generally, global space as a possible alternative to the dominant neoliberal forms of education (Griffiths & Millei, 2013; Silova, 2010; Silova et al., 2017). We hope that the modest attempt at a more nuanced approach that follows will not be seen as an endeavour to whitewash, deny, or downplay the undoubted crimes of communism. Although this chapter focuses on the education system in Czechia, and the situation in Slovakia after the Second World War was somewhat different, the development of education throughout Czechoslovakia was very similar and led to the convergence of systems. During the first 20 years of communist rule (1948–1968), the existence of two nations (Czechs and Slovaks) was recognised but Czechoslovakia was a unitary state ruled from Prague. The Slovaks obtained certain mostly symbolic concessions in the form of an asymmetrical state administration organisation, which also included education. The education system was governed by the Prague-­ based National Ministry, but in Slovakia an executive body called the Education Commission (povereníctvo školstva) received some competences. No such body existed in the Czech lands (Bohemia, Moravia, and Czech Silesia). In 1968, during a period of political liberalisation,2 Czechoslovakia became a federation. This was the only major political change which survived the Soviet occupation of the country and subsequent return of neo-Stalinism. Thus, the governance of education was fully devolved to both of the newly established national republics. The Czech education was administered by the Ministry of Schooling of the Czech Republic and the regional and local “People’s Committees” (regional governments and municipalities; see Kučerová et al., 2020). Slovak education was similarly governed by the ministry based in Bratislava. Even though the Czech and Slovak education policies were formally independent now, in practice, one  Popularly known as the Prague Spring, because it peaked between January and August 1968, but formal federalisation took place in October, after the occupation of the country by the troops of the Warsaw Pact. 2

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represented a mirror image of the other. Administrative and support bodies dealt with day-to-day management, but important political decisions were always made by the Communist Party and its Central Committee in Prague. This was true before and after the devolution of powers. For this purpose and in parallel with the above-­ described line of governance, a mirror hierarchy of Communist Party bodies was established – from the Central Committee down to Party cells in individual schools. The Party bodies were constitutionally superior to the state administration. As a rule, the school principal or the head of another education authority was a Party member, thus achieving a personal and practical connection between the Party and the state administration.

Reforms Under Direct Soviet Influence During the first period of communist rule, the legitimation discourse of historic determinism dominated the reforms and their implementation. The Party’s ideology was infallible, the victory of communism was inevitable, and a socially just system with equity and wellbeing for all was soon to be achieved. After the February 1948 communist coup, one of the very first steps of the new government was the state take-over and/or closure of all non-state (private and church) schools and the establishment of comprehensive schools with a unified curriculum for all students of compulsory school age (ages 6 to 15). Soon, an extensive and inefficient nationalised economy required labour mobilisation. As a large number of women took up employment, a dense network of nurseries, kindergartens, and after-school programmes rapidly emerged. Experiments were also performed with elementary boarding schools (Šťastný et al., 2018). Ideological and pragmatic reasons met here, as collective education in school facilities was considered to be universally more advantageous and superior. The regime allowed mothers to pursue a career and at the same time the impact of an ideologically unreliable family environment on children was minimised. The above-described first wave of socialist reforms was not only due to the Soviet influence, as since at least the 1930s, a comprehensive public primary and lower secondary school system had been demanded by prominent local actors, including many left-wing academics and teachers. The communist coup was an opportunity for them to definitively assert their views. The short-lived attempt to find a “Czechoslovak” policy trajectory within the communist bloc soon came to an end, however. The subsequent reform in 1953 aimed to adapt education as much as possible to the Soviet model, which became a universal reference (Novotný, 2020). Above all, the school system was required to produce workers for the heavy and military industries quickly, and as a result the reform shortened the length of compulsory education. During the previous era local actors (albeit backed by the Party and Soviet patrons) chose the specifics of the education policy, whereas now the situation was reversed, with policy firmly determined from the outside by the Soviet model. A local politician willing to implement the new reforms was sought, and eventually found, as it turned out that the radical

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abandonment of national school traditions and the interruption of continuity was not acceptable even for many of the local Stalinists. A fully centralised (and in this period undoubtedly totalitarian) governance allowed structural changes such as the reorganisation of the educational landscape to be quickly implemented across the board. However, it proved difficult to achieve the goals of structural change: to improve the educational outcomes of students from blue-collar (“proletarian” in communist parlance) and rural families and to remove barriers to their access to higher education. The Communist reforms encountered similar problems in practically all sectors. As a result, and despite some successes, the original legitimation ideology became increasingly dubious and unpersuasive. At the end of the 1950s, the mobilising narrative of the imminent advent of an ideal classless and equitable society disappeared. The ruling communist powers quietly abandoned their revolutionary utopian rhetoric. Rather than talking about future dreams, the communist regimes (apart from the use of repressive power) focused more on gaining public consensus through social benefits in the present. The Party stressed, for example, universal free public schooling from pre-primary to university level, as well as very cheap school meals and student housing. At the same time, however, in the era sometimes designated as Khrushchevism,3 the Soviet Union achieved major successes in missile technology and breakthroughs in astronautics. These achievements become a new and welcome source of pride and legitimation for the whole system, replacing the dream of a communist society. This new emphasis on science and technology required a different school system. In 1960, the Communist Party drafted a new School Act, already the third, which would again extend compulsory schooling to 9  years. The urgent need for well-­ prepared specialists for various scientific and technical fields led to the gradual erosion of a fully comprehensive school. From the 1960s onwards, selective schools reappeared in the Soviet Union, and Czechoslovak education soon followed this reference model. First, in each district, one selective school with extended language instruction (both compulsory Russian and elective Western languages) was set up. Later, schools focusing on mathematics, sports, or even arts emerged. The high regard for science and technology had another consequence: a new role for knowledge in education policy. In the early years of the communist government, the principles of school reforms were deductively derived from the writings of the founding fathers of Marxism-Leninism. In the 1960s, the modern social sciences gradually became an actor in policy-making (Richta, 1968; Kopeček, 2019). It was now possible to carefully publish facts and identify problems. The results of empirical research were supposed to become one of the inputs of school governance. A more difficult question was who could conduct such research and how, since the Stalinists had recently virtually eliminated fields such as sociology or psychometrics.

 Nikita S. Khrushchev was the Soviet leader from 1953 to 1964.

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After the shock of Sputnik, the interest of the USA and other Western countries in the Soviet/socialist school system grew rapidly. Similar trends could be observed on the opposite side of the Iron Curtain, which temporarily become more permeable in the 1960s. In Czechoslovakia, it was again possible to publish the works of Western educators and psychologists, discuss them, and invite their authors to local conferences. However, in 1968, the process of liberalisation had gone so far that the Soviet Union and the neighbouring socialist countries decided to intervene militarily and re-establish an orthodox neo-Stalinist regime.

The “New Concept of Education” There is now an ongoing scholarly discussion about the nature of the period of “normalisation”, which lasted from the restoration of the orthodox communist regime after the invasion of the Warsaw Pact troops in 1968 until the end of the 1980s. There is no doubt that the school system was fiercely affected by repression, especially in terms of staffing: no one who was ideologically unreliable was given the opportunity to influence the young generation and often the best teachers had to leave schools. At the same time, work continued on the concept of yet another school reform, which was not only based on Soviet Marxist psychology, but also drew quietly on the works of Jerome Bruner and other Western authors. Even in the communist regime, there was no completely uniform directive determining the form of the school and instruction. In the Soviet Union, for example, the concepts of Leonid V. Zankov, Vasily V. Davydov, and others competed with each other (Yvon et al., 2013) creating a certain space for discussion and decision-making by actors in the countries in the Soviet sphere of influence. However, it was clear that one or other of the Soviet models had to be followed. Lev S. Vygotsky’s Marxist theory required instruction based on abstract scientific thinking and language from an early age, so the decision was taken to fundamentally rework the curriculum of mathematics and other subjects. An effective school was considered to be one where there were as many students in the class as possible and who mastered the content as quickly as possible. Invoking the hypothesis about the accelerated intellectual development of children and youth in a socialist society, the Soviet Union shortened the length of primary school education, and so it was necessary to proceed in the same way in Czechoslovakia. In 1976, after 2 years of piloting, the reform of compulsory education, known as the “new concept of education” (nové pojetí), was introduced in the same form in both the Czech lands and Slovakia. A system of strictly centralised and directive-driven school governance enabled a rapid and relatively faithful implementation of the reform throughout the state. The new curriculum and teaching would suit gifted children or those who had good support from their families. As the TIMSS 1995 survey two decades later revealed, in the early 1990s, Czech students were among the best in mathematics and science

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in the world. However, it quickly became clear that the fast-paced and demanding curriculum imposed a disproportionate burden on children with special needs or simply on working-class children. Although the communist power was reluctant to admit mistakes and generally did not support feedback, the problems soon became so serious that reforms of the reform were necessary after the first year of its full-­ scale implementation and then again in subsequent years. Despite partial modifications, however, the basic features set up in 1976 were preserved by the Czech education system until the end of the communist era. The growing number of failing students in mainstream comprehensive schools required an expansion of the (traditional) system of schools for children with special educational needs, into which a disproportionately high number of Roma students were placed, along with other children who, for various reasons, could not keep up with the pace of teaching in mainstream schools. The formally comprehensive system of primary and lower secondary education therefore enabled and, in fact, supported different forms of covert exclusion. The fifth and final communist Education Act of 1984 codified the results of the reforms introduced in the 1970s. Compulsory school attendance was extended to 10  years, beyond the then 8-year comprehensive school. Every child graduating from lower secondary school (usually aged 14) had to enrol at an upper secondary school and attend it for at least 2 years. This, together with a low drop-out rate, led to a very high proportion of students successfully completing upper secondary education. Unfortunately, they often gained a qualification that they could not choose according to their preferences. Vocational and technical schools were the upper secondary education tracks officially favoured by the Communist Party: only about 15% of students were admitted into the general education/academic track. Although the system of admission to different tracks of upper secondary schools took into account applicants’ previous academic results, in reality students’ social background and/or parental Communist Party membership played a key role (Šimáně & Kamanová, 2020). Unequal access to prestigious schools and colleges on the basis of political loyalty or corruption was one of the factors that contributed to the growing dissatisfaction of the population, leading to the collapse of the communist government in Czechoslovakia in 1989. Paradoxically, the Velvet Revolution was started by students of the very school system that the regime had tried hard to control for four decades.4

 The immediate impetus for the fall of the communist regime in Czechoslovakia was provided by a peaceful demonstration by university students in Prague on November 17, 1989, which was violently suppressed by the police commanded by Party cadres. 4

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Post-socialist Transformation Individual CEE countries entered the period of post-socialist transformation with fully restored or, in the case of some post-Soviet states, even newly-acquired independence. Although several analogies can lead to the perception of these countries, or at least the countries of the so-called Visegrad Group (Czechia, Slovakia, Hungary, and Poland), as a more or less homogeneous group, there are significant instances where their development went in different directions. If we do find similarities in the development of school policies, they can be explained by an analogous history and similar internal conditions and external influences, with any coordination of policies between them essentially playing only a marginal role. A specific case, however, is the considerable similarity between the development of school policies in Czechia and Slovakia. These two countries entered the process of transformation as a joint federal state, with no language barrier between them and personal relationships closely linking professional communities. After the partition of Czechoslovakia, both countries experienced very similar dynamics within their school policy reforms; for example, the long wait for a new education law (Czechia – 2004, Slovakia – 2008) and the subsequent start of curricular reforms of a very similar nature. An example of limited international cooperation in the school policy field was the foundation of the Visegrad Fund in 2000. With an annual budget of €10 million, this endowment provides grants and scholarships to support the cooperation of civil society organisations in the Visegrad Group countries. The endowment is perceived as a local complement to EU grant schemes or as an alternative to private philanthropy through sources such as the Open Society Foundation. The individual participating schools or project networks benefit from the receipt of grants and scholarships from the Visegrad Fund. However, the impact of such activities on school policy is limited, and incomparably less significant than the widespread effects of the EU-funded activities discussed below. Therefore, school policy became the subject of international cooperation and coordination mainly with the advent of the EU Cohesion Fund. Cooperation and coordination did not occur directly between the countries of CEE; instead, it included partners from Western Europe, or the European Union as a whole. Actors from outside set the principles of cooperation and the agenda. These influences were so significant in the later stages of post-socialist transformation that one of the phases of development was even named after them: Europeanisation. Halász (2015), Birzea (2008), and several other scholars divide the post-socialist transformation into phases. We will supplement this perspective with a view that traces the onset of different groups of actors at different times. While the first post-­ socialist education policy development models expected that a new optimal school system would be achieved relatively soon, subsequent analyses speak of a still unfinished transformation trapped in a lack of capacity analogous to the post-­ colonial situation or a fundamental backslide to authoritarian governance. However, it is possible that the current situation of the education policy in Czechia and other

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countries is not a specifically post-socialist phenomenon, but instead reflects a situation that also exists in traditional Western democracies. A study of the actors and their “assemblages” can be useful here.

Phases of School Policy Reforms After 1989 Many analyses have emerged between the fall of communism and today that attempt to characterise the post-socialist transformation of education. These analyses typically relate to the situation in one country or, conversely, comment on the situation in all the post-socialist CEE countries. Although the development is on the whole specific to each country, there are some similarities based on the historical situation and common externalities that influenced certain countries simultaneously (external financing of reform steps by the World Bank) or in waves (EU accession). The first papers reflecting these transformations began appearing in the early 1990s. From today’s perspective, some of the conclusions were somewhat premature as various changes that were implemented were interpreted as reforms and counter-reforms. Their authors tended to see the reforms as, at least partly, completed. Nevertheless, some authors (Halász, 1990; Kalous, 1993) identified key issues that have proved to be genuinely significant: the question of centralisation, or more specifically, the decentralisation of the school system. Many scholars have tried to interpret school reforms in the post-socialist countries of CEE on the basis of a more or less detailed phasing of the transformation. Since there are phases of development that are fundamentally different, the following narration of Czech school policy reforms is also set within a periodisation of recent history. It attempts to avoid the presentation of partial fluctuations on the path to reforms. We differentiate between four periods. The initial phase of school policy reforms brought depoliticisation and decentralisation of the school system. In agreement with various scholars (Greger & Walterová, 2007; Moree, 2013), we see this short time period as a phase of deconstruction. The second phase of school policy reform is frequently referred to as partial stabilisation and brought about a crystallisation of the reform programme, based mainly on internal resources and intellectual traditions, with no significant interest in external reflection. Although it is not easy to define its time span, it was replaced by a third phase of externally funded reforms at the turn of the millennium. As the main donor of the reforms proved to be the EU and the main driver was the EU accession process, it is possible to call this phase Europeanisation. The fourth phase, in the second decade of the twenty-­ first century, highlighted divergent developments in various CEE countries and even post-Europeanisation processes. The education system is a multi-level multi-site structure. Policies move between different levels or places with some delay and simultaneously undergo translations or recontextualisations. Trying to capture this complexity usually requires the simultaneous telling of several different stories, reflecting processes at different levels, from the perspectives of other actors (Goodson & Mikser, 2022; Mikser &

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Goodson, 2019), and zooming between processes taking place at various levels. The period in which we now find ourselves is more in line with what is happening at the centre and at the macro level. In most schools change has progressed at a different pace.

Deconstruction Supported by a broad consensus, the first phrase and deconstruction of the centralised school system began with a rapid implementation of the first steps and brought about the de-ideologisation of the school system. Some of these steps co-defined the critical aspects of the system and changed it irreversibly. The decentralisation process was launched and a quasi-market was set up. Elite grammar schools, a structure from pre-communist times, were restored, while the in-service teacher training system was abolished. Some system-level changes (re)introduced in the early 1990s still have highly controversial consequences up to the present day, for example, the early selection of Czech students into two educational tracks after they complete primary school. These political decisions were made on the basis of a relatively vague idea of the future development of education. The wording of one of the first programme statements of the Civic Forum, the structure that led the revolution in the Czech part of Czechoslovakia, provides the evidence: “Democratic education should be organised on principles of humanity, without a state monopoly on education. Society must respect teachers of all kinds of schools and give them space to exercise their unique character” (Hrubá, 2013). These topics continued to be the axis of the discussions in the years to come. The de-ideologisation agenda and decentralisation of the school system were implemented in 1990 in a “revolutionary hurry” (Kalous, 1993, p. 236). It could be interpreted, on the one hand, as a positive example of a “window of opportunity”, but on the other hand, it raised the question of the risk of losing control of further school reform (Kalous, 1993). Although the phase is labelled as one of deconstruction and specific changes occurred, most notably changes in the law, the actual structures of school governance remained unchanged and curricular policy remained centralised. Radical proposals for the professional self-governance of schools and their community character with minimum state interference had not yet manifested themselves in the school system. A similar set of first steps occurred within other CEE countries (Halász, 2015, p.  351): “Among the common themes of education policy, the highest priorities were given to ‘depoliticising’ education and reducing central control, increasing parental choice, re-establishing religiously-affiliated and classical academic schools and revitalising schools, applying progressive or alternative pedagogies.” Halász also refers to the shared experience of policymakers in CEE countries: “Most of the new democratically-elected CEE education policy leaders wanted to liberate

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education from political pressures, including those connected with the demands for social progress and economic development” (Halász, 2015, p. 353). As mentioned above, the idea of a “return to Europe” was also present from the beginning. However, there was no complete agreement on whether to adopt Western models or find one’s own (“third”) path between communist totalitarianism and Western neoliberalism. In Czechia, the neoliberal approach quickly prevailed, at least in the economy. In the field of education, some conservative voices asserted that a home-grown model of education, popularly invoking Comenius (a seventeenth-­ century Czech pedagogue), would be as good as or even more valuable than a Western one. In the 1990s these voices may have seemed rather marginal. However, we see now that the narrative of an immoral and decadent Western civilisation and the need to protect the young generation from the perils of liberalism plays a key role in legitimising authoritarian tendencies – and not only in Russia (Snyder, 2018).

Partial Stabilisation The second phase of the transformation of education covers the period up until the implementation of the donor-driven school policy reforms at the turn of the millennium. Various studies refer to this period as a phase of partial stabilisation (Kotásek et al., 2004). This period was characterised by clashes of diverse ideas about the desired state of the school system: often a clash of top-down and bottom-up processes. Occasional coalitions of politicians, academics, and practitioners emerged and networks of actors and non-profit organisations promoting different reform steps appeared. Discussions relating to the need for reform materialised in the first comprehensive conceptual documents. The top-down school policies and governance structures were eroded step by step and school autonomy expanded. The rapid change of regime surprised the majority of actors, and a positive school policy reform agenda took time to emerge. It must be borne in mind that politicians with minimal experience of real democratic politics came to power with the change of regime. In addition, if the education policy has standard parameters, it is based on an analysis of the situation and an analysis of the education system carried out in 1988 under the previous regime was rejected as illegitimate and irrelevant (Polouček & Zounek, 2021). In the early 1990s various groups of actors presented reports on the state of the system (Pařízek, 1993). However, most of these were more normative than evidence-based and none of them represented a broader consensus. The proposals did at least “prompt discussion on the future of Czech education and the first programme for the reform of education entitled “Quality and Accountability” was prepared by the Ministry of Education (full official name Ministry of Schools, Youth and Sport) in 1994” (Greger & Walterová, 2007, p. 16). To understand the lack of capacity to analyse the needs of the system, one has to look at the state of educational sciences at the beginning of the 1990s in Czechia. One perhaps less obvious ramification of totalitarian control over the social sciences was the fact that dissenters, expelled from official academic institutions, had no

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opportunities to run empirical research projects. These non-conformist scholars endeavoured to keep independent free scientific thinking alive in the form of the “clandestine university”; however, they focused mainly on theoretical work, and, above all, and in line with the Central European tradition, on philosophy and the humanities. So not only orthodox Marxist educationalists, but also their opponents in dissent, did not prioritise empirical research and did not appreciate the role of empirical research in modern social science. In contrast to sociology, for example, educational sciences (under the traditional Central European label “pedagogics” and “didactics”) were never banned by the Communist rulers. One could even say that the institutional conditions were favourable: a network of new teacher training colleges was established in regional capitals, departments of pedagogy already existed at the traditional universities, and a new Institute of Education was founded within the Academy of Sciences. However, this official support proved to be a kiss of death. Unlike biomedicine or technology, which retained a considerable degree of autonomy in the post-Stalinist era, educational sciences had made too many compromises with the ruling ideology, causing significant harm to how they were perceived by the academic community and the general public. After 1989, a general scepticism about the pedagogical sciences led to the abolition of the Institute of Education within the Academy of Sciences and undermined the authority of the academic community in discussions about school policy reforms. It opened up the space for policy making, without scientific evidence, that characterised the first half of the 1990s in Czechia. There were, however, some exceptions to this. As Ekiert (2015) identifies, one of the first global players to influence the transformation of Czech schools was the World Health Organization (WHO). From the early 1990s onwards, a small group of Czech health psychologists opened the way for the influence of the WHO (Havlínová, 2002; Dvořák, 2021). Their research on the effect of the reforms of the 1970s and 1980s on students’ physical and mental health portrayed post-socialist schools as uniform, even totalitarian institutions, oppressive to both students and teachers, and harmful to healthy childhood development (Thomas et al., 1998). The discourse on humanisation and children’s health as key reform goals was well received, and influential teacher training colleges and emerging non-profit organisations joined this movement. Phenomenological philosophy was popular among Czech dissident groups and this approach obtained further support following the publication of the Delors Report for UNESCO.  As a result, the topic of “school humanisation” became crucial in the development of all further reform proposals. Here we find an explanation of why some of the hallmarks of the “global education reform model” have never been adopted in Czechia. While the performance orientation of instruction and test-based accountability policies were deemed harmful to all school actors, the autonomy of schools was highly rated. This gradually led to a specific combination of very high levels of curricular and managerial autonomy among school heads, which was not counterbalanced by control mechanisms.

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Decentralisation: Reasons and Consequences From 1989 onwards the decentralisation process was the most visible school policy reform. There was a significant streamlining of management structures in the school system. Intermediate (specifically regional) management structures were gradually abolished and the administrative structure at the district level was also later abolished. With the reform of public administration in 2000, the entire structure of sectoral management eventually disappeared and only two substantial levels of school administration remained in the school system: the school itself and the ministry – with the role of municipalities and regions becoming mostly administrative. In 2003 all schools became legal entities. Decentralisation reached an extreme degree. The school principal was made (and still is) responsible for both the administrative and economic operations of the school, as well as for educational leadership. The space between the state and the school remains almost empty, only occasionally being filled by the Czech School Inspectorate’s inspections. Such decentralisation was a logical and expected reaction to the previous centralised system. The reasoning behind decentralisation differed depending on the group of policy actors. Actors of the democratic movement after the 1989 Velvet Revolution saw the state monopoly of education and the rampant bureaucratic structures as “obstacles to democratic change in education” (Kalous, 1993, p. 236). Making each school more independent and opening up the school system to private and church schools seemed to be an open door to democratisation and the humanisation of the education system. The 1992–1998 neo-liberal government supported decentralisation, with its emphasis on the principle of subsidiarity, as part of a general tendency to make the state as lean as possible. It also introduced clarification and a narrowing of the economics of the education system by applying “per capita” financing. The adherents of the progressive pedagogy movement (Rýdl, 1996) added the argument that the external and internal autonomy of schools was a precondition for productive and progressive education. The level of decentralisation achieved is usually interpreted as an unusually high level of autonomy. However, this conclusion has to be considered critically. School autonomy as a function of low external control depends on the actors’ qualities (Rýdl, 1996) and also should not be confused with agency (Arcia et al., 2011): decentralisation does not mean the same as autonomy. Top-Down Processes As mentioned above, the deconstruction represented by some changes in the law took place very rapidly. This raised expectations of further reforms. It seemed necessary to look for ways to intervene relatively quickly in the school system. Instead, the hesitant and cautious pace of the reforms was disappointing. Society expected radical educational reforms; however, it was 15 years after the political change of 1989 before a new School Act (2004) came into force in Czechia.

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In the early 1990s, the government, represented by the Ministry of Education, was not able to apply standard mechanisms of democratic education policymaking and it became obvious that some representatives misunderstood the role of the ministry in the reform process. For example, Petr Piťha, the first Minister of Education of the Czech Republic after the partition of Czechoslovakia, understood his role as being a promoter of the humanisation of the school and the keeper of national traditions. Instead of structural changes, he promoted a new curricular programme from a centralist position, the creation of which he himself participated in. Nevertheless, the central authorities managed to stabilise their position and turned their attention to the systemic changes necessary to complete the deconstruction of the centralised system. These steps include setting up a transparent system of financing schools on a per capita basis, clarifying the legal position of the school in the system, and gradually adjusting the role of the Czech School Inspectorate. Bottom-Up Movement At the same time as the top-down processes, a massive activation of pro-reform educators and scholars led to the emergence of non-governmental associations (PAU, NEMES, IDEA, etc.). Groups of pro-reform actors identified, in more informed ways, opportunities to influence policy, and were ready to form coalitions and support each other. This made participation in the reforms more effective. Soon, these initiatives were able to reflect critically on the reform steps, formulate a positive reform agenda, and uncover the blind spots of the reforms. Among the topics under discussion were school development (Havlínová et al., 1994; Pol & Lazarová, 1999), school autonomy (Rýdl, 1996), and the missing mechanisms of school self-­ evaluation (Rýdl et al., 1998), etc. The peak influence of the pro-reform initiatives came after the 1998 elections when the Social Democrats took over the government. The government invited initiatives to participate in the reform and initiated a public debate on the reform steps. However, this phase of compliance ended in conflict when the government did not allow pro-reform initiatives to participate in the creation of curricular documents as part of a fundamental reform a few years later. This rise of pro-reform activities created a somewhat unique situation in Czechia. Over time private sponsors emerged who, for various reasons, sought opportunities to support school reform. The Open Society Fund, an internationally established philanthropic project, and the Philip Morris company in Czechia became involved in philanthropic activities and naturally found partners in domestic actors, pedagogical initiatives, and pro-reform movements. These philanthropic projects faced difficulties finding partners in other CEE countries with less developed bottom-up movements. They therefore had to establish new structures that were less well integrated with the Czech environment, which may be the reason for their weaker relations with national governments. These weaker ties eventually turned against these projects as soon as the anti-reform forces were activated. Similarly, some commercial players, usually foreign investors, who identified vacant niches in the education market, found local partners to cooperate with.

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Publishers who flooded the market with textbooks could not operate in the Czech environment without the support of local authors. Both investors in the market of education and philanthropic projects often brought stimuli from abroad that were new and innovative in the Czech environment; for example, the Open Society Fund supported projects to develop children’s critical thinking or inclusive education. Such projects are sometimes interpreted within the concept of “travelling policies”. This term describes situations where “international policies and agendas interact with local traditions and ideologies” (Moree, 2013, p. 52). However, since there is often a lack of an element of “outside pressures” (Lawn & Lingard, 2002, p. 294), which is also associated with travelling policies, another interpretation is viable: innovations welcomed by pro-reform actors in school policy spread by “diffusion” in the school system (Novotný, 2004).

Donor-Driven Reforms and Europeanisation Until the end of the 1990s, Czech education policy repeatedly displayed a high level of resistance to interventions from intergovernmental organisations. In 1995 Czechia became the first of the CEE countries (1996: Hungary and Poland, 2000: Slovakia, etc.) to join the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). However, this, along with the publication of the OECD’s Review of National Policy for Education (1996, follow-up report 1999), had hardly any visible effect. In contrast, the World Bank ran ambitious campaigns in education reform in several other CEE countries and Birzea commented that “the influence of external resources was so great that some countries (e.g. Romania and Bulgaria) even ran the risk of education policies becoming incoherent, owing to their excessive dependence on external donors” (Birzea, 2008, p. 110). The participation of Czechia in large-scale international studies of student achievement (e.g. TIMSS 1995, 1998) generated data that stimulated public discussions on the need for reform, again, though, with limited impact on policymaking. The results of the outcome measurements also brought about some confusion, as they were surprisingly better than expected. Negotiations on EU accession started in 1996 and the (financial) support of the Phare Programme became a “driving force of the internationalisation” of the Czech school system (Greger & Walterová, 2007; Stastna, 2001). The Phare Programme was created by the then European Communities (EC) to provide financial support for the reforms that took place in 1989, initially in Poland and Hungary, but soon including a number of other CEE countries, including Czechia and Slovakia. It was originally based on the priorities of individual countries (1990–1997), but in the second period (in Czechia in 1998–2006) it focused entirely on pre-accession goals. It is important to note that the Phare Programme also financed economic and social cohesion projects, including the transformation of education (initially mainly vocational and higher education). Two key policy documents, the Green Paper (České vzdělání a Evropa…, 1999) and the White Paper (Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport, 2001), were also published with the support of the Phare Programme.

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However, the lack of coherence between these two documents illustrates the fact that the policymaking imitated standard procedures rather than representing good practice in policymaking. However, the White Paper (the full official name of the document was The National Programme for the Development of Education in the Czech Republic) did become a basis for a new education law. The Education Act (2004) underlined the continuing trend for decentralisation and provided schools with deepened curricular autonomy (Dvořák et al., 2014). The curricular reform initiated by the Education Act became the main attempt at reform during the post-socialist era. A new school-based curriculum, developed by schoolteachers within the framework curricula and guided by a national curricular agency (Výzkumný ústav pedagogický), was to be the critical element of the reform, replacing the traditional centrally developed syllabi. To compare, four countries joined the EU in 2004: Czechia, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia. All four of them also launched curricular reforms that more or less emulated global trends (Corner, 2015). It is argued that the education reforms in some CEE countries were stimulated by the need to spend EU cohesion and structural funds in the education sector. Kosová and Porubský (2011) describe the reform as an external funding-driven reform. Besides the budget, the EU also contributed to the idea of developing key competencies as a new way of framing school education. The new framework and school curricula exhibited all the key features of “New Curricula” (Priestley & Biesta, 2013) based on the principle of cross-curricular work and the promotion of general key competencies. In contrast to the long tradition of Czech education, mandatory outcomes replaced detailed syllabi for individual grades and no compulsory subject matter was included in basic education. The extensive shift to school-based curriculum development challenged the competencies of teachers. Janík (2015) and Janík et al. (2020) summarise that the essential goals of the reform remained unfulfilled in many respects, as schools mainly approached the task formally and recycled the previous nationwide syllabi, disregarding the opportunity to deviate from them and create a local, place-based curriculum. Two key theoretical positions currently informing comparative educational research may be used to interpret the curricular reform in Czechia (and in the other three countries that joined the EU at the same time): new institutionalism and the theory of policy borrowing. New institutionalism (Meyer & Rowan, 2006; Meyer, 2010; Ramirez & Meyer, 2002; Wiseman et al., 2014) postulates that the spread of the global culture of education dominates the reform processes in different parts of the world. Some countries, however, imitate the global models quite superficially. The concept of “loose coupling” explains any changes and divergence from the original model which may happen in a particular country during the adoption and implementation of the reform process. The theory of policy borrowing (Phillips & Ochs, 2003) posits, in some cases, that educational reforms are borrowed on the basis of the principle of “solutions first”. They are adopted without a local problem to solve or without actually solving a problem that really exists in the school system adopting them. Despite this, there is a method in this madness as there are always local political or economic reasons for introducing a reform; for example, a

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widespread motivation for borrowing reforms seems to be a desire to benefit from EU structural funding in European transition countries (Kosová & Porubský, 2011). The process of policy borrowing always includes translation: local adaptation, modification, or re-framing of an imported reform (Steiner-Khamsi, 2012, 2016, 2021). Simultaneously, the borrowing process in CEE countries may face the capability trap (Pritchett et al., 2010). Therefore, both approaches expect that some countries want to follow Western models, while however, lacking the necessary capabilities and resources to do so.

Post-Europeanisation The 2010s were characterised by the growing influence of populist political parties in all CEE countries, but with different impacts on society and education: in Hungary and Poland, populist parties were able to push through educational reforms (or rather counter-reforms), completely disregarding the opposition and the liberal section of the public. Although the education policy processes in both countries proceeded comparably, their content differed (Rajca, 2020; Velkey, 2020). In Hungary, a rigid centralisation and nationalisation of education took place and subsequently “inequalities between schools have increased significantly, and school segregation has become increasingly common and accepted” (Velkey, 2022). The purposeful liquidation of the Budapest campus of the non-state Central European University (Austin, 2021) was of symbolic importance. Interestingly, the same university was expelled to Budapest from Prague in the 1990s by the then neoliberal-conservative government. In Czechia, the pro-Russian and pro-Chinese President Miloš Zeman most strongly symbolised the erosion of the pro-European orientation. In education, the publicʼs attitude to public schools has gradually changed. In the first two decades, sociologists repeatedly reported a high level of satisfaction with schools and a belief in their quality on the part of both parents and the general public. In recent years, however, this satisfaction has declined and this is probably one of the reasons for the rapid growth in the number of new private schools. However, most parents still do not want more fundamental changes to school instruction. Academics and other experts are frustrated by the unsatisfactory results of previous education reforms and the inability to launch new ones. The government of the Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babiš (2017–2021) could not rely so much on nationalist sentiments and tried to prove its legitimacy by solving the accumulated problems more effectively than liberal political parties. Thus, somewhat paradoxically, the populist government began to address the long-­ standing deep internal debt of education and significantly increased the salaries of teachers, which were (compared to other professions) among the lowest in the OECD countries. During the same period, the conditions for inclusive education were stabilised, although the promotion of inclusion had not previously been favourably received either by schools or by the general public (Štech, 2021).

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During this time systematic work began on a new education reform. The proposed reform had two main aims: (1) to modernise the curriculum, and (2) to reduce the differences in studentsʼ educational outcomes. The first goal was due to the disappointing results of the previous curricular reform, which overestimated the potential for the school-based curriculum development to be a change mechanism. The second aim was a response to the findings from the international PISA and TIMSS surveys that the differences between studentsʼ results in different geographical areas and in different schools had increased significantly. This unfavourable development is associated with the excessive decentralisation of the school system. The preparation of the school reform was also characterised by greater-than-­ usual transparency and an effort to build consensus among key actors. The goals and processes of the reform reflected the growing influence of a new generation of experts, sociologists, political scientists, and economists who completed their studies and gained their professional experience after the fall of communism. The importance of research evidence is also growing, as well as permanent communication with key stakeholders. In the autumn of 2021, the opposition coalition of liberal and conservative political parties won the parliamentary election with a democratic and Europe-facing programme. The new government made a decision that was not usual in Czech education policy: although radically opposed to the previous government in most other areas, the winning parties promised to maintain continuity in education policy and to continue with preparations for the reform initiated by the previous Minister of Education, Petr Plaga, who even remained in the position of Deputy Minister of Education. However, the new government soon had to deal with the acute problem of the influx of tens of thousands of school-age refugees from Ukraine. (This partially overshadowed another chronic challenge for Czech education – achieving a higher degree of inclusion of Roma children in mainstream schools in a situation in which the liberal economic model rather increases the exclusion of Roma families in society.) How the full-scale war in Eastern Europe will affect the medium- to long-term direction of Czech education is difficult to predict at this time.

Conclusions In our chapter on Czech school policy reforms in the CEE context, we examined the role of domestic actors, various international influences, and individual school reforms. Modern general education in Czechia was first built by the Austrian monarchy according to the Prussian model. In the last third of the nineteenth century, education was substantially changed by liberal reforms, again coming to Czechia from Vienna. The interwar Czechoslovak Republic maintained the Austrian school system, with any major changes being limited to small-scale experiments. After the Second World War, the home-grown school reform did not have the opportunity to mature, as the Soviet models with their advantages and disadvantages were externally enforced (being more or less willingly implemented by Czech actors). Since

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2000, the key actors of change in Czech and Slovak education have been the European Union, the OECD, and other international actors (Surubaru, 2020; Pelle & Kuruczleki, 2016). By no means do we want to draw any parallels between the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, the totalitarian Soviet Union with its empire, and the European Union based on democratic values. On the other hand, it is necessary to consider that small and medium-sized countries such as Czechia are unlikely to succeed without integration into larger units and may not even be able to create an original functional school education model (Ramirez & Meyer, 2002). There can be no dispute about the fact that, as a result of the disintegration of the communist dominion, the 1990s brought fundamental changes both in school policy and in the reality of school education. The accession of countries in this area to the European Union (2004  – Czechia, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, and Slovenia; 2007 – Romania and Bulgaria; 2013 – Croatia; other countries are conducting accession talks) was expected to lead to further changes, perhaps even more significant, ones. Here, however, the reports begin to differ. Greger (2012) considers the changes associated with EU accession to be far less significant than the processes in the first decade after 1989. In many cases, the second transition was only formal, with no real impact on schools. Greger also does not consider the education reforms after 2000 to be specific to the post-socialist region. The new reforms were responding to the universal challenges of globalisation and other social changes or the usual problems of education policy anywhere and at any time. Yet another and fundamentally contradictory view suggests that the convergence of the former Eastern Bloc countries and Western Europe has not occurred (it is very slow or the differences are even growing) and that the CEE countries, as a result of their history, will be stuck forever in a never-ending transition and a capability trap (Peshkopia, 2014; Pritchett et  al., 2010) similar to the post-colonial situation.5 Indeed, in Czechia, a number of papers have recently appeared that document and analyse unsuccessful and failing projects in various areas of school policy, whether it is the more than 10 years of fruitless efforts to create a National Curricular Council (Veselý, 2015), curricular reform of the compulsory schools (Dvořák, 2021), or further teacher education (Michek & Spilková, 2021). Similarly, we would find a series of unsuccessful educational reforms in Slovakia. The approaches described represent two paradigms, which Snyder (2018) named the politics of inevitability and the politics of eternity. The former presupposes a more or less automatic inevitable progress and convergence of the post-socialist system to the Western/global model. In contrast, the latter model makes the countries of the region eternal victims of the past. Can we avoid these two extreme positions – the idea of automatic convergence and condemnation of lagging eternally – in assessing the continuity and/or transformation of education policy in the  If it seems to us that the school systems of Western and Eastern Europe today are addressing similar challenges with similar policies, it does not necessarily mean that the post-socialist countries have become more like the West. To some extent, this can also reflect the global destabilisation of traditional democratic institutions and values, which leads to the West solving the problems of the rise of populists, regional separatism, etc. 5

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post-­socialist field? We have tried to sketch a picture that shows the specific actors, their goals, and the effects of their actions rather than universal trends. One of the biggest surprises in the CEE countries of Hungary or Poland, which began democratising their societies relatively early and fast, was that their educational reforms in the first and second decades after the fall of communism were internationally appreciated. Despite this, in recent years counter-reforms have taken place in the Polish and Hungarian education systems which reflect the overall developments in these countries. An extreme case is Russia, which has become a militant authoritarian regime, with the expected consequences for school education. All three countries, despite their differences, share a resistance to the liberal ideas of European integration and an emphasis on the supremacy of their own national heritage. Fortunately, Czechia has not yet definitively taken this path of demonising neoliberal globalisation and glorifying alleged national traditions in education and society. However, the conflict has not been resolved forever and Czechia cannot rid itself of its position between East and West. At the moment, the prevailing attitude is uncertainty about the future of the countries of Central and Eastern Europe. The dilemma of choosing between the neoliberal model of school governance and its more humanistic alternatives now seems less significant than the threat of an utterly illiberal future, whether as a result of internal development or the intervention of external (super)powers. Furthermore, the questions we ask ourselves in Central and Eastern Europe today may be relevant for the whole continent in the future.

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Chapter 11

Education Policies and Reforms in Slovenia and Croatia: Shared History, Diverging Paths Eva Klemenčič Mirazchiyski, Urška Štremfel, Nikša Alfirević, and Ljiljana Najev Čačija Abstract  In this chapter, we analyse the education policy and reform patterns in Slovenia and Croatia, by exploring their common roots during the socialist era and the diverging development paths since the 1990s. General development trends are identified and analysed, by exploring the influences of neoliberal and transnational approaches, with a particular focus on international large-scale student assessments (ILSAs) and their role in shaping the national policies. Particular national issues are further explored, including the policy-borrowing and policy-lending patterns, their underlying political/ideological drivers and other issues where the two countries diverge from the transnational patterns. Comparative analysis is based on the authors’ review of the ILSAs data, the qualitative evaluation of the European Education & Training framework and national strategic policy documents. At the end of the chapter, we develop a critical perspective on the motives and timing of Slovenian and Croatian education policy-making by referring to the reform initiatives and their impact; joining/withdrawing from some cycles of ILSA and comparative studies; bilateral/regional cooperation efforts. Therefore, we show that policy-making in education is not only about modernisation and reform processes, but that it is tightly coupled with the ideological presumptions and preferences, adopted by the political actors. Especially in the case of Croatia, Europeanisation is often used as a general argument for the formal adoption of ambitious education reform agenda(s), which are rarely fully implemented. Keywords  Education policy · Education reforms · International large-scale student assessments (ILSAs) · Croatia · Slovenia

E. K. Mirazchiyski (*) · U. Štremfel Educational Research Institute, Ljubljana, Slovenia e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] N. Alfirević · L. N. Čačija Faculty of Economics, Business and Tourism, University of Split, Split, Croatia e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. B. Krejsler, L. Moos (eds.), School Policy Reform in Europe, Educational Governance Research 22, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-35434-2_11

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Introduction Although country-specific peculiarities characterize each EU member state in the educational system, some countries share commonalities that can, to some extent, determine similarities in how they accept the EU and broader international influences. Silova (2009, p. 295) argues that a particular group of new member states, i.e., post-socialist member states, “share several educational characteristics, as reflected in educational legacies inherited from the socialist regime and a proclaimed aspiration to embrace Western educational values.” Therefore, Europeanisation in these states is understood as post-socialist modernisation and the path towards completing the transition. By focusing on the global, post-socialist states have constructed ways of reasoning that undermine divergent visions for education reforms and limit the possibilities of imagining any alternative trajectories of post-socialist transformations (Silova, 2009; Chankseliani & Silova, 2018). “Although the emergence of Western neoliberal imaginaries is visible in education policy narratives in many post-socialist contexts, there are also multiple tensions, complexities and contradictions associated with the ongoing reconfigurations of education purposes and values, as well as with their subsequent translations into education policy and practice” (Chankseliani & Silova, 2018, p. 19). Halász (2015, p. 350) argues that although Central and Eastern post-socialist EU member states are treated as a group, it is essential to see the internal differences within this cluster. Based on their geopolitical position, the ways they made their transition journal to a market economy and parliamentary democracy and deeper roots in their unique history, he divides them into four groups: the Baltic states (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania), the four Visegrád countries (Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia) and the countries of the Western (Croatia and Slovenia) and Eastern Balkans (Bulgaria and Romania).1 This chapter focuses on the interplay between global and national factors in education policy development in Slovenia and Croatia, emphasizing these factors and their interweaving. It aims to explain the conditions in which Slovenia and Croatia have been (internally and externally) triggered to follow the EU and broader international educational initiatives in the last three decades (since their independence onwards). Although the modernisation, internationalisation and Europeanisation of post-­ socialist education systems have been relatively well researched (e.g., Cerych, 1997; Mitter, 2003; Birzea, 2008; Silova, 2009; Halász, 2015; Chankseliani & Silova, 2018), there have been scarce existing studies, which would systematically  We could also see that there are different definitions for Western Balkans and that terminology is also changing with the accession policies of countries into the EU.  Due to the European Commission’s 2008 statement, “Western Balkans is a political neologism that has been used to refer to Albania and the territory of former Yugoslavia, except Slovenia, since the early 1990s” (Koršňáková et al., 2022, p. 3). The institutions of the EU have generally used the term Western Balkans for the Balkan area, including non-members of the EU and developed a policy to support the gradual integration of these economies into the European Union (EU) (ibid.). 1

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analyse the issue in Slovenia and Croatia and complete the lack of studies, which would do this in a comparative perspective. A preliminary analysis of education policy literature in Croatia and Slovenia, indexed by the Elsevier Scopus reference database, shows several clusters of the extant research.2 One cluster focuses on the research of education and its public policies related to the labour market, social policies and poverty reduction. Another cluster links to the public health policies’ attitudes toward health and medical education. The third identified cluster brings together studies related to higher education, its reforms and internationalisation. The higher education cluster is a relatively recent addition to the Slovenian and Croatian national literature on education (as of 2018). From this point of view, this chapter fills the research gap by providing a comparative insight into post-socialist education policy developments and reforms in Slovenia and Croatia and the ways internationalisation and Europeanisation have influenced them.

Development of the Education System in Slovenia and Croatia A long history characterizes the education system in present-day Slovenia and Croatia. According to Lajh and Štremfel (2010), it can be divided into three main periods: (a) an imperialistic education policy (until World War II), which was marked by different interventions and enforced rules. For example, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, parts of Slovenia and Croatia were included in the Illyrian Provinces of Napoleon I’s French Empire and later under Austro-Hungarian rule; (b) supervised education policy (from World War II to 1991) in which Slovenia and Croatia, as two of the socialist republics of Yugoslavia, (partially) developed their education policy, while at the same time retaining a policy that was consistent with the typical federal arrangement; and (c) sovereign education policy (post-1991). This turning point in their development occurred in the 1990s, following Slovenia’s and Croatia’s independence in 1991. Both countries faced resistance from Yugoslav forces when they declared independence. However, while the violent conflict in Slovenia lasted only a few days, Croatia suffered a longer and more violent conflict. Several cities in Croatia were damaged and around one-third of Croatian territory was occupied. Croatia regained complete control over all of its territories only in 2002. Due to different paths to independence, it can be assumed that the development of the education system in Slovenia and Croatia significantly differed, as showed below. It first, however, needs to be mentioned that some basic structural parts of both education systems are (still) similar, e.g., primary and lower secondary education is organised as a single structure system in both countries (beginning at the age of 6 and consisting of 9  years of compulsory schooling in Slovenia and beginning at the age of 6 or 7 and consisting of 8 years in Croatia). In both cases, the education systems are centraly governed, with the majority of public schools

 Research results are available from the authors.

2

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(which are secular), upper secondary schooling is not compulsory in either one, but almost all students enrol into the upper secondary level, when the tracking of students actually begins. While there is no doubt that the beginning of the development of the school system of both countries dates back to 1991, there are also many differences, some of which are still pronounced today. The period of sovereign education policy in Slovenia should be elaborated and divided into subsections. These subsections could be understood concerning the plan for comprehensive school reform in Slovenia, which consisted of three main phases: (a) changes in educational legislation (1991–1996); (b) curricular reform (1996–1999); and (c) implementation and evaluation (1999 onwards). In addition to the national reform process, we argue that from Slovenia’s independence onwards, we can also recognize three phases of the Europeanisation process, which are to some extent significantly intertwined with the national reform process: (a) lesson-­drawing (1991–1998); (b) pre-Europeanisation (1998–2004); and (c) Europeanisation (2004 onwards) (see Table 11.1). Žiljak and Molnar (2015) divided the development of Croatia’s education policy into three phases: (a) nurturing national policy (1991–2000); (b) pre-­Europeanisation process (2000–2013); (c) Europeanisation (2013 onwards). The main characteristic of the first phase of education policy changes in Croatia is the political, conceptual and institutional breakup with the socialist education system in 1990–1991 and the affirmation of national values in education policy. The paradigmatic shift with the determination of a new policy direction was followed by a decade of smaller steps and changes (Žiljak & Molnar, 2015, pp.  281, 282). Specificity emphasises that changes to the education policy began in a war environment, which entailed difficulties for education policy (Koren & Baranović, 2009). Croatia was marked by constrained sovereignty since the state institutions were established in only one part of the territory. The prerequisites for a unified education policy were created only when the state institutions began functioning on the territory of the entire state in 1998 (Žiljak & Baketa, 2019, p.  266). System reforms characterize the second phase, education placement on the agenda and a strong momentum in the Europeanisation process, decision-making, implementation, institutional development and evaluation. The education changes were connected with the negotiation for entry into the EU (Žiljak & Molnar, 2015, p. 284; Žiljak & Baketa, 2019, p. 269). The third Europeanisation phase started in 2013 with the formal accession of Croatia to the EU. The development of education policy after 1991  in Slovenia and Croatia (Table 11.1) is consistent with the arguments of several authors that national education policies cannot be conclusively analysed without considering an international context (e.g., Sahlberg, 2011) and the impact of international organisations (e.g., Martens et al., 2010) and confirms that the systemic reforms of post-socialist states are inextricably linked with the Europeanisation process (Halász, 2007, p. 34). It confirms Blokker’s (2005, p. 504) assumptions that in post-socialist countries, the West has been unproblematically presented as the embodiment of progress, providing ‘the normative affirmation of the Western modernity project.’ Being left was not politically acceptable, presenting the discourse of crisis and threat to international legitimacy.

1997–1999 curricular reform

II. Phase

Monitoring and evaluation of the reforms Quality assessment and assurance School self-evaluation School inspection National examinations International large-scale assessments

Nine-year elementary school programme Starting points of curricular reform Extensive in-service teacher training

Alignment with European values and international educational standards Review teams (OECD) Consultations with experts from France, England, Scotland, Germany and Nordic countries Comparison of education in Slovenia with education systems from selected countries in Central and Western Europe The identified need for permanent structures for the international transfer of knowledge and good practices

I. Phase

2004 onwards Institutionalised forms of mutual learning II. Phase Europeanisation Open method of coordination Representatives in working groups E&T 2010 and E&T 2020 Representatives in expert bodies and EU III. Phase networks

1998–2004 Attaining international standards of Pre-­ knowledge Europeanisation EU accession process (1998–2002) Meetings with representatives of the educational authorities from France, Norway and Finland Involvement of schools in European educational and training projects

Development of 1991–1997 theoretical base for Lesson drawing step-by-step reform White paper on education The entire educational legislation regulating pre-primary to tertiary education

National reform process

Europeanisation/internationalisation process

Sources: Štremfel (2015), Žiljak and Molnar (2015), and Žiljak and Baketa (2019)

III. Phase 2000 onwards Evaluation

1991–1996 Legislative reform

I. Phase

Slovenia

Table 11.1  Intertwined national reforms and Europeanisation process in Slovenia in Croatia

2013 onwards

2000 onwards substantive changes

1991–2000 Nurturing national education

Croatia

Entire legislation (2007–2009)

Severing ties with the socialist Heritage (change of administrative and management staff) Abolishing socialist subjects and introducing national identity, nurturing ones No strategic document was accepted Changes to education policy implemented incrementally Information technology plan and program (1994) Legislative changes occurred mainly via bylaw acts An overly simplistic and nationalistic approach to implementation of the idea of national education

National reform process

The dual system with applied experience and The support of the Bavarian chamber of trades and crafts

2013 onwards Europeanisation

2000–2013 Beginning of Prenegotiations in Europeanisation 2001 for entry into the EU

1991–2000 Limited international cooperation

Europeanisation/ internationalisation process

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The Slovenian White Paper on Education (1995)3 and Slovenian researchers report that Europe has been seen as an essential reference in reforming the Slovenian educational system (Štrajn, 2004, pp. 51–54). Barle Lakota and Svetlik (in Gaber, 2008, p. 1) explained: “/…/ the change of the social system meant that changes in the education system became a necessity. Thus, at the start of the 1990s, Slovenia joined the European trend towards reforms of education systems.” Slovenia wanted to become part of a free Europe with a high standard of living and saw education as an essential tool to reach this goal (Gaber, 2008, p. 102). Therefore, the reform of the Slovenian educational system took place in line with the common European heritage of political, cultural and moral values (Kodelja, 2007, p. 40). The accession of Slovenia to the EU helped the country clarify some conceptual questions about the educational system and articulate the direction of its future educational priorities (Pluško, 2004, p. 62). In these reform processes, the EU was presented almost with mythic expectations and no critical views (Barle Lakota, 2005). However, the Ministry of Education and Sport (2005, p. 3) reveals that “adaptation to the European Education Area has been a demanding task since some of Slovenia’s national standards were previously different from those in the EU.” When Slovenia became a full member of the EU in 2004, the educational system was relatively well developed, with some targets and indicators already matching or exceeding EU averages. The successful attainment of EU benchmarks and the compliant incorporation of EU agendas in the national space were recognized in interviews in 2010 by European Commission representatives, evaluating Slovenia as ‘a good pupil’ in the educational policy field (Štremfel, 2013). Similarly, in Croatia, Žiljak and Molnar (2015) expose that recent studies on education policy in Croatia have shown that educational changes cannot be understood without the European dimension. For example, the first Croatian President, Franjo Tuđman (1990), said in his programmatic speech in the Croatian Parliament: “The old regime has left us in many areas in a spiritual and material wasteland, especially in education and training. We need to return to our and general European educational traditions and make a radical turn towards the future information era”. Žiljak and Molnar (2015, p. 282) argue that the education policy goal indicated here encompassed the two essential elements of the changes: the breakup of the socialist system and the return to European roots and connections. This was carried out by reaffirming traditional Croatian national values understood as European (non-­Balkan) values (Žiljak & Molnar, 2015, p. 282). However, authors of the White Paper on Croatian Education from 2001 claimed that, during the 1990s in Croatia, “elementary and obligatory education is both structurally and content-wise incompatible with education systems in developed European states” (Pastuović et al., 2001, p. 11). This primarily refers to the duration of elementary education and the absence of curricular reform. However, in all critical programmatic documents and legislation accepted mainly between 2005 and 2010, Europe is markedly used to argue for the changes or

 “In Slovenia, one of the goals of the renewed school system is to allow achieving internationally comparable standards at the end of the primary school” (White paper on Education 1995, p. 71). 3

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as a legitimising instrument. Žiljak and Molnar (2015, p. 284) argue that the arrival of education policy in the heart of the EU’s political interests coincided with the transitional changes in Croatia and its accession to the EU. Even though significant changes and developments are evident after the three decades of Slovenian and Croatian education policy, at least at the beginning, restrictions on radical reforms were evident. In Slovenia, this can be illustrated by Gaber’s (2008, p. 12) explanation: “From the very beginning, we avoided the word ‘reform.’ For one thing, both citizens and ourselves were afraid of yet another experiment in education. A fear of making new mistakes made us opt for a careful comparative step-by-step reform. One of the hypotheses (which proved to be true) was that the existing system formed a sound basis that we could develop further without overly radical change.” Similarly, Žiljak and Molnar (2015, p. 282) explain that the new goals and objectives in the first decade of Croatian independence were not shaped into a comprehensive educational reform. A series of individual decisions were made instead. Despite sharing some common points (breaking up with the socialist system, openness to the West and relative restriction to extensive reforms), it is evident that the first phase of transition in Slovenia and Croatia is significantly differentiated. In Slovenia, this period was largely already intertwined with pre-Europeanisation and internationalisation. In its desire to depoliticise the educational agenda, Slovenia, at the very beginning, started international cooperation in the forms of bilateral international cooperation, lesson drawing and the evaluation of its educational system with involvement in international comparative assessment studies. This can be explained by Gaber’s (2008) reflection that despite different views on national educational reforms existing, they were imbued with faith in a rationalist (European) approach to policy-making. While Croatia, in the first decade after independence, was mainly focused on nurturing the national identity agenda in the educational system. The war situation limited education policy developments. Although the changes in education also emphasized the modernisation and cultural gaps between the wider region and the old EU member countries, even today, national identity issues block some aspects of democratisation if reform is perceived as opposed to the widely accepted identity narratives (Freyburg & Richter, 2010; Koren, 2020). For instance, in Croatia, education has been linked to identity issues during socialist times, when many Croatians found the ‘Yugoslav’ identity to be imposed by educational practices, including the definition (and teaching) of Croatian vs. the officially sanctioned ‘Serbo-Croatian’/ ‘Croato-Serbian’ language norm in the 1970s; contested ‘anti-nationalistic’ history curricula, taught from the centralistic (Yugoslav) point of view, throughout the 1970s and 1980s; etc. These issues were opposed by the counter-practices of ‘Croatisation’ and ‘re-traditionalisation’ during the initial education reform attempts in 1990s, which (re)affirmed the ethnic culture and denied previous embeddedness into a wider regional (ex-Yugoslav) cultural space (Bellamy, 2003, pp. 137–149). New curricula (Baranović, 1994), state-authorized textbooks (Štimac, 2020) and educational practices became the identity formation drivers. Although the educational reforms of the 1990s were formally linked to the values of democracy and Europeanisation,

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their practical orientation could be described in terms of encouraging the national and religious homogeneity and labelling/socially excluding the opposing actors (Bellamy, 2003, pp. 153–154). Thus, it can be argued that the Europeanisation and internationalisation of the Croatian education system began a decade later than the Slovenian one and similar challenges to the specific reform elements, such as introduction of civic education in the recent curricular reform attempt, are still present (Beroš & Pongračić, 2018). There is a widely accepted perception of the Croatian stakeholders that modernisation and reform processes are still stalled in many aspects of the Croatian society, including education (Kurelic & Rodin, 2012; Hornstein Tomić & Taylor, 2018). Regardless of such a public perception, the foreign experts and the relevant government ministry have presented an affirmative evaluation of the ‘School for life’ reform initiative (intended to replace/continue the politically challenged ‘Comprehensive curricular reform’ project).4 With a new emphasis on (non-­ ideologically challenging) aspects of education’s ‘relevance for practical life’ and the implementation of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) in schools, through the EU-financed e-Schools project,5 the involvement of international experts and organisations did not prove as especially useful in transforming the critical political actors’ and policy-makers’ preferences for maintaining the status quo. Therefore, it could be concluded that the current curricula emerged as a compromise among the conflicting institutional actors (Jokić & Ristić Dedić, 2018, 2019) and ideological interests (Beroš & Pongračić, 2018) instead of being produced by the reform process. The same findings can be applied to other aspects of modernizing the Croatian education system, such as the professionalisation and licensing of school principals, who seem to perceive themselves as a profession (Relja et  al., 2019). Nevertheless, historical accounts of this policy initiative (Alfirević et al., 2011; Alfirević et al., 2016) and its outcomes (Alfirević et al., 2020) align with the previously described findings.

I nternationalising National Agenda by Bilateral, Regional and Multilateral Policy Learning Globalisation triggered various forms of bilateral, regional and multilateral policy learning through which national states internationalize their national education-­ policy making (Steiner-Khamsi, 2012).

 See: https://skolazazivot.hr/sazetak-engleski/.  https://ec.europa.eu/regional_policy/en/information/publications/factsheets/2020/e-schoolsproject-bringing-croatian-schools-in-the-digital-era and https://pilot.e-­skole.hr/en/e-schools/ project-description/. 4 5

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Bilateral Policy Learning Regarding bilateral policy learning in Slovenia, in the transition and modernisation process, we can recognize the adoption of many policy documents, which took account of comparisons with and good practices of other (EU) member states. Lesson drawing and comparison with EU member states have thus been involved in the educational reform process from Slovenia’s independence. Experts from several EU member states were consulted in establishing and developing the Slovenian education system. Although Nordic countries were seen as role models, the particular solutions were imported from different parts of the EU, depending on the topic (e.g., Sweden mainly served as a model for organizing primary schools, England was consulted in providing national external assessment, the introduction of the dual system of vocational education combined German and Danish experiences). Bilateral agreements with several countries in the EU and around the world continue to be an important part of education policy cooperation (Eurydice, 2022b), while in preparing a legislative proposal in Slovenia, three policy arrangements of other EU states should be elaborated as one of the justifications for the proposal (DZ, n.d.). Žiljak and Molnar (2015) report that in the pre-Europeanisation period in Croatia, some foreign consultants (key experts) played an essential role in transferring specific educational models and interpreting the changes. Their participation in education mainly occurred within the framework of the CARDS (Community Assistance for Reconstruction, Development and Stabilisation) EU pre-accession programmes. Education systems in Germanic countries, such as Germany and Austria, especially vocational education, have been quoted as a benchmark and candidates for policy transfer (Buković, 2018). For example, the dual vocational education system was re-introduced by taking advantage of the experiences and support of the Bavarian Chamber of Trades and Crafts. Some bilateral cooperation between the two countries in education is evident as well. Still, this cooperation is more sporadic, informal and voluntary and not in terms of cooperation than, for example, among the Nordic countries where cooperation is agreed upon at the ministerial level (e.g., Northern Lights edition), while at the same time the involvement of Slovenia and Croatia in regional and multilateral international cooperation is similar among both countries or follows the same patterns.

Regional Policy Learning Slovenia and Croatia are involved in various forms of regional cooperation in the constant development and modernisation of their educational systems. At the policy level, both countries are members of the Central-European Initiative (CEI),6 which  Members of CEI brings together 17 member states: Albania, Belarus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Montenegro, Czechia, Croatia, Italy, Hungary, Northern Macedonia, Moldova, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Serbia and Ukraine. 6

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aims to support member states on their European integration path and the Central European Exchange Programme for University Studies, which aims to improve cooperation in the field of higher education with an emphasis on inter-university cooperation and mobility. Slovenia takes part in Central European Cooperation in Education and Training (CECE), involving Austria, Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovak Republic and Slovenia, which builds on regional multilateral cooperation, including peer learning and networking in issues related to the European cooperation in the field of education such as lifelong learning strategies, the implementation of the E&T 2020/30 and establishing a European education area (Joint Memorandum, 2013). Croatia, together with Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Northern Macedonia, Moldova, Montenegro and Serbia, takes part in the Education Reform Initiative of South-Eastern Europe (ERISSE), which supports national reforms in education and training through various regional activities and links them to the European framework for the development of Education. Other non-policy regional initiatives in which Slovenia and Croatia both take part include the Network of Education Policy Centers (NEPC), involving 27 members from 22 (East-European, Western Balkan and Middle East countries) and the CEEPUS which promotes cooperation in higher education in Central Europe (involving 15 member countries). Both countries are also part of the Dinaric group for the IEA’s7 ILSAs, including Montenegro, Serbia, North Macedonia, Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Croatia and Slovenia. The cooperation in the IEA Dinaric regional group is for other countries supported by the Western Balkan Strategy (European Parliament, 2018) initiative, but for Slovenia and Croatia, it is not. As Elezović (personal communication, March 13, 2022) argued, “the main motivation was to resemble the reports in Scandinavian countries (Northern Lights edition) in which the closer look and detailed picture of results of ILSAs are analysed for some areas. The second point was to be able to compare schooling systems that are coming from the common cultural and social roots”.

Multilateral Policy Learning Despite sharing the shared historical legacy, the period of their formal involvement in different forms of transnational collaborations signifies that Slovenia and Croatia have faced different development paths in terms of internationalisation and the Europeanisation of their education system. Slovenia enjoyed a relatively stable political situation and joined the EU in 2004 and the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in 2013. The shift towards a market economy also improved standards of living in Slovenia. On the other hand, Croatia struggled with ensuring political and economic stability. The country joined the EU

 International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (non-governmental organisation). 7

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in 2013 and started accession discussions to the OECD in early 2022 (European Commission, 2022; Eurydice, 2022a, b). When entering the EU (Slovenia in 2004 and Croatia in 2013), countries became intensively involved in multilateral policy learning in the open method of coordination framework (e.g., European Commission Working Groups and their peer learning activities within E&T 2010/2020/2030), as well as peer counselling8 and peer review activities. A brief overview of these activities suggests that both countries follow the good practices of other countries more than they represent. In the context of Europeanisation, the significance of comparisons between the performance of Slovenian students and that of students from other/most developed EU member states is highlighted in the updated national legislation and newly adopted strategic documents in the field of education in Slovenia (e.g., the 2006 and 2019 National Strategy for Development of Literacy, 2007 Lifelong Learning Strategy, 2011 White Paper on Education, 2017 National Development Strategy). For example, White Paper on Education (2011, p. 25) indicates the following strategic goal: “At the state level, we have to set and pave the way to the goal, that according to the quality of the presented knowledge, Slovenian students rank in at least the top third of the achievements of the students of the developed countries”.9 On the contrary, Croatia did not set the same goals as Slovenia – to be in the top third achievers (I. Elezović, personal communication, March 13, 2022). However, their strategic document mentions international large-scale assessments (ILSAs), namely PIRLS,10 TIMSS,11 ESLC,12 to provide “valuable data that enable comparisons of our students’ results with the results achieved by students from other countries” (Ministry of Education and Science, 2014, p. 138). The Strategy for Education, Science and Technology as well provides a recommendation that based on the PISA13 results, “teaching application-oriented skills must be changed” in primary schools (ibid, p. 25). Žiljak and Baketa (2019, p. 270) report that invoking the notion of Europe as an argument or a legitimation was significant in several changes and policy documents in Croatia. For example, the draft of the Primary and Secondary Education Act in 2008 emphasized structural, normative and content adaptation to the EU.  One of the notable examples is the

 Peer counselling is an instrument which brings together professional peers from a small number of national administrations to provide external advice to a country in the process of a policy development. It is intended to go beyond information-sharing and provide a forum for finding solutions to national challenges in a participatory workshop (European Commission, n.d.). 9  From a scientific point of view, it should be noted that setting the goal “top third of the achievements of students of the developed countries” is pointless considering methodological assumptions, e.g., countries are ranked at different positions. Still, often there are no statistically significant differences in students’ achievements among several countries (Klemenčič & Mirazchiyski, 2018). 10  Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (IEA). 11  Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (IEA). 12  European Survey on Language Competences (EU). 13  Programme for International Student Assessment (OECD). 8

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Strategy for Education, Science and Technology (Ministry of Education and Science, 2014), associated with the comprehensive education reform initiative, which called for compulsory nine-year primary education. Unfortunately, even this modernisation attempt has never been considered in practical terms. It remains one of the principal arguments for the formal nature of Croatia’s Europeanisation/reform processes, with a lagging or a completely non-existing implementation. The Education Sector Development Plan (2005–2010) justified its goals by harmonizing with the European and global trends, while the implementation was based on financing by a loan from the World Bank and accessible EU funds. The Croatian national development strategy (Government of the Republic of Croatia, 2021a) states to be very closely related to the E&T 2020 in terms of its priorities, goals and measures. A compelling argument confirming this is that Europe is mentioned 323 times in the document. In the framework of Goal 2: educated and employed people, seven indicators have been identified, six of them aim to achieve the average achievement of the EU by 2030. Their practical relevance remains highly questionable regardless of how the objectives have been specified. The shifting of political priorities and the ‘meddling’ with the critical implementation initiatives made the educational reform agenda disappear from the public discourse. The comparative insight into national development strategies shows that they both refer to the EU averages. While Slovenia tries to perform among the most successful ones, the Croatian goals are related to the EU average. The relatedness of education and employment is evident in the titles of both goals, while in Croatia, two of six indicators relate to employment. While Slovenian Development Strategy 2030 (Government of the Republic of Slovenia, 2017) was prepared independently by the Slovenian government, the Croatian strategy was prepared with the analytical support of the World Bank (2020). Its overall objectives are, once again, derived from the EU average values and PISA indicator values (Government of the Republic of Croatia, 2021b). In terms of international counselling, cooperation arrangements with different international organisations and institutions cannot be overlooked. For example, Cedefop was invited to provide a thematic country review and expert assistance in introducing Apprenticeship law in Slovenia (Cedefop, 2017). Slovenia joined the OECD project on skills strategy, which resulted in the diagnostic report (OECD, 2017) and Skills Strategy Implementation Guidance - Improving the Governance of Adult Learning (OECD, 2018). There are multiple additional examples of international experts or organisations reforming and modernizing the Croatian education systems. In 2004 Croatia joined the OECD project “Thematic Review of Tertiary Education,” which provides a report on the assessment (OECD, 2007). The World Bank has been especially active in providing technical assistance to Croatian education, with a recent education modernisation project (approved in 2021),14 the

14

 See: https://projects.worldbank.org/en/projects-operations/project-detail/P170178.

11  Education Policies and Reforms in Slovenia and Croatia: Shared History, Diverging… 249 Table 11.2  Involvement of Slovenia and Croatia in bilateral, regional and multilateral international cooperation in the field of education Bilateral cooperation

Regional cooperation Multilateral cooperation International organisations and institutions’ counselling services employed

Slovenia Six bilateral agreements with EU member states, six with third-countries

Croatia Awarding outgoing and incoming mobility scholarships to domestic and international students and researchers CEI, CECE, NEPC, CEI, ERISSE, NEPC, Dinaric Group, Dinaric group, CEEPUS CEEPUS EU (2004), OECD (2013) EU (2013) World Bank (2001– World Bank, OECD, Cedefop 2007 – support for ILSA), OECD, IMF, CEDEFOP

Sources: Eurydice (2022c, d) and our sources

(ultimately failed) comprehensive curriculum reform-related project in 2011,15 two science and technology-focused projects,16 etc. (Table 11.2). In their transition period, Slovenia and Croatia were intensively involved in bilateral policy learning. It was intensively employed in Slovenia in the first phase of reforming the education system and in Croatia in the second pre-Europeanisation phase. Regarding regional policy cooperation, it can be argued that although Slovenia and Croatia are neighbouring countries, there is no such clear idea to which region they belong precisely as they are part of different Central-European (Slovenia) and Southern-European (Croatia) initiatives. Considering the counselling of international organisations and institutions, it seems that Croatia was mainly relying on the World Bank initiatives, which may be related to its social-economic difficulties originating from the long war period. The OECD’s role is more evident in Slovenia, related to its accession process and formal membership from 2013 onwards.

Evidence-Based Policy Making On the one hand, there were great aspirations for following international trends in education since the beginning of its sovereignty and the paradigmatic shift towards outcome-centred education from 2000 onwards resulted in increasing Slovenian involvement in ILSAs. Following the White Paper on Education (2011), one of Slovenia’s most important goals in the field of education is the establishment of a culture of quality and assessment based on the concept of evidence-based policy,

 See: https://projects.worldbank.org/en/projects-operations/project-detail/P086671.  See: https://projects.worldbank.org/en/projects-operations/project-detail/P127308 and https:// projects.worldbank.org/en/projects-operations/project-detail/P080258. 15 16

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where participation in ILSAs plays an important role. Slovenia started to participate formally in ILSAs far after its independence in 1991 to gain international comparative insight into the success of its first education reform. Initially, Kodelja (2005, p.  221) reported that despite the perceived increase in participation in ILSAs, Slovenia continued to grapple with an inadequately perfected institutional structure for processing and interpreting the data from these studies. However, the results of case studies have, from different research perspectives and taking the international framework of particular ILSA into account, identified the following influences of ILSAs on the process and content of education policy in Slovenia. The findings (Japelj Pavešić, 2013) suggest that TIMSS results represented an argumentation for some, directly and indirectly, curricula/syllabus changes over the years. These were accompanied by intensified teacher training and changes in the teaching and learning process (e.g., introducing experimental learning and using TIMSS exercises in the teaching process) (ibid.). Šimenc (2012) also found a relatively high content match among civic and citizenship curricula (1999, 2011) and ICCS17 2009 framework. However, according to the authors, we cannot claim that CIVED 1999 and ICCS 2009 directly affected syllabi. Klemenčič (2010) reported that PIRLS 2001 results presented one of the foundations for forming the National Literacy Strategy. Štremfel (2013) identified the influences the below-average Slovenian students in PISA 2009 caused in the education policy process. These involve the organisation of national conferences, regional discussions and workshops, targeted projects for improving the level of reading literacy among Slovenian students and intensive media attention to below-average results. Štefanc (2008) and Vezjak (2014) exposed that the involvement of Slovenia in international integrations in the field of education (including, but not solely, in ILSAs) resulted in some unintended changes in the national education policy (e.g., orientation to the economic dimension of education). In this regard, it should be exposed that according to the perception of key national actors (policy makers, experts, school principals) the evidence-based education in Slovenia is not well developed (Štremfel, 2013, 2021). The misinterpretation and use of the ILSA’s data for politically motivated changes instead of for the evidence-based reform of the educational system are evident as well. For example, 63% of policy makers, 81% of experts and 84% of school principals participating in the case study (Štremfel, 2013) agreed with the statement ‘International comparative assessment studies in Slovenia are often used for as an argument for politically motivated changes in the field of education’. To overcome such shortcomings in developing and using evidence-based education policy making in Slovenia, the Ministry of Education, Science and Sport (2017) has been establishing a new comprehensive model for identifying and ensuring quality in the field of education. The new model, among other aims, plans to more systematically use the results of national research and ILSAs in developing Slovenian educational policies and practices.

  International Civic and Citizenship Education Study (previously named/abbreviated as CIVED) (IEA). 17

11  Education Policies and Reforms in Slovenia and Croatia: Shared History, Diverging… 251

Compared to Slovenia (starting with ILSAs in 1991), Croatia entered ILSAs relatively late (starting with PISA in 2006 – the same as in Slovenia, but in TIMSS and PIRLS in 2011), which can be related to its nationalistic tendencies in the first phase of the sovereign education system development (Table 11.1) and the consequently later pre-Europeanisation process. Although the recent experience shows that the public policy community is normatively accepting ILSA results, Žiljak and Baketa (2019, p. 279) report that the underperformance in ILSAs in Croatia did not start serious public discussions and did not become a political question or a policy campaign issue. Pastuović (2014) reported that information and data that revealed the state of the education system had a relatively poor influence in the previous policy cycles on the policy change. PISA results did not provoke a discussion regarding the necessary education changes within the professional or general public, except for some news highlighting the policy issues from different ideological and political viewpoints. The recent acceptance of ILSA (especially PISA) results in setting the educational policy strategy could be attributed to the policy actors, choosing the most convenient path to policy development, or even using the most convenient data to avoid further ideological confrontation on the ‘education reform front.’ For example, the National Strategy for Education, Science and Technology (Ministry of Education and Science, 2014, p. 25) indicates that Croatian’s below average PISA results “indicates that the approach taken in primary schools related to the acquisition of knowledge, to teaching key competences and particularly to teaching application-oriented skills must be changed” (ibid., p. 25). There seems to be a lack of critical attitude towards the ILSAs (see, e.g., Stubbs, 2020), which could be as well attributed to the heavy involvement of international organisations in Croatian national education-policy making, especially the World Bank. Based on the Žiljak and Baketa’s (2019, p. 273) findings that education research is rare and irregular, data is scarce, research networks are weak and the public impact of research is small, it can be argued that evidence-based education policy making in Croatia is not optimally developed. Such a conclusion could be supported by the results of the initial bibliometric analysis, which shows a lack of systematic reviews and comparative studies, which could be helpful to the policy-makers. However, it should be noted that both Europeanisation patterns and bilateral policy transfers in South East Europe/Western Balkans proved to depend on the will of the political actors and serve as the legitimisation of their existing preferences (Vukasovic & Huisman, 2018). Some experts use this pattern to introduce the rhetoric’s of education ‘depolitisation’ instead of insisting on clear political commitments and public scrutiny over the activities of critical political actors (Žiljak, 2009). A lack of integrative and comparative studies, emphasized as the result of our preliminary bibliometric analysis and negative perceptions and the political pressure exerted on the recent educational reform in Croatia (Alfirević et  al., 2020), confirm our arguments. The persistent tensions between the expert and political community in education policy-making are evident in Slovenia as well. Research findings expose several controversies of key political reforms and decisions in the

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last 30 years. Gaber (2007) exposes that the 1990s reform was profoundly biased by an over-rationalistic concept of education and the belief that reform would run smoothly when it is well-informed, inclusive and financially supported. Kovač Šebart (2007) and Vidmar (2007) exposed that the proposed changes of the Organisation and Financing of Education Act, which presupposed radical intervention in the existing system design of the organisation and financing of education in Slovenia completely lacked the professional and theoretical conceptual background, as well empirical data, relevant economic calculations and comparative data from various countries with developed education systems, with which it would be possible to prove the validity of the announced interventions in the school system. Černe and Antić (2021) warn that expert data in education policy making during the COVID-19 pandemic was completely ignored. It seems that despite the normative intentions toward evidence-based policy making, both countries are struggling with weak historical tradition and institutional infrastructure, which would allow evidence-based policy-making to reach its potential.

Reservations to International Influences Despite openness to international cooperation, evidence can be found in both countries which demonstrate reservations to different forms of international influences on the national educational space. This was most evident in national responses to the OECD (2011) and International Monetary Fund (IMF) (2015) reports in Slovenia. The OECD (2011) assessed that the Slovenian education system is not economically efficient and proposed several measures to improve the efficiency of Slovenian education. Similarly, the IMF (2015) report exposed the relatively high share of GDP that Slovenia invests in education and proposed measures for public savings in education. The Slovenian expert community (e.g., Educational Research Institute, 2011; Vidmar et  al., 2015) responded actively to both reports by pointing out the shortcoming of the basic methodological assumptions of the OECD and IMF analyses, principles and various possibilities of interpretation (and reinterpretation) of numerical results and statistics. One of the main criticisms of these reports was their focus on the efficiency of education, while overlooking an important national strategic goal in Slovenia  – social justice in education and open challenges to its implementation (White Paper on Education 2011). Social technologies, through which OECD and other international organisations influence national educational space, have been in Slovenia, at least to some extent, scientifically discussed (e.g. Medveš, 2008; Štefanc, 2008; Vezjak, 2014) and comprehensively addressed within the national basic research project (Kodelja et al., 2019). However, an awareness of these social techonologies among Slovenian education-policy makers, especially with regards to the governance of the problems (e.g. Alexiadou, 2014), remains limited (Štremfel, 2013, 2021).

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However, it can be argued that Slovenia, after the intensive involvement within international cooperation in the field of education during its first decade and after its involvement in the EU, stepped into the second period when it becomes more selective in adopting international agendas. This can be confirmed with data gathered from Slovenian high public officials in the field of education (Štremfel, 2021), stating that preserving the national sovereignty of the education system and respecting the principle of subsidiarity was one of the critical issues of implementing E&T 2020 in Slovenia in the last decade. While in Slovenia, in the second decade of its formal membership in the EU, some reservations about international influences have emerged, it seems that Croatia, in its first decade of EU membership, has not faced them yet. Žiljak and Molnar (2015, p. 286) report that the discourse of the Lisbon Process (competitiveness and employability as key educational terms) was transferred into the national strategy without any specific questioning. The weaker presence and influence of experts whose narrow field of scientific work is education and education policy were notable. Together with emphasizing employability, the Ministry of Economy, Labour and Entrepreneurship involvement was becoming more apparent. There were no counter-narrations and the social dimension was noticed as a problem only at the end of the decade. The external influence was entirely accepted to ensure the fulfilment of the unquestioned objectives (Žiljak & Molnar, 2015, p. 287).

Conclusions Post-socialist transformations present a unique conceptual space to examine a rapid reconfiguration of discursive rationalities, norms and practices in education (Silova, 2012, p.  235). This chapter confirms that what we see in education policy is the intertwining between the effects of the global diffusion of modernity and the nascent global education policy field, mediated by the path dependency of national cultures and histories, as manifested in national schooling systems (Lingard, 2018, pp. 56–57). The chapter also demonstrates that instead of emphasizing policy, structures and excellent schools, the history, culture and extent of structural in/equality, explanations of outstanding national performance on the test are necessary (Lingard, 2018, pp. 44–45). Comparative insights into national education policy developments in Slovenia and Croatia in the last three decades show some common and diverging points. According to the data analysed, it can be argued that Slovenia and Croatia faced different transition paths since 1991 onwards despite long-term shared historical legacies. While Slovenian was already closely intertwined with the Europeanisation/ internationalisation process, what can be particularly attributed to the faith in the power of the (Western) rationalist way of education-policy making, Croatia mainly focused on the national identity. Such an orientation, already discussed in this chapter, was emphasized by the war and the national sovereignty in the 1990s, but

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still shows in some aspects of the educational practice and reform, as a part of a continuous identity narrative production, legitimizing the new elites and their practices (Subotić, 2013). However, from a contemporary perspective, common Europeanisation/internationalisation features, ranging from mythic expectations to legitimizing national changes and more reflective/critical insights, were evident in both countries within a decade. Non-selective acceptance of the EU and broader western international agendas in both countries are evident. They can be explained by (a) post-socialist states’ desire to break with the past and be aligned with EU western values (Silova, 2009) and (b) the non-perfect institutional infrastructure, which enables EU agendas to penetrate Slovenian and Croatian educational systems without critical political and policy actors’ awareness (e.g., Štremfel, 2015). High reliance on “neutral expert data,” which ILSAs can provide in both countries, can be explained by (a) the desire of both countries to depoliticise socialist education policy-making and (b) the desire to reach/maintain the competitiveness of the states in the global knowledge economy (Wiseman, 2010). However, our findings demonstrate that both countries have been struggling with the development of evidence-based education policy-making, which can be attributed to a lack of historical experiences and imperfect institutional infrastructure, which would allow more successful cooperation between expert and political actors. However, recognised reluctance to the EU and international agendas in Slovenia can be partly explained by experiences gained during the two decades of the formal membership to the EU, which Croatia may still follow. Cerych (1997, p. 77) argues that changes deriving from transformation and reform processes have long-term consequences, however imperfect their implementation has been. The chapter reveals how divergent paths of education policy-making in the first decade of Slovenian and Croatian sovereignty are still reflected in the current state of their education policy-making. Their monitoring in the following decades would allow further assessment of how (im)perfect post-socialist transformation, Europeanisation and internationalisation of both systems have been.

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Pluško, A. (2004). S prenovo vzgojno-izobraževalnega sistema uresničujemo cilje Evropske unije [By reforming the education system, we are realizing the goals of the European Union]. Vzgoja in izobraževanje, 35(1), 61–63. Relja, R., Popović, T., & Gutović, T. (2019). Analysis of elements and process of school principals' professionalization in Croatia. Management: Journal of Contemporary Management Issues, 24(Special Issue), 55–71. Sahlberg, P. (2011). Finnish lessons: What can the world learn from educational change in Finland? Teachers College Press. Silova, I. (2009). Varieties of educational transformation: The post-socialist states of central/ southeastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. In R.  Cowen & A.  M. Kazamias (Eds.), International handbook of comparative education. Part One. (pp. 295–320). Springer. Silova, I. (2012). Contested meanings of educational borrowing. In G. Steiner-Khamsi & F. Waldow (Eds.), Policy borrowing and lending in education (pp. 229–245). Routledge. Šimenc, M. (Ed.). (2012). Razvoj državljanske vzgoje v Republiki Sloveniji [Development of civic and citizenship education in Slovenia] (Dissertationes 22). Pedagoški inštitut, Digitalna knjižnica, https://www.pei.si/ISBN/978-­961-­270-­146-­8.pdf Štefanc, D. (2008). Ideje neoliberalizma v procesih rekonceptualizacije obveznega splošnega izobraževanja: nekatere teoretske poteze in praktične implikacije [Neoliberal ideas in the processes of reconceptualization of compulsory general education: Some theoretical moves and practical implications]. Sodobna Pedagogika, 3, 10–31. Steiner-Khamsi, G. (2012). Understanding policy borrowing and lending. Building comparative policy studies. In G.  Steiner-Khamsi & F.  Waldow (Eds.), Policy borrowing and lending in education (pp. 3–17). Routledge. Štimac, Z. (2020). Southeast Europe in history textbooks: A variety of selective perceptions. In G. Ognjenović & J. Jozelić (Eds.), Nationhood and politicization of history in school textbooks (pp. 253–275). Palgrave Macmillan. Štrajn, D. (2004). Evropska unija in Slovenija v procesih sprememb sistemov vzgoje in izobraževanja [The European Union and Slovenia in the processes of changes in education systems]. Vzgoja in izobraževanje, 35(1), 51–55. Štremfel, U. (2013). Nova oblika vladavine v Evropski uniji na področju izobraževalnih politik [New modes of European Union governance in the field of education policies] (Doctoral dissertation). Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Ljubljana. Štremfel, U. (2015). Slovenian education policy in the EU context. In D. Lajh & Z. Petak (Eds.), EU public policies seen from a national perspective: Slovenia and Croatia in the European Union. Ljubljana. Štremfel, U. (2021). Analysis of the implementation of the strategic framework for European cooperation in education and training (‘ET 2020′) in Slovenia (Internal report). Educational Research Institute. Stubbs, P. (2020). Vladavina svetovnega razvrščanja v izobraževanju: politika in praksa raziskave PISA [The governmental work of global rankings in education: PISA politics, policy and practice]. Šolsko polje, 31(1–2), 131–138. Subotić, J. (2013). Stories states tell: Identity, narrative, and human rights in the Balkans. Slavic Review, 72(2), 306–326. Tuđman, F. (1990). Speech in parliament on 30 May 1990. Available at http://www.sabor.hr/ Default.aspx?art=1765&sec=444. Accessed 5 May 2012. Vezjak, B. (2014). Neoliberalizem v šolstvu. Uvodnik [Neoliberalism in education. Editorial]. Časopis za kritiko znanosti, XLII(256), 7–12. Vidmar, T. (2007). Predvidene spremembe in dopolnitve Zakona o organizaciji in financiranju vzgoje in izobraževanja (ZOFVI) [Anticipated changes and additions to the act on the organization and financing of education (ZOFVI)]. Sodobna pedagogika, 58(2), 222–224. Vidmar, M., Štremfel, U., Klemenčič, E., Štraus, M., & Mlekuž, A. (2015). V izkrivljenem ogledalu: gostujoče pero: varčevalni predlogi IMF za izobraževanje ignorirajo posebnosti in

11  Education Policies and Reforms in Slovenia and Croatia: Shared History, Diverging… 259 vloge nacionalnega sistema [In a distorted mirror – Guest editorial: IMF austerity proposals for education ignore national system specificities and roles]. Delo, 57(256), 5. Vukasovic, M., & Huisman, J. (2018). Europeanization, policy transfer or domestic opportunity? Comparison of European impact in higher education policy. Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis: Research and Practice, 20(3), 269–287. White Paper on Education in Slovenia. (1995). Bela knjiga o vzgoji in izobraževanju v Republiki Sloveniji. Ministrstvo za šolstvo in šport. White Paper on Education in Slovenia. (2011). Bela knjiga o vzgoji in izobraževanju v Republiki Sloveniji. Ministrstvo za šolstvo in šport. Wiseman, W. A. (2010). The uses of evidence for educational policymaking: Global contexts and international trends. Review of Research in Education, 34(1), 1–24. World Bank. (2020). RAS Croatia: 2030 national development strategy. https://www.worldbank. org/en/country/croatia/brief/ras-­croatia-­2030-­national-­development-­strategy Žiljak, T. (2009). Rad na obrazovnoj politici umjesto depolitizacije obrazovanja [Educational policy work instead of the depolitisation of education]. Odgojne znanosti, 11(2), 179–194. Žiljak, T., & Baketa, N. (2019). Education policy in Croatia. In Z. Petak & K. Kotarski (Eds.), Policymaking at the European periphery. The case of Croatia (pp.  265–283). Palgrave Macmillan. Žiljak, T., & Molnar, T. (2015). Croatian education policy in the EU context. In D. Lajh & Z. Petak (Eds.), EU public policies seen from a national perspective: Slovenia and Croatia in the European Union (pp. 279–297). Faculty of Social Sciences.

Part V

Discussions

Chapter 12

Ever-Morphing Relations Between the Global, Supranational and the National in Schooling Policy: A Reflection on Some European Cases Bob Lingard Abstract This chapter proffers a response to the introductory chapter by the collection’s editors. It also provides responses to the granular case studies of ever-­ changing relations between pressures for alignment between EU member nations’ schooling systems and the schooling policies of three German language Northern European school systems, three Romanic Southern European systems, those of four post-­Communist Slavic language nations, along with the devolved systems of England, Scotland and Wales in post Brexit UK. The chapter also focuses on the morphing relations between global policy pressures post the end of the Cold War and developments in the EU in relation to education policy in member nations, evidenced in the helpful policy histories documented throughout. These analyses are set against considerations of the recent rise of right-wing populist ethnonationalist backlashes opposed to supranationalism as manifested in the EU.  The chapter provides commentary on these tensions between education policy alignments in EU member nations and recent nationalistic contestations of these as documented throughout the collection. These tensions result in vernacular Europeanization and also demonstrate the necessity to go beyond accounts of both Europeanization and globalization that only stress top-down unidimensional converging effects in member and other nations. Additionally, while it is argued the collection makes a significant contribution to comparative policy sociology in education, the chapters together also unequivocally demonstrate that we need to go beyond the binary of methodological nationalism and methodological globalism, while also emphasising the empirical and path dependency in such policy sociology. Keywords  Europeanization · Nationalisms · Backlashes · Methodological nationalism · Methodological globalism

B. Lingard (*) Australian Catholic University, Brisbane, Australia e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. B. Krejsler, L. Moos (eds.), School Policy Reform in Europe, Educational Governance Research 22, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-35434-2_12

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Introduction In this chapter, I proffer a critical reflection on the arguments, evidence and insights provided by the cases in this compelling book, School Policy Reform in Europe between Transnational Alignment and National Contestation. The collection analyses the changing foci of school reforms in European nations, contextualised against changing global-European-national-local relations, imbrications and spaces and against the impacts of digitalization, commercialization and new nationalisms in education. In terms of the positionality of my reflection: I have worked in English and Scottish universities when the UK was still a member of the EU, yet at the time when there was the rise of the Scottish independence movement. Prior to that period, then and subsequently, I have researched education in Europe focused on the impact of the supranational political entity the EU and the creation of a European Education Policy Space (Lawn & Grek, 2012). Additionally, I have researched developing systemic education policy responses to globalization and the enhanced significance globally and within participating nations of International Large-Scale Assessments, managed and administered by both the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the International Association for the Evaluation of Achievement in Education (IEA). Europeanization and globalization have worked together in affecting EU member nations’ school systems. At the same time, my intellectual position within the social sciences has been that of the sociology of education with a special interest in education policy, specifically what I see as comparative policy sociology in education, also linked to the field of comparative education. From this particular standpoint and my lived and researched experiences then, this chapter documents and analyses the ever-morphing relations between global pressures post the end of the Cold War from the early 1990s, supranational developments in respect of the education policy work of the EU, and ever-changing manifestations of nationalism. The latter include more recent eruptions of right-wing populist ethnonationalism as a backlash against neo-liberal and cosmopolitan globalization and are evident to varying degrees and with varying influence in most EU member nations. The hubris in academic accounts of globalization immediately post the end of the Cold War has clearly evaporated, including Appadurai’s (1996) talk of an emergent post-national world and Fukuyama’s (1992) talk of the end of history with US liberal democracy seen as the end point of historical evolution. We are witnessing ever changing imbrications of the local, national, supranational and global with implications for school reform. These imbrications are described by the editors and authors of this collection as changing tensions and contestations between education policy alignments across EU member nations and nationalistic contestations of this alignment. This chapter next considers the background and contexts to the changes that the collection addresses, then documents the developing work of the EU in relation to schooling, followed by succinct analyses of and reflections on the national cases

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included in the collection. This response to School Policy Reform in Europe concludes with an evaluative commentary on the contribution of the collection to comparative policy sociology in education and a normative comment on its insightful findings and multiple contributions.

Background and Contexts Globalization changed the spatial relations between the global, regional, supranational, national, and local (Amin, 2002). These new relations have played out in top-down and bottom-up changes to policy processes across the policy cycle in education, including even at the local level of policy enactment within schools. One important point to be noted here, though, is that these relations continue to change and develop. The second point is that, even during the immediate collapse of the Cold War and the move towards a global economy and more global economic integration, the nation-state remained important, but evolved in its ways of working, set against the imbrications of its relationships with global pressures from international organizations such as the OECD. For EU member nations there were also supranational and transnational pressures from the EU, along with everchanging national politics and nationalistic resistances within the nation. As Peck and Theodore (2015, p. xv) suggest, “Policymaking imaginaries have been ‘debordered’…even if the achievement of policy outcomes remains a stubbornly localized, context-specific process”. This might be one way of productively thinking about changing national/EU relations in education policy making in member nations, but extending the idea of policy enactment to consideration of the mediation at the national level of policy production and European policy pressures. The focus of the chapters in this collection is schooling, which has always been more closely aligned with national policy ambitions and the constitution of the ‘imagined community’, which is the nation (Anderson, 1990), while acknowledging more closer policy alignment at the higher education level across the EU as a result of the Bologna process. Schooling and the nation and national identities sit intimately together, even in the context of policy pressures from above the nation. In terms of evolving statecraft within the nation-state in EU member nations, it is important to understand that there has been since the outset of the EU as a common market established by the 1957 Treaty of Rome, an ever-present tension between member nations and the EU and between and amongst member nations, while there have been some policy alignments between national blocs in the EU/ Europe, for example, amongst the three Nordic nations that are EU members, notably, Denmark, Sweden and Finland. Brexit, categorical evidence of the new ethnonationalism, is a most obvious manifestation of national/EU tensions and those between member nations, as is the rise of right-wing populist nationalist politics within many EU member nations, as clearly documented in this edited collection. Grek (2021, p.  144) posits that, this antithetical relationship between member nations and the concept of Europe pursued by the EU, “between a desire to move,

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travel, to get to know one another, yet almost routinely, almost subconsciously finding those ‘others’ as different and unintelligible, is a particularly productive setting in which to investigate the production of European policy”. The changing nature of this so-called antithetical relationship is the focus of this chapter and of this edited collection, with the focus specifically on the rise of new ethnonationalisms as a populist right-wing backlash against neoliberal globalization and Europeanization (Rizvi, 2022). Specifically and importantly, the collection focuses on how this new nationalism or reassertion of old nationalisms has affected member/EU relations in schooling policy in terms of resistances to above the nation pressures. These pressures included what some saw as an incremental, yet almost surreptitious push for policy alignment in schooling across EU member nations. There are important contexts to this backlash. Centrally powerful here has been the growth in inequality within member nations, as thoroughly and insightfully analysed by Piketty (2013), Fraser (2022) and Savage (2021). They demonstrate how the global neoliberal policy settlement and the related restructuring of the state have precipitated the growth in inequality through new public management and moves to network governance with private sector actors being involved in the work of the state, in changing practices of statecraft, with this involvement working its ways across the policy cycle, including in education (Ball, 2021; Rizvi & Lingard, 2010). European nations have witnessed a weakening of the welfare state and commitments to the common good, with a greater emphasis on self-responsibilising individualism and competition, giving preference to market options over state provision. These have contributed to the growth of inequality. They have also, pertinent to the analysis of this chapter and this collection, precipitated challenges to liberal democracy. On the latter, Kundnani (2020) has written instructively about contemporary crises in liberal democracies, particularly in Europe. He sees these crises manifesting in the rise of populism, emerging ‘democratic deconsolidation’, that is, the transition from democracy to authoritarianism, which he sees occurring in Hungary and Poland (there is a case study of the latter in this collection), and in what he refers to as the hollowing-out of democracy in the context of the seeming hegemony of meta-­ policy framings of neoliberalism and the enhanced involvement of large private sector corporations in networked governance. Bergsen et al. (2022) have extended this analysis to proffer an argument beyond populist backlashes. They suggest there are multiple threats to democracy in Europe: namely, the structure of the economies of European nations, the growth in inequality within them linked to an emergence of what they call political inequality, that is, European governments governing in the interests of the most well-off and ignoring the rest. Finally, they see another threat stemming from the depoliticization of economic policy making at the EU level, which is seen to manifest a technocratic form of economic governance, hidden from democratic participation and input. This is another significant backdrop to the cases analysed in this collection. As Appadurai (2006) has persuasively argued, the loss of some economic sovereignty resulting from the globalization of the economy, and specifically here the creation of a European economy and constitution of the EU as an independent

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economic actor, has meant that what he refers to as ‘ethnos’ and related construction of national identity and national citizens are policy domains over which the nations still has sovereignty. Small nations in particular have seemingly ceded control of the economy to the EU and globally. This has played out in one manifestation as the rise of new populist right wing nationalisms as a surreptitious form of racism and the ‘othering’ of migrants and refugees. This agonism between sovereignty over ethnos and loss of economic sovereignty has also contributed to the challenge to liberal democracy across Europe. These matters have also affected schools and schooling policies within nations. It is this context as well, of course, that has resulted in the human capital framing of schooling policies in the face of the loss of some economic sovereignty; the economizing of schooling policy. These matters are evident in the cases that are the focus of this collection and of course central to the contestation by nations of European policies that work with and embody these ideas. Also important in the changes to the scales and spaces of policy making in schooling have been digitalization and commercialization. The enhanced influence of International Large-Scale Assessments (ILSAs) and related infrastructures, as will be argued in the next section, have been important in creating the globe as a commensurate space of measurement and developing global schooling policies. These have also contributed to Europeanization of schooling policies, as policies and testing, indicators and the like have been aligned between the EU and the OECD (Grek, 2014). Elsewhere, the impact of such standardized statistical categories and indicators and other measures has been referred to as a ‘magistrature of influence’ across EU member nations (Lawn & Lingard, 2002). Numbers are technologies of distance, as are these ILSAs, which decontextualize school system performance from national contexts and recontextualize system performance within the spaces of the globe and of Europe. Datafication and digitalization have facilitated these moves, as has the establishment of data infrastructures. Commercialization and privatization have also been related developments, linked to the neoliberal, and new practices of statecraft and governance and have contributed to the weakening of education policies within nations as expressions of democratic conversations and deliberations. The OECD and EU have worked closely together regarding the creation of the EU (and the global) as a commensurate space of measurement (Grek, 2014). Now, as the editors of this collection, John Benedicto Krejsler and Lejf Moos, suggest, these above the nation, top-down pressures and developments have always been accompanied by varying levels of resistance within member nations. As they insightfully put it, national policy contestation in EU member nations has always been a ‘mainstay companion’ of these global and supranational developments. What we see here is what we might call ‘vernacular Europeanization’ of schooling policies across EU member nations, that is, Europeanization pressures have always been mediated by path dependent aspects of the politics within member nations. I use supranational here because I see the EU as a supranational political entity as distinct from, say the OECD, which is as an international intergovernmental organization. Both, though, precipitate in their policy moves and related testing and

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indicators, the transnational flows of policy ideas and policy with effects within nations. While as the editors note, there has always been resistance of various kinds to EU education policy pressures, this edited collection focuses on new tensions between transnational policy alignments in schooling and national contestation concerning these. This contestation is set against the rise of new nationalisms, very clearly evident in the election for example of a quasi-fascist party to government in Italy, the rise of the far-right political party, Alternative for Germany, and various right wing populist movements across Europe, including UKIP in the UK, which supported Brexit, and right-wing anti-migration parties in some of the Nordic nations (e.g., Denmark, Sweden, Finland) and far-right violence and influence of Marine Le Pen’s party Rassemblement National in France. These are worrying political developments and often evident in right-wing nationalist politics and anti-­globalization tropes. Rizvi (2022) has shown how this right-wing populist opposition and resistance to neoliberal globalization and to Europeanization has worked with a rearticulation of earlier left critiques of the impacts these developments on inequality. However, he demonstrates how these right-wing resistances work with an ethnonationalism that blames migrants and refugees for these problems, in the US context at least leaving intact neoliberal globalization, and manifesting in new forms of racism and othering. In Europe, he argues, this populist discontentment focuses on migration and refugees and the supposed capacities of these groups to move easily across national borders. This politics has been most evident in Hungary under the leadership of Orban and in Poland under the leadership of Duda and Kaczynski’s Law and Order party, but has manifested elsewhere in Europe as well, as already noted. Right wing populist parties in European nations are very negative about the EU and other multilateral agreements, stressing a conservative Christianity and collaboration between nations as opposed to supranational compacts. These politics are an important focus of this collection with implications for national school systems/Europeanization relationships. In relation to the EU and policy making in schooling, there has never been an unmediated move away from national influence towards EU and global policy convergences. However, the latter had very strong effects, particularly in the early parts of this century, but have always played out in path dependent ways in member nations. Regarding globalization, Europeanization and the nation, things have changed substantially since the Global Financial Crisis in 2008 and evolving global geo-­ politics since that time. These changes include the unconscionable Russian invasion of Ukraine right on Europe’s doorstep, resulting global political tensions with severe economic consequences, Brexit, China’s economic and military rise and new place in geo-politics, and the seeming weakening of the US’s global superpower status. COVID 19 also had its impacts and linked to the rise of new nationalism (e.g., ‘vaccine nationalism’), as global supply chains weakened and Global North nations called for more national/local production of manufactured goods as a protective strategy. COVID 19 precipitated online schooling, which also provided a market opportunity for the EdTech companies to increase their involvement in education

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policy and in the work of schools (Hogan & Sellar, 2021). At the same time, it is widely acknowledged that the pressing global climate crisis cannot be addressed through national policies alone, but necessitates agreed global strategies to be complemented by appropriate national policies. We are now witnessing a new confluence of factors, including right-wing populism, with very real impact on the workings of globalization and Europeanization and on EU nations. Schooling policies in EU nations are now situated in this ever-changing geopolitical context. The final point to be made in this section is one well made by Krejsler and Moos in their introduction to the collection. They argue, and rightly so in my view, that much of the policy developments in schooling over the last couple of decades sponsored by the EU and the OECD might best be characterised as Anglo-American derived reforms (cf. Lingard & Lewis, 2016; Krejsler, 2020). Certainly, the internationally dominant top-down, test-based modes of accountability are very much derived from English and US models, what we might see as the Anglo-American model (Lingard et al., 2016). de Santos’s (2006) point regarding globalization that we should only speak of globalizing localisms and localizing globalisms; that is, globally circulating policies and policy idea have their origins somewhere, while these globally circulating entities are also localized as they touch down with nations. Sobe (2015), on the latter, speaks of policy translation; a translation always mediated by the path dependent realities of a given nation. It is such mediation which is the concern of this edited collection in changing geopolitical, European and national political contexts and referred to as recontextualization.

 racing Morphing Global, EU and National Relations T in Education Policy In most parts of the world, until the end of the Cold War, schooling was under the sole jurisdiction of nations. During that period, education policy was seen to be the exclusive function of the nation-state, “devised, directed and enacted” by it or by other governmental units within it (states, local authorities) (Clarke, 2019, p. v). Thus until that time, for example, in the USA, schooling was managed and administered at either state or local levels with limited federal involvement. In Canada and Australia, schooling was firmly under the jurisdiction of the states and provinces. In Australia, for example, schooling is the residual policy responsibility of the states and territories as articulated in the Constitution. Despite that situation in Australia, there were moves from the 1970s for more federal involvement around social justice matters and subsequently around human capital concerns. We might say the same about Germany until that time. Krejsler and Moos suggest until the mid-1990s German schooling was under the jurisdiction of the states – Länder, adopted an in-­ put model and was framed within the broad Bildung philosophy. In a unitary form of government, say as with New Zealand, schooling was under the sole jurisdiction

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of the nation, while in England there was a mixture of local and national authority in schooling. The same was the case with other European schooling systems; they were under the jurisdiction of the nation. Despite membership of the supranational European Union, education including schooling was seen to be a subsidiary policy controlled by member nations as articulated in the 1992 Maastricht Treaty. Despite Europeanization then, at that time, schooling remained under the authority of the member nations. Yet the point to note here is that even for European member nations, as for others, the impacts of globalization, and related expanding Europeanization, saw a challenge to the assumption that schooling and policy were simply and only under the jurisdiction of the nation or sub-national political units. Knowledge economy discourses articulated in the mid-1990s by the OECD and by other international organizations, including the supranational EU, along with human capital reframing of education policy, ideologies proselytised by all of these organizations, witnessed increasing global and European effects on the production of schooling polices. As Papanastasiou (2019, p. 41) notes regarding the EU and the development of European education policies, the 2000 Lisbon Treaty was a significant ‘dislocatory moment’ regarding the place of the EU and education and school systems. As she argues, the open method of coordination, which was adopted, was a soft governance model, which witnessed new EU wide benchmarks and targets that encouraged alignments and convergence across member nations’ schooling systems. This was a soft power move beyond schooling as only a subsidiary authority of the EU nation. She also demonstrates how collaborations between the OECD, the EU and their associated data infrastructures pushed this alignment further; for example, in aligning the statistical categories of Eurostat, Eurydice, and I would add, those of the OECD (Lawn & Lingard, 2002). She suggests moves for schooling policy alignments were strengthened even further again at the meeting of EU heads of state in November, 2017, where education was an important agenda item. She quotes the European Commission‘s communication from that meeting as observing in respect of education, that education and culture were important drivers across the EU for “jobs, social fairness, active citizenship as well as a means to experience European identity in all its diversity” (p. 43). In that context, Lawn and Grek (2012) have spoken of an emergent ‘European education policy space’. With this emergence, we see the impact of a supranational organization, the EU, on policy within the putative national schooling systems of member nations. This enhanced EU role in education, which is part of the Europeanization of policies across the member nations, must also be seen as a response to globalization pressures following the collapse of the Cold War and the creation of a global economy with weakened national tariff boundaries and some loss of national economic sovereignty. So in relation to this, we see from late last century and early this century, enhanced significance of International Large Scale Assessments such as the OECD’s PISA and the IEA’s TIMSS and PIRLS, resulting in an emergent global education policy field, constituted as a commensurate space of measurement and what we might see as an example of ‘context collapse’ (Wetsch, 2009). Here national systems were recontextualized and compared globally (Bartlett & Vavrus, 2019),

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along with the emergence of what we see as global education policies. These pressures worked differently in respect of different nations and for EU member nations worked in conjunction with Europeanization developments. The OECD’s education work affected education policy content, processes and the instantiation of national testing regimes in many nations, particularly in the rich nations of the Global North, including EU and OECD member nations. Other international organizations, though, also had a role, so that the UN and UNESCO’s Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) have had considerable policy impact in the schooling systems of most nations, particularly those in the Global South. Globalization challenged a conception of the nation-state as tightly bordered and bounded. Instead, we now saw policies and policy ideas in education, ‘policyscapes’ (Ball, 1998; Carney, 2011), flow across national borders and discursively, at least, result in some convergence of meta-framings of policies if not so much in terms of policy specificities and enactments. Here the path dependency continued to be important in mediating global and European pressures. In policy sociology in education, the result was a focus on how global, European and international policy developments affected policy making regarding schooling within nations. This new policy sociology in education, argued Larsen and Beech (2014), “focused on how the national has mediated the global. …the emphasis is on the global and the national (or local) with the latter conceptualised implicitly as a ‘place’ influenced by outside forces” (p.  197). We could substitute European for global in this observation and the argument also applies. In terms of theory, this emphasis on top-down impacts of globalization and Europeanization saw the need for new theorising with talk of new scales of policy making in education. As theory developed in the face of better empirical understandings of what was occurring, other conceptualisations also emerged. So, we have witnessed talk of new topological spaces in policy making in education, where the stress is on relations rather than locations; evident for example, in the emergence of PISA for Schools where individual schools participate in a test aligned with main PISA, but where comparisons are with systems and schools located elsewhere, beyond the nation. Here we see local relations working across national borders. What we have also come to understand is that globalization and Europeanization both resulted from international and supranational pressures, but also from bottom­up support and pressures from nations. Think of the OECD’s PISA, for example, based on the US’s NAEP, which resulted from strong US pressure on the OECD. What these developments have done is complexify our understandings of the workings of both globalization and Europeanization in schooling. We must acknowledge rescaling, new topological relations working across nations, both top-down and bottom-up pressures  (see  Crowley et  al., 2021). There are other approaches emphasising policy mobilities, the flows of policies, fast policy making, the place of affect in policy and so on; also arguments about the overcoming of the ontological distinction between place and space (Amin, 2002). Additionally, all of these theoretical and methodological developments are situated against ever changing

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politics, and at the present moment the apparent success of right-wing populist nationalism in several nations. It is these matters that are the focus of this collection. With the impact of globalization (and Europeanization) on nations, there was a very real challenge to methodological nationalism within the social sciences broadly, which was predicated on the assumption that society and the social were homologous with the nation. This challenge to methodological nationalism worked its way through policy sociology in education. However, as Clarke (2019) argues, it has seemingly been replaced by the hegemony in policy studies of what he calls ‘methodological globalism’, representing and assuming an almost flat world of policy mobility and transfer. This collection makes it patently clear, set against the rise of new nationalism, specifically ethnonationalism, that we need to move beyond the binary of methodological nationalism and methodological globalism. This is very evident in the argument of the introductory chapter by John Benedicto Krejsler and Lejf Moos and in the national cases.

Lessons from Some European National Cases It has been noted above that Krejsler and Moos in their powerful introduction to this collection suggested that Europeanization (and indeed globalization) pressures on schooling policy in EU member nations have always been contested in one way or another. They also make the point, referencing Larry Cuban’s (2013) US work, that suggests policy has its greatest impact on schools and their practices in a discursive manner (for example, in the talk of teachers) and does not have so much impact on actual classrooms and pedagogies. While this might be the case in respect of some policies, I would argue strongly that the complementary working together of ILSAs and national testing regimes in many systems today have very real effects on teachers’ pedagogical practices and breadth of curriculum offerings and also help frame the policy focus of schools. The extent of specific policy impact is, of course, an empirical question. The editors informatively also note the tensions between Europeanizing and globalizing policy pressures and some specific European education traditions. Here they mention Bildung, Didactics and democratic discourses regarding the broad purposes of schooling evident across many North-Western European nations. They also mention the polytechnical traditions of the post-socialist nations of Central and Eastern Europe, also the place of secularism in French schooling polices and the continuing impact of Napoleonic bureaucratic structures, and so on. Thus, resistances and contestations have come from many directions and have changed over time. However, the focus in this collection is specifically on the impact of rearticulated forms of nationalism and how these have affected schooling policies in 10 EU nations, and Brexit England. Brief commentaries will be provided here of the implications to be drawn from these excellent and granular case studies. The cases are exceedingly interesting and exemplary policy sociology in education scholarship. The groupings of the cases by the editors are also of interest

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and thought provoking. They speak, for example, of Germanic language Northern Europe to take in the school systems of Denmark, Germany and the Netherlands. They speak of the French, Italian and Spanish cases (Catalonia rather than Spain) as representing Romanic Southern Europe, while Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovenia and Croatia are seen as representing post-Communist Slavic language nations in Eastern and Central Europe and the Western Balkans. We see here the many and diverse faces of what constitutes Europe. There is also a case of the neoliberal, new public management and network governance reforms in English schooling, which are distinguished from school reforms of a vastly different kind in Scotland and Wales, as other constituent parts of the ever evolving and devolving UK. This case exemplifies the editors’ argument that much of what has happened in respect of both Europeanization and globalization in schooling policy can be seen as the localizing within EU member nations of an Anglo-American reform approach, a globalizing localism in de Santos’s (2006) terms. We should note as well, however, that the Academies reform in England borrowed its model from the free school reforms in Sweden. As is argued by the editors of the collection, England has probably become more inward looking in school policy terms since Brexit. Reform ideas in schooling move in multiple directions, but as argued by Peck and Theodore (2015), as they move they mutate. The Danish case documents the clear impacts of Europeanization and globalization since the new millennium on Danish schooling in top-down testing and related accountabilities, but also the retention of Danish characteristics of comprehensive schools and talk of social justice. It is argued that there has been a turn from the broader Germanic Bildung model to the narrower, more AngloAmerican test-based accountabilities, a focus on standards and outcomes. Since the turn of the century, Germany has been affected by both Europeanization and globalization in education policy terms. The PISA shock of 2001 resulted in a stronger federal presence in schooling, hitherto closely managed by the Länder, and the subsequent impact of testing and accountability pressures. In Switzerland, schooling was still managed at the sub-national (Canton) level, while in Austria there has always been a stronger federal government presence, but both systems since the turn of the century have seen a new emphasis on testing, an output as opposed to an input focus and the introduction of quality inspection regimes. Dutch schooling policies manifest an admixture of national and international pressures, with some impact of ILSAs (outstanding comparative results on the earlier tests with subsequent small declines in performance with some impact) and the new post 2016 curricula showing signs of the impact of OECD and IEA testing and skills approaches, while there was a strong national bent in the history curricula. We see here national curricula as both an instantiation of the nation, but also a response to European and global pressures (Lingard, 2021b). At the same time, broad goals for schooling are still in place in the Netherlands, for example, the goal of producing ‘well-balanced grown-ups’. France continues to manifest its centralized bureaucratic Napoleonic heritage in the running of its school system, along with a secular focus, with some perhaps largely unacknowledged impacts of European policy frames and OECD testing.

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School choice and competitive school markets redolent of neoliberal reforms of schooling systems have been resisted by the strong republican state. Italy is represented as a Southern European variant on the French model ‘with welfarist traits’. From the end of the 1990s, European discourses in schooling in France, but have had a substantial impact in Italy under the influence of new public management, testing and standardization. The Spanish case is really a Catalonian case. The focus on a region rather than Spain is indicative of the complex internal quasi federal structure of Spain, called ‘sui generis federalism’ in the chapter, and the greater role of the autonomous regions flowing from the new Constitution ratified at the end of the Franco era in 1975. An over-adaptation to neo-liberal and new public management reforms is reported, as are close alignment and integration with European schooling policy trends. It can be noted as well that there has also been some usage of the OECD’s PISA for Schools test, linked to the Catalonian independence movement (for example, evidenced in the October referendum in 2017). Recently, educational innovation has been the catchcry in Catalonia and has worked as a ‘floating signifier’ with many reforms of different kinds being supported under its rubric. Interestingly, Catalonia strongly defends its autonomy in education policy and has utilised the OECD’s Education at a Glance indicators to align its regional indicators with those of the OECD and also participated as a separate entity in main PISA (Engel, 2015). The Spanish case raises issues concerning the impacts of both Europeanization and globalization on politics and on the actual political structures within nations and national and sub-national responses to these pressures. Do these effects work differently in federal as opposed to unitary forms of political organization? Certainly, in the Australian context, globalization has resulted in a much stronger federal presence in schooling with the development of national curricula and national testing (Lingard, 2018, 2021a, b; Savage et al., 2022). The Catalonian chapter demonstrates synchronous upward rescaling towards European integration and downward rescaling in the active policy making of the autonomous region, as well as some devolution towards greater school autonomy. We see in this case an exemplar of the multi-scalar interactions in contemporary European policy making in schooling. The three post-socialist cases offer instructive insights into the ways path dependency, changing geopolitics and transnational pressures work together or in tension in schooling policy. Czech schooling demonstrates a complex interplay of national and international actors, including not for profit organizations such as the Open Society Fund. It is shown that while Slovenia and Croatia had similar schooling influences in the Soviet era, that developments in each have diverged since that time. Slovenia is a member of the EU and joined the OECD in 2010 and has participated in PISA. Since the 1990s neoliberal and other transnational policy ideas have had impact in both nations, but there has been a something of a nationalist backlash to these moves in Croatia. Croatia has been a member of the EU since 2013 and became a member of the OECD in 2022 and has participated in PISA since 2006.

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Concluding Comments John Benedicto Krejsler and Lejf Moos ask if current nationalistic contestations of neoliberal globalization and of processes of Europeanization are just blips in the long duree of ongoing discursive policy convergences and effects on nations from above nation processes; the effects of both globalization and Europeanization. This is a question I have also asked with colleagues (Rizvi et al., 2022). The answer here will be determined by ongoing empirical investigations and research. Yet there is no doubt that digital disruption, related digitalization and commercialization will have continuing impacts on the places and spaces of policy making in schooling with the edtech companies pushing policy convergence to expand market possibilities (Hogan & Sellar, 2021; Gulson, 2022). Krejsler and Moos’s collection has offered a real service to comparative education policy studies by stressing the necessity of the empirical and of developing our theorising as the empirical changes. The collection documents the broad changes we need to take account of, as well as specific path dependent changes in national schooling systems. Bourdieu’s (1990, p. 28) idea of research as ‘fieldwork in philosophy’ picks up very well the necessity of acknowledging and working with the imbrications of the theoretical, the methodological and the empirical and ensuring that our theories and methodologies do not do violence to the complexity of reality; here, interwoven national-Europe, nation-global relationships and contestations between transnational policy alignment across EU member nations’ school systems and new populist nationalisms. Certainly, their introductory chapter and each of the cases document and well illustrate the ways the national, in many cases evident in new ethnonationalisms, in path dependent ways, always mediates pressures from both globalization and Europeanization. In this way they have also illustrated the necessity that comparative policy studies in education within a policy sociology framework goes beyond the binary of methodological nationalism and methodological globalism. The introductory chapter and the cases provide most informative accounts of what path dependency is in respect of the multiple directions and complexities of European, global and national imbrications in schooling policies and reforms. Krejsler and Moos suggest their collection illustrates “what is politically and educationally possible within different traditions and balances of power between different stakeholder traditions”; in relation to their national system cases and in relation to the ever-changing imbrications of Europeanization, globalization and national school policies and reforms. This is a powerful definition of path dependency and its mediating impact on the affordances of the transnational, along with the digitalization of schooling governance, commercialization and network governance, and the re-emergence of particular manifestations of nationalism. In addition to this thinking about path dependency, the collection really drives home the necessity of an historical disposition to effective comparative policy sociology in education. The cases in this collection in their granularity also very well show the important point that globalization and Europeanization are not simply top-down processes.

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The Catalonian case well illustrates this point. This reality is also very well demonstrated in Santos and Kauko’s (2022) account of how external references to the European, to the global and to other nations is used in debates in the Portuguese parliament to rationalise and legitimate national reforms in schooling. Carney (2019, p. 252) has been very critical of this tendency in ‘global education policy research’ to stress top-down, global to national pressures, observing,” Methodologically, it appears to favour a gaze from above and across space, silencing or simplifying subaltern experiences and expressions of reform in order to trace new formations of power and their effects” (p. 252). A great strength of this collection is that in alignment with Carney’s observation and the argument of Larsen and Beech (2014), it acknowledges that we need to move beyond a number of unhelpful binaries in comparative education policy studies, for example, those of place/space, local/global, national/local, national/international, transnational/national, national/ European, supranational/national and so on, and deal with the multiple geographies, cartographies and directionalities of power in policy processes, including local and national impacts on and imperatives in respect of Europeanization and globalization, including both bottom-up and top-down pressures and resistances. The strength of the collection is that its national cases add important, granular empirical accounts to assist us in moving forward with the necessary theories and methodologies in comparative education policy studies from a sociological perspective, while also contributing to advancing our understandings of Europeanization and globalization in respect of schooling policies. In sum, School Policy Reform in Europe between Transnational Alignment and National Contestation makes multiple contributions to the field of comparative policy sociology in education. The analyses proffered demonstrate the significance of focusing on changes in the empirical realty of systemic school policy, but always with a researcher disposition of Bourdieu’s ‘fieldwork in philosophy’. They also drive home the significance of history and the related concept of path dependency for comparative policy sociology in education with both needing to be addressed at various scales and in different spaces, including the sub-national, national, supranational (EU), transnational and global. The case studies very evidently show that Europeanization and globalization are not simply top-down, unidirectional processes. Rather, the cases unequivocally illustrate that these processes work in multiple directions and also cut across national borders. That insight also demands the need for new theorising about Europeanization and globalization processes in policy sociology in education, but importantly demonstrate the pressing necessity to go beyond a binary of methodological nationalism and methodological globalism. While the cases do not deal specifically with the topological, where emphasis is on relations rather than locations, they do suggest the necessity of such an approach to researching and understanding new spatialities in education policy processes, where the local reaches across national borders and some transnational processes also reach inside nations, as illustrated in the case of Catalonia. To conclude: for an outsider like me, born in the wake of the devastations of the second world war and the shocking effects of fascism, and one who held the social democratic approaches and politics of the Nordic nations and social Europe as

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important reference points for public policy, including schooling policy in Australia, recent developments and the rise of right-wing populism in many of those nations, indeed the frightening rise of neo-fascism in a few, along with the emergence of illiberal democracies in Poland and Hungary, has come as something of a saddening shock. It makes clear that we must be ever vigilant in seeking to protect progressive gains and move to a better future and that this will entail complex policy work across and within nations and across the globe at this dangerous geopolitical moment. UNESCO’s (2021) report, Reimagining our futures together: A new social contract for education, in offering an ethics of humanistic possibilities for thinking such a future and defending progressive gains, is one place where the necessary inclusive and democratic conversations might begin.

References Amin, A. (2002). Spatialities of globalization. Environment and Planning A, 34(3), 385399. Anderson, B. (1990). Imagined communities: Reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism. Verso. Appadurai, A. (1996). Modernity at large: Cultural dimensions of globalization. University of Minnesota Press. Appadurai, A. (2006). Fear of small numbers: An essay on the geography of anger. Duke University Press. Ball, S.  J. (1998). Big policies/small world: An introduction to international perspectives in education policy. Comparative Education, 34(2), 119–130. Ball, S. (2021). Following policy: Network ethnography and education policy mobilities. In B. Lingard (Ed.), Globalisation and education (pp. 126–143). Routledge. Bartlett, L., & Vavrus, F. (2019). Rethinking the concept of ‘context’ in comparative research. In R. Gorur, S. Sellar, & G. Steiner-Khamsi (Eds.), Comparative methodology in the era of big data and global networks: World yearbook of education 2019 (pp. 187–201). Routledge. Bergsen, P., Downey, L., Krahe, M., Kundnani, H., Moschella, M., & Slobodian, Q. (2022). The economic basis of democracy in Europe: Structural economic change, inequality and the depoliticization of economic policymaking. Chatham House. Bourdieu, P. (1990). In other words: Essays towards a reflexive sociology. Stanford University Press. Carney, S. (2011). Imagining globalization: Educational policyscapes. In G.  Steiner-Khamsi & F. Waldow (Eds.), Policy borrowing and lending in education (pp. 339–353). Routledge. Carney, S. (2019). Writing global education policy research. In M. Pareira do Amaral, G. Steiner-­ Khamsi, & C.  Thompson (Eds.), Researching the global education industry (pp.  251–272). Springer. Clarke, J. (2019). Foreword. In N. Papanastasiou (Ed.), The politics of scale in policy: Scalecraft and education governance (pp. v–xii). Policy Press. Crowley, K., Stewart, J., Kay, A., & Head, B. (2021). Reconsidering policy: Complexity, governance and the state. Policy Press. Cuban, L. (2013). Why so many structural changes in schools and so little reform in teaching practice? Journal of Educational Administration, 51(2), 109–125. de Santos, B. S. (2006). Globalizations. Theory, Culture & Society, 23, 393–399. Engel, L. (2015). Steering the national: Exploring the education policy uses of PISA in Spain. European Education, 47(2), 100–116. Fraser, N. (2022). Cannibal capitalism: How our system is devouring democracy and what we can do about it. Verso.

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Fukuyama, F. (1992). The end of history and the last man. Penguin. Grek, S. (2014). OECD as a site of coproduction: European education governance and the new politics of ‘policy mobilization’. Critical Policy Studies, 8(3), 266–281. Grek, S. (2021). OECD as a site of coproduction: European education governance and the new politics of ‘policy mobilization’. In B.  Lingard (Ed.), Globalisation and education (pp. 144–159). Routledge. Gulson, K. (2022). Artificial intelligence and a new global policy problem in education. In F. Rizvi, B. Lingard, & R. Rinne (Eds.), Reimagining globalization and education (pp. 79–91). Routledge. Hogan, A., & Sellar, S. (2021). Pearson’s digital transformation and the disruption of public education. In C. Wyatt-Smith, B. Lingard, & E. Heck (Eds.), Digital disruption in teaching and testing: Assessments, big data, and the transformation of schooling (pp. 107–123). Routledge. Krejsler, J.  B. (2020). Imagining school as standards-driven and students as career-ready! A comparative genealogy of US federal and European transnational turns in education policy. In G. Fan & T. S. Popkewitz (Eds.), Handbook of educational policy studies (Vol. 2, Chapter 19, pp. 351–383). Springer. Kundnani, H. (2020). The future of democracy in Europe: Technology and the evolution of representation. Chatham House. Larsen, M., & Beech, J. (2014). Spatial theorizing in comparative and international education research. Comparative Education Review, 58(2), 191–214. Lawn, M., & Grek, S. (2012). Europeanising education: Governing a new policy space. Symposium. Lawn, M., & Lingard, B. (2002). Creating a European policy space in educational governance: The role of transnational policy actors. European Educational Research Journal, 1(2), 290–307. Lingard, B. (2018). The Australian curriculum: A critical interrogation of why, what and where to? Curriculum Perspectives, 38(1), 55–65. Lingard, B. (2021a). Globalisation and education: Theorising and researching changing imbrications in education policy. In B. Lingard (Ed.), Globalisation and education (pp. 1–27). Routledge. Lingard, B. (2021b). National curriculum making as more or less expressions of and responses to globalization. In M.  Priestley, D.  Avunger, S.  Philippou, & T.  Soina (Eds.), Curriculum making in Europe: Policy and practice within and across diverse contexts (pp. 29–51). Emerald Publishing. Lingard, B., & Lewis, S. (2016). Globalization of the Anglo-American approach to top-down, test-­ based educational accountability. In G. Brown & L. Harris (Eds.), Handbook of human and social conditions in assessment (pp. 387–403). Routledge. Lingard, B., Martino, W., Rezai-Rashti, G., & Sellar, S. (2016). Globalizing educational accountabilities. Routledge. Papanastasiou, N. (2019). The politics of scale in policy: Scalecraft and education governance. Policy Press. Peck, J., & Theodore, N. (2015). Fast policy: Experimental statecraft at the thresholds of neoliberalism. University of Minnesota Press. Piketty, T. (2013). Capital in the twenty-first century. The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Rizvi, F. (2022). Education and the politics of anti-globalization. In F.  Rizvi, B.  Lingard, & R. Rinne (Eds.), Reimagining globalization and education (pp. 214–227). Routledge. Rizvi, F., & Lingard, B. (2010). Globalizing education policy. Routledge. Rizvi, F., Lingard, B., & Rinne, R. (Eds.). (2022). Reimagining globalization and education. Routledge. Santos, I., & Kauko, J. (2022). Externalisations in the Portuguese parliament: Analysing power struggles and (de-)legitimation with multiple streams approach. Journal of Education Policy, 37(3), 399–418. Savage, M. (2021). The return of inequality. Harvard University Press.

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Savage, G., Gregorio, E., & Lingard, B. (2022). Practices of statecraft and the reassembling of political boundaries: The contested nature of national schooling reform in the Australian federation. Policy Studies, 43(5), 962–983. Sobe, N. (2015). All that is global is not world culture: Accountability systems and educational apparatuses. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 13(1), 135–148. UNESCO. (2021). Reimagining our futures together: A new social contract for education. UNESCO. Wetsch, M. (2009). You Tube and you: Experiences of self-awareness in the context collapse of the recording webcam. Explorations in Media Ecology, 8(2), 99–114. Dr Bob Lingard  is a Professorial Fellow in the Institute for Learning Sciences and Teacher Education at Australian Catholic University and an Emeritus Professor at The University of Queensland. His most recent books include: Exploring education policy through newspapers and social media (Routledge, 2023), Reimagining globalization and education (Routledge, 2022), Global-national networks in education policy: Primary education, social enterprises and ‘Teach for Bangladesh’ (Bloomsbury, 2022), Digital disruption in teaching and testing: Assessments, big data, and the transformation of schooling (Routledge, 2021), Globalisation and education (Routledge, 2021) and Digital learning assessments and big data: Implications for teacher professionalism (UNESCO, 2019).

Chapter 13

Europe as the Exterior Interiorized in the Infrastructures of Policy Thomas S. Popkewitz

Abstract  This chapter is to think about the relational of nation, collective belonging and the interiorization of “Europe” as the external other in the study of national  policy and school reform. The chapter begins historically with thinking about the making of the nation as a site governing collective belonging, home, and individuality. Today, “Europe” is a fold in historical practices that form a calculative reason external to but as a space of action in national policies and reform practices. The discussion explores as flows and movements of “Europe” through notions of the indigenous foreigner and traveling libraries. These notions direct attention to how particular modes of reasoning project global and universal knowledge (which they are not!) that settle in and appear as indigenous, affectively attached as principles of national salvation and redemption in the enactments of national policy and reforms. “Europe” is an externality interiorized in national policies through the calculative reason explored as: (1) the non-polemic language for management/planning, (2) numbers and statistics as cultural artifacts, (3) the alchemy that reterritorizes disciplinary knowledges as pedagogical knowledge and the curriculum, and (4) the comparative reasoning that excludes and abjects in efforts of inclusion. The significance of the infrastructures of “Europe” in the nation is generating new phenomena as real and as phantasmagrams that “act” to compare, differentiate and distribute differences of kinds of people. With the objects of study as the systems of reason, the chapter shifts attention from the formal categories of the state and its welfare institutions as originary sites about the matters of importance to the governing principles and paradoxes of educational practices in relation to social commitments. Keywords  The politics of knowledge · Policy · Calculations · Affective economy · Comparative reason and social exclusions · Making kinds of people

T. S. Popkewitz (*) University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. B. Krejsler, L. Moos (eds.), School Policy Reform in Europe, Educational Governance Research 22, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-35434-2_13

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A few years ago, I was asked to think about the question of Europeanization, initially in a review of a book edited by António Nóvoa and Martin Lawn (2002) “Fabricating Europe: The Formation of An Education Space” (Schmidt & Popkewitz, 2004) and in a later discussion and article about the mobilizations of a “European” research sector (Popkewitz & Martins, 2013). The book and subsequent work clearly pointed to a particular blindness to The European Union’s interventions in education through the backdoors of economic, labor, and higher education policies. The blindness to educational interventions occurred through the academic acceptance of legal definitions of subsidiarity in the European Union that reserved educational policy to nations. Today, there is no need for back doors as this current book continually reiterates. “Europe” is an actor in national education. As Krejsler & Moos argue in the introduction, the principle of subsidiarity is a phantasma! Nor should that be surprising. Overlooked in policy discussions is that 50% of national legislation and legal structures are related to European policy initiatives.1 The Bologna Process, EU Lisbon 2000 Agenda, educational mobility programs, and, less visible, the European Commission’s social and educational science and statistical programs, professional networks, and cross-national research projects make education calculable as objects of policy and institutional practices. Europe is visible in the national discussions yet erased and displaced with the focus on national laws, institutional forms, and school agencies as the agents and originary force in the governance of education practices. This chapter is to think about the relational of nation, collective belonging and its interiorization of its external other, “Europe”, in the study of policy and school reform. Grek (2020) and her colleagues explore this relation in different institutional and political agents that connect as nodules. My concern is complementary, a different layer to and focus on the social epistemologies that travel and intersect with the nation; Europe as patterns of recognitions and expectations of experience in the governing of “the matters” of educational phenomena (Popkewitz, 2014). My argument is not necessarily that Europe or the European Union is the origin of the calculative reasoning that folds into national policies; rather “Europe” signifies a space of multiple historical practices external to the nation but whose calculations are entangled as a location-less knowledge in the governing of European national policy and reform practices.2 My interest in knowledge is directed to the political of schooling; the principles ordering and comparing who people are, should be, and who does “not fit” into the spaces of normalcy as excluded and abjected. The chapter begins historically with discussing the making of the nation as a site governing collective belonging, home, and individuality. This literature is considered, paradoxically, to think about the entanglements of “Europe” as external folds present in the interior of national educational practices. “Europe” is the  This figure came from a discussion with a national director of legal affairs related to the EU.  Europe is a symbolic marker of an exteriority that folds into the interiority of national policy. My intent relates to the proximity of this exteriority in the focus on the national policies under discussion in this book. The trope of Europe is not meant as an originary site about episteme of uneven historical lines with no single origin. 1 2

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production of the architecture and topography of calculation, a space that generates “the will to know” in the ordering, classifying, and planning of national policy. The following section explores flows and movements of epistemes through notions of the indigenous foreigner and traveling libraries. The indigenous foreigner directs attention to how particular modes of reasoning projected as global and universal (which they are not!) settle in and appear as indigenous; indigenous as affectively attached to principles of national salvation and redemption. Often policy analyses take the official distinctions of policy and legislation as the origin of research, such as European Union notions of subsidiarity, the open method of coordination, benchmarks, and competences. This discussion views such concepts as the events in the study of policy. They embody an exteriority interior to the nation that I call Europe. That exteriority or indigenous foreigner travels in libraries or assemblages of theories, ideas, stories, and technologies that order and classify the potentialities of educational systems that policy is to effect. The third and fourth sections attend to how the traveling libraries are enunciated in the infrastructure of science in which Europe provides an infrastructure in fashioning and shaping of schooling, policy and reforms. The discussion’s focus on the systems of reason is a strategy to move away from the formal categories of the state and its welfare institutions as originary sites about the matters of importance. This “semiotic realism” given to the categories of the state assumes the word is a representation of the real (Popkewitz, 2022a, b). Robert Haveman (1987), former director of the Wisconsin Center of Poverty Studies, wrote that one of the limits of poverty research was that its conceptualizations from its post-war years assumed state classifications and statistics as its foundation of understanding. Such limits exist within those educational policies studies that accept state distinctions as objective and transcendental identities, conserving and reinscribing the contemporaneous frameworks as the very conditions of analysis.

 he Nation as Fabrications of Collective Belonging T and Anticipations of Potentialities I begin ironically with the nation to explore “Europe” as an infrastructure governing collective belonging, home, and individuality. The idea of the nation is not something natural for people to feel as a “home” and belonging but one that requires continual practices that generate modes of reasoning whose sensitivities create boundaries of affiliation and differences. My focus on the invention of the nation is to locate the politics of knowledge in which “Europe” in contemporary life generates practices of memory and belonging previously defined more through the interior spaces of the nation. For several historical reasons, the stories of the European school are often told through the geographical lines of the nation, with Europe and sometimes the US in this volume  as external agents of admiration and fear. Generally, narratives of

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educational histories, sociologies, psychologies, and comparative studies are of the school as an exemplary institution for nation-building and constructing national identity. It is not uncommon, for example, to speak of schools through political/ economic categories grounded in the objectifications of the nation, such as the discussion of Swiss, German, and American education through distinctions; such as centralization/decentralization (federalism), or subsidiarity, or neo-liberalism. The nation becomes the site in which educational practices join the representations of people and events of the past and present as movements that allow and constrain the potentialities that enable social prosperity, and individual happiness and well-being. Yet there is another literature and sets of distinctions that focus on the nation and its link to educational systems in a different way. That literature focuses on the nation as a particular invention of modernity in making a historically distinctive kind of people – the citizen. This is expressed in Anderson’s (1983/2006) call of the making of the nation as an “imagined community,” one in which cultural representations fabricate forms of unity, affiliation, and belonging that also creates boundaries of the excluded and abjected. For my purposes, Anderson’s notion of “imagined community” is theoretically and historically limited. Fabricating the unity of nation-ness entails attention to the political of knowledge in ordering of conduct and governing subjectification. This governing of conduct entails double gestures (Popkewitz, 2008, 2009). There is the gesture of the hope of the nation as a salvation theme which activates potentialities for the good life. In that gesture of hope are new forms of governance and subjectification that embody notions of difference and their distributions enacted in school pedagogy, the formation of the modern school subjects, and psychologies of learning and childhood (Rose, 1989; Popkewitz et al., 2017). Embodied in the phenomena in the making of the nation and its subjectification, then, are gestures that produce “Others”; the dangers and dangerous populations that challenge collective images and salvation narratives inscribed as the future of the nation (see e.g., Popkewitz, 2020). The double gestures of inclusion and exclusion, as I explore later, embody the comparative reasoning that inscribes internal threats to the nation, such as the immigrants and racialized populations, but also the external feared “others”. The abjections are about different kinds of people who are dangers and dangerous, banished and haunting the borders of subjective constitution – the disabled, at-risk and other populations that are  not fully included in  the normalized “self” of the nation. The double gestures are folds in an affective economy with the promise of an anticipated good life and protections against its threats. Competencies and standards as the object of policies, for example, appear as a global reasoning in legislating that are not just planning devices. The reason of competencies affectively attaches images and emotions about the hope of enacting the future potentialities of people and societies  that are simultaneously normalizing and pathologizing. The calculations affectively order and classify the matters of education and what matters in education, the kinds of statements and problems that require action, and the possibilities recognized as solutions. The affect of competences and benchmarks expresses what seem as nonpolemic concepts about securing the future of society and people that research and policy

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activate. The children’s problem solving and literacies, for example, in international assessments are phenomena created indexically through the technologies of research as anticipated potentialities (Popkewitz, 2022a). The indexes of literacies are properties produced through the measurement technologies but taken as real in policy and research to make possible the Knowledge Society and the lifelong learner as the potentialities of kinds of people (See European Social Survey, 2015; Popkewitz, 2022b; Rizzo, 2017). In one sense, the affective economy of “Europe” is not hidden. They are embodied in European reports and their “purposes”. Articulated across different European commissions, Europe is spoken about as a singularity, a metonym projected as producing a systemic harmony among education, society, and environments within nations (Popkewitz & Martins, 2013). The Social Sciences become the apotheosis of the reason that brings into Europe exceptionalism and cosmopolitanism. While an economic language is often used, the kind of person embodied in the research is cultural and has little direct relation to economy. Europe is, according to documents, a “laboratory” to create unity and integration to shape people who are lifelong learners. “Europe provides a natural laboratory” (European Science Foundation, 2009, p. 6) that will eliminate and re-define differences to achieve commonality and harmony in a single European community. Education is to “mould” the child’s “attitudes, behaviours, values and skills that are socially and politically viable in modern society” (European Commission, 2011, p. 12). Research is “action-­ oriented” so that this European will no longer be a mere “vision” but a reality (Nordin, 2011). If I can summarize the thinking of “Europe” as an external Other and the political, “Europe” is a space of action that fabricates patterns of recognition and expectations that has at least five qualities. 1. The calculations of school life entail modes of reasoning that are agential. The state reforms and European schema to manage economies and societies embody sets of rules and standards that affectively organize educational matters as kinds of problems that require action. The expertise of professionalization and languages of benchmarks, global competences, and literacy in much of European policies, for example, are about the imagined potentialities of life and kinds of people, and not descriptions of actual life and people. The abstractions are desires of becoming, anticipations of potentialities to be activated. 2. The calculative reasoning of policy and research is about making kinds of people. The lifelong learner in EU learning policy is a particular phantasmagram of the potentialities of a kind of person taken and realized with policy to actualize (Fejes & Nicoll, 2007; Rizzo, 2017). 3. The construction of a European, an American, or a German are kinds of people and belonging produced through an amalgamation of technologies, ideas, and social practices in the governing of conduct. 4. The making of kinds of people are desires of potentialities that research and policy are to activate. The desires are embodied in the principles that order reason as practices that generate purposes and intent in policy and practices, what

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Nietzsche expressed as “the will to know” and Foucault described as productive power. Narratives of the child in pedagogy and psychologies of childhood expressed as “learning” and “problem solving” and measured in school assessments of scientific literacy, for example, are inscriptions of anticipated potentialities of kinds of people. Seeing the presence of the future in the present was a heritage of Christian theology in the West reassembled in processes of secularization that brought the reason of salvation in the City of “Man” [sic]. Edward Allworth Ross, an early founder of American sociology and a former Baptist Minister, placed faith in the redemptive qualities of the common school to provide social cohesion, consensus, and obedience for the future. The secular promise was that the nation and its citizens would escape the burden of historical time by citizen who would truly be universal and a model to the world. The French pedagogue Gabriel Compayré in the late nineteenth century, for example, saw the science of pedagogy as having the double purpose of establishing the rules governing students who were to become adults in society that attached self-reliance and self-motivation with the cosmopolitanism of the citizen who acted with liberty and freedom. 5. The reasoning of policy and pedagogical sciences is comparative. The comparativeness appears as differences in ranking, differentiations of abilities, attitudes, and knowledge. Today the differences are expressed through internal categories of the self as motivation, engagement, participation, and cooperation. The calculations appear as designed for learning and well-being, but these abstractions entail continua of value to differentiate normalcy and pathologies as the interior of the child. Differences are distributed as double gestures; the hope of the future entangled with the dangers and dangerous populations (Popkewitz, 2022a, b). The comparativeness, at least in the West, is not new but is found in some ways in Linnea’s taxonomy of flora and fauna that put western civilizations at the top of its hierarchy, the Enlightenment’s differentiations of advanced civilizations, and the missionary qualities of colonialization into the nineteenth century. It assumes a particular quality of knowledge in the nineteenth century human sciences in which a discrete empiricity is given to knowledge, “seeing” of things as analytically discrete and functionally related  units. The indexing of social phenomena gives a unity, structure, and function designated through representations and conceptual distinctions about identities and differences in social life. The indexing become the phenomena created is the real  and the origin of change. The indexes affirm and are distributed as a comparative temporal knowledge of ordering and successions verified through empirical investigations (Foucault, 1994; Popkewitz, 2022c). The affective economy of Europe are calculative practices to unleash potential of a unity of the present fashioned to define the future. While this phrase of historically fashioning the future may seem an oxymoron and thus odd, the unity of Europe is fabricated as a heritage that makes intelligible the potentialities of the future. The human potentialities are comparative desires embodied in the fabrications of unity that inscribes, paradoxically, dualities and double gestures. The unity is given as the

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objectivizations of kinds of people as identities in continua of values. The differences are embodied in the calculative logic of policy and research that connects in pedagogical projects as a comparative reasoning about cultural principles directed to the subject’s body and soul (Lesko, 2001; Popkewitz, 2017; Rose, 1989).

I ndigenous Foreigner and Traveling Libraries: Movements and Settlements in the Reason of Policy and Reforms I started with belonging and nation to consider how Europe and nation are entangled in the practices of education, policy, and research. The notions of indigenous foreigner and traveling libraries are to explore the systems of reason in national educational policies, school life and research. “Europe” as a center of calculation is a space of historical practices external to the nation. The calculative reasoning travels, at one level, with little respect for geographical borders yet become parts of infrastructures in national policies. This section offers some contours for thinking about these travels that is more than merely the borrowing or transferring of knowledge (see, Popkewitz, 2005; Popkewitz et al., 2021; Zhao et al., 2022). The externalities work, I will argue, as indigenous foreigners that connect and assembled in traveling libraries to form styles of reasoning as they settle in different national policies and educational practices. The phrase indigenous foreigner appears to be an oxymoron  – opposites that belong together. “Indigenous” appears today as a word that registers the specificity of the local and the original home often besieged by political vectors of colonial violence that is not only external to Europe but evident in this book’s discussion of the post-communist Central & Eastern Europe and Western Balkans. The notion of indigenous foreigner gives attention to the calculative reasoning that circulates as a seemingly global language about the phenomena of education and its management. Europe, in this context, affectively functions as a calculative infrastructure which gives provenance to science and expertise as a practical and useful knowledge concerned with progress and social improvement (Popkewitz, 2020). The politics of the centers of calculations is that they affectively generate feelings that appear as reflective of local, national aspirations in reforming and modernizing educational systems. Evoked in the indigenous foreigner are collective and individual hopes and purpose activated in, for example, international assessments. The calculative reasoning of the assessments  are given a reasonableness, even with tensions and debates, among diverse sites as Denmark, Serbia, Spain, Sweden and Portugal. The calculative form of the assessments is that of science as a homeless, location-less knowledge that feels unattached to any geographical context. The technologies of indexing and ordering phenomena about educational practices act affectively, attached with national hopes and anxieties about the adequacy for an imagined future of a nation. The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD) Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), a center piece in many

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European national policies, provides comparative calculations in which its informational systems are emotive as championing national aspirations of ensuring children’s preparedness for the globalized world of the twenty-first century. The dispositions are that the assessment will meet the “the unprecedented challenges” of “the digital revolution” by providing the potential for economic prosperity, social well-being, and a “more inclusive and sustainable development” (OECD, 2019a, pp. 6–7). But this “Europe” is often invisible in national debates and statements about what matters in educational policy and practices. The work of Sverker Lindblad (Lindblad et al., 2021) of Gothenburg University is important in this understanding of how the global knowledge flows and enters multiple spaces as indigenous foreigners in teacher education. Often overlooked, the research on teacher education is important to how teaching, notions of learning, pedagogy and didactics are given a language in which policy is translated into the practices of schooling. Lindblad’s work maps research through the bibliographic couplings in English language teacher education journals. The web of science visualizes the multiplicities and complexities of worldwide institutes, research groups, journals, and citation indexes in teacher education. The nations represented are vast, but with strong clusters in Europe, such as the Netherlands, Finland, Norway, Germany, England, Ireland, Scotland, Belgium, Sweden, and Turkey. While the clusters and geographical loci express global nodules, the subjects of research follow historically specific patterns of recognition not necessarily related to the conventions of institutional organizations as their origins. There appears to be a global grammar and syntax to fashion and shape the problems and classification of phenomena of teacher education, such as professional development, preservice, teacher education, inclusive education, practicums, social justice, and didactics. Across these distinctions are categories and classifications that historically connect with Anglo-American trajectories of professionalism as they settle into different national policy initiatives related to, for example, teacher education reforms policy initiatives in Sweden in the late twentieth century.3 The foreign, seeming homeless-ness of the distinctions and ordering of the calculations travel as a singularity and unity for action in different historical, cultural, and social spaces. The patterns of recognition and expectations of experience generated in the calculations settle and are assembled of other “ideas” to describe and organize the practices of policy and the school pedagogical organization itself. The “acting” of the indigenous foreign in its settlements is not merely reductive and reproductive of its originary practices. The settlements become something else. This something else brings back into view the political of knowledge. The indigenous foreigners embody epistemic and ontological rules and standards in traveling. However, the principles are  not stable as they move.4 Deleuze and Guattari  The Anglo-American traditions are discussed historically in Popkewitz (1987); and in contemporary research, Popkewitz (2020). 4  This is illustrated, at least on the surface, incorporation of American Fordism in the 1920s into the Soviet assembly lines of its industrial system to create the workers’ paradise; The Chinese embrace 3

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(1980/1987) speak of the movement among spaces as de/re-territorializations. The historian Jürgen Herbst (1965), for example, explored how German idealist historiography linked with notions of Bildung traveled to the US at the turn of the twentieth century. The German notion of Bildung entered the US as an instrumental historiography that made possible scientific categories of teaching and learning related to norms of individualizations connected with American imaginaries. Within Europe, Bildung travels as well across time and space with different settlements in Germany and throughout Europe (Horlacher, 2015). The movements of indigenous foreigners as a fold in different settlements can be thought of as traveling libraries. Traveling libraries in the context of this discussion of “Europe” is to think that the calculative reason is never merely “borrowed” but an arrival that is never alone. The settlements of the indigenous foreigner occur at the interstices of other texts/authors, metaphorically like a group of books sitting on a desk being read at the same time. The multiplicities of ideas, theories, classifications, and stories of the “libraries” are entangled as creative, vibrant historical practices that are not merely the sum of its authors. The American John Dewey, the Swiss Jean Piaget, the Russian Lev Vygotsky, and the French Michel Foucault move and settle in many different spaces. The “new” settlements are no longer enunciations of ideas within the intellectual/social conditions in which they were produced but have different coordinates for defining relevancies and expectations (Popkewitz, 2005). Dussel (2021), for example, explores the emergence of tactile pedagogy as interconnections between technology, art, design, and educational research in the early-twentieth-century. The pedagogies traveled in ways that are neither reductive nor additive, but create new objects and distinctions as they travel through university seminars and laboratories and artistic workshops between Milano in Italy, Ulm in Germany, Chicago, Cambridge, and Los Angeles and through the biographical trajectories of design educators who later configured digital media into pedagogical practices in schools.

 atterns of Recognition, Expectations of Experience P and Belonging As suggested, Europe is a metonym in policy analyses that articulates an infrastructure that produces calculation about the potentialities of kinds of people. European Union reports, for example, embody salvation narratives in which standards, expertise, and the imagery of global competencies give expression to its practices as activating progress and prosperity. The salvation and redemptive narratives stand against unspoken norms that simultaneously evoke hopes against fears of the of OECD’s International assessments (PISA) with a “Socialist Character”, and the linking of the Soviet psychology of Vygotsky as a science that engages Communist ideals with the Calvinist reformism of the American Pragmatist John Dewey in American psychologies in the middle of the twentieth century.

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dangers, for example, of the European Union as inscriptions of bureaucracies, and challenges to national sovereignty that has pockets in east and western Europe. The European East related to the former Soviet Union, for example, narrates the European Union as hopes of a cosmopolitanism that in some of the Slavic states is undoing what is perceived as entrenched provincialism and localism. Yet others see the West as the anti-Christ that destroys national values through the West’s encroaching of liberal values. Europe is an epistemic space of action; calculations generating patterns of recognition and expectations of experience enunciated through the affective qualities of its categories, such as benchmarks, competencies, and as the pedagogy programs which “see” children’s learning in which the interiorities of development, well-­ being, and growth  have social/cultural coordinates. The focus on Europe as an indigenous foreigner, then, is on the externalities of calculative rationalities folding in national policies and reforms. Whether Denmark’s steering by standards-based education or the Spanish audit culture discussed previously in book, the practices are given intelligibility through traveling libraries in which “Europe” embodies a calculative reason that signifies and orders what is possible, hoped for, but also what is feared and threatening. The “European” calculative reasoning moves among different geographical and institutional sites as architectures and topographies framing the practices of education as an affective economy of human development and reducing the pain of modernization. (see, e.g., Grek, 2018; Carvalho, 2018; Normand, 2021; Pereyra et al., 2011).5 I focus on four folds in the infrastructure of “Europe”, “things” that do not “belong” to the nation but which settle in as indigenous foreigners in different traveling libraries: (1) the non-polemic language of management, (2) numbers and statistics as cultural artifacts, (3) the alchemy that reterritorizes disciplinary knowledges into the pedagogical knowledge, and (4) the comparative reasoning that excludes and abjects in efforts of inclusion. The different folds of “Europe” circulate in the infrastructures of national policies through the various chapters of the book. The significance of the infrastructures of “Europe” interiorized in the nation is the calculations that create phenomena that “act” as real sites for “sight” in what Rancière (1983/2004) calls the partition of the sensible. That sight, I will argue, are phantasmagrams, like the illusory images of the magic lanterns of the seventeenth century, acted on as real and governing principles about the body and soul in pedagogical and psychological models (Popkewitz, 2022a).

 OECD (2019a), for example, talked about the historical changes related to industrialization and the current “Digital Age” as simultaneously preparing for the future and reducing the pain of its dislocations. 5

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Memory/Forgetting While the daily newspapers are continually haunted with dissensus, the infrastructure of the calculative reasoning of policy and research in Europe are spoken about as a unity that inscribes harmony, consensus, and integration among the different institutional practices. The European Union and the European Commission are sites, for example, generating unity through the classifications and statistical collection of data about difference within that unity. This section gives nuance to this unity of “Europe” that, paradoxically, entails practices of memory/forgetting which  locates the unity as a temporal relation (history) of the past/present and future. The creation of history is the creation of classifications that work into, redefine, and blur national boundaries. The creation of a memory locates the self in a unity of Europe and as a “European” bound with the production of historical objects and narratives of collective origin. Narratives of national salvation and redemption connect with desires that anticipate “the good life” reasoned as found in European institutions. The European Council and the European Commission (2010), for example, speak about Europe in the imaginaries of the Enlightenment’s “cosmopolitanism” and salvation themes that generate utopic images of the potentialities of societies and people enabled as the “European life as a path to the future”. The paths to the future, paradoxically, entail reconstructing memory/forgetting to connect the past and present to the future. European documents speak of the common belonging as a natural evolution. Europe, it is asserted, has a “universal mission” that has been culturally shaped by a “tension between history and transcendence” (Giesen, 2002, p. 202). The European Commission’s research priorities for funding projects continually broached the issue of consensus as a practical matter of “why European research matters” in calls for policy-oriented research. Research is to provide cultural and social “insights” that can spark important European initiatives aimed at modernization (European Commission, 2011, p. 13). The collective belonging and “home” are fabricated as “heritage” in the reimagining of memory.6 Heritage is invented as intricately linked with external images and narratives of Europe as the cultural boundaries of the nation in Europe as the originary space of common heritage. Zones of the individual and collective past, previously linked with the nation, become memorialized as European doors of castles, farms, museums, and factories to evoke memories of the unity in the national diversity of the past. The calls for research, for example, have expressed a European exceptionalism fabricated as common values portrayed across social science policy that embodies liberal values of “social protection”, “equality” and a European “social model”. Whether the task is seeking a knowledge-based economy, creating environmental sustainability, or operating as a European unit within a global world, research funding is likened to the dawn of a new future in human relationships and the transformation of Europe into a dream of peace and justice.  These issues of memory are discussed in Popkewitz and Martins (2013).

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These documents of Europe as a center of policy and calculation of nation-ness are given visibility through phrases such as such “all countries” are to use schools to “help shape society and its future citizens” (European Commission, 2011, p. 12). Europe is the site of “education for the masses”, with European research to enable the “making quality education available for all” and “countering persistence of socio-economic inequalities and the skills mismatch” (European Commission, 2011, p. 12). Nations become an anonymous category within integration, coherence and harmony, located within European systems where “member states support”, for example, “national lifelong learning strategies” (The Council of The European Union, 2018, p.  4). The space of belonging is the universalized space of “the European” as a humankind with which to “build governments that were transnational, passionless and safe” (Brooks, 2011).

 he Non-polemic Homelessness of Numbers: The Cultural T Logic of Equivalence That Distributes Differences If we think about Europe as a calculative reasoning, that reasoning is not only about memory and forgetting. It is anticipatory of belonging and affiliation that are paradoxically non-polemic discourses of science and management. The irony to much of modern analytical thought is to separate things that are practically and historically interrelated. The case of “Europe” is expressive of that irony. It is the folding of memory/forgetting, anticipating the future, and the knowledge of expertise, planning and assessment in the infrastructures of policy, research and school systems. Expressed through notions of competences, benchmarks, and educational standards, for example, a space of action is created that seems to exist non-polemically and outside of historical time;7 but necessary to know who people have been and for securing future economic prosperity, the welfare of populations, and individual well-being and happiness.8 Latour (1987) spoke of this kind of knowledge systems as immobile mobiles. The affect of the non-polemic qualities of knowledge is that it appears without “home”, location, and social context. The numbers populating graphs and charts are descriptions, but the descriptions embodying philosophical ideals enunciating an anticipated future. The European Commission’s (2022) Eurydice, for example, standardizes and compares national performances as global indexes to differentiate mathematics and science literacy. The numbers are entangled in the production of memory as social and cultural practices generating principles about ‘the nature’ of society, and the comparative reason that differentiates in making kinds of people discussed later (Popkewitz, 2017).

7  I am borrowing these phrases from the work of Berger et al. (1974) and Savage (2010) but historically and theoretically using them in different ways. 8  This imagined future is explicit in OECD’s Future of Education and Skills 2030 (OECD, 2019a).

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The homelessness of numbers and statistics envisions a mode of telling the truth about the phenomena of the social and individuality. The trust in numbers, probability theories, and statistics acts as disinterested knowledge. The calculations appear as existing outside of traditions, ideology and subjectivity, a particular quality of knowledge as truth that emerges in modernity.9 Yet it is important to recognize that statistics works as a social technology that does not act by itself but as a fold in the infrastructure of science (Lindblad et al., 2018). Numbers define the problem space for standardizing the subjects generated in the calculations represented as “Europe”. The institutionalization of large databases in contemporary policy and assessments, for example, shifts governance from institutional indicators, audit and performance-monitoring to governance that combines technical measurement, components, and procedures that order the capacities and qualities of individuality (Lascoumes & Le Galès, 2007; Normand et al., 2018; Pettersson & Popkewitz, 2019). The systems of equivalencies and magnitudes establish norms as differences from the average. That average is not a thing of reality but creates new phenomena as the real through the distinctions made into data and indexed to compare and distribute differences. Europe forms as the averages and differences over time that perform as memories for valuing of good life as the nation-states’ monitoring of the educational practices. The work of numbers work are descriptions that embody desires of futures that are to be actualized through planning. The Europe-wide statistics overlap with and, to some extent, supersede national data, creating a space of equivalence where one can judge, assess, and order practices about the potentialities of kinds of people to be activated through policy and research. Numbers are not agents in and of themselves. It is probably more appropriate to think of numbers as a fold in an infrastructure of theories, narratives, and technologies for calculating and reasoning about what the world is and should be. The objectivity and equivalences are not transcendent principles of pure reason, but shaped and fashioned in moral and political discourses that embody philosophical ideals as desires about potentialities anticipated. Romuald Normand (2021) has explored the development of an expertise in the context of “Europe” in the datafication and experimentation in European policies related to education. The statistical analyses, Normand argues, has produced new modalities for thinking about society. The metrics of the school create an affective economy through its practices of harmonization and standardization through the increased institutionalization of large databases and statistical techniques through the OECD’s PISA and the European Social Survey (ESS). Equivalences are created in which differences are registered as performances and outcomes of schools. The numbers of statistics project social images and narratives that identify and compare school systems in imagined notions

 I am not claiming the infrastructures and particular historical lines go uncontested, such as the use of statistics. But my concern is with particular calculative systems of reason that operates as a space action in policy and school practices and its measurements. 9

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of the future described as the competitiveness of the nation in the light of new, global economic demands. The datafication and experimentation in European policies that permeate contemporary education are an affective economy in which the numbers appear as real. The metrics index, assess (and judge) the objects of assessments as constituting educational success and failures. The comparing is performed through Bayesian theory of probability and frequency statistics in which there is a center (like Quetelet’s average person) that makes all things equal for comparison. The aggregates generate statistic propositions that act as practical laws about the nature of things and differences in, for example, competences in normal distributions. Why is this important to this discussion? The nonpolemic knowledge has locations. What is elided is the affect of knowledge and the historical conditions embodied in the utopic qualities generated. The descriptions are not of the present philosophical ideals and values about human conduct given as the pathways offered for activating futures. The numbers create phenomena as actionable for policy and school practices to respond to the hopes and anxieties imagined as globalization. The cascading numbers embody images and narratives that are projected the “system compass” to the imagined future bounded as benchmarks and “the types of competencies students need to navigate towards the future we want, individually and collectively” (OECD, 2019a, p. 15). But this effect is not only numbers per se but qualities of the human sciences and those related to education since its formation in the long nineteenth century (Popkewitz, 2020). The affect of the calculations produces contours that enclose and differentiate kinds of people as the art of governing of the self, homologous but different from what occurs with the formations of the modern welfare state in care of the self.

The Alchemy of School Subjects The infrastructure that produces the reason of “Europe” discussed has different historical lines. At the interstices of memory/forgetting, the non-polemic discourses that anticipate the futures, and the inscriptions of numbers is another historical line in national policies and school reforms: the translations of disciplinary practices of science, mathematics and art formed in models of curriculum. This translation is an alchemy, magic tranformations like the medieval alchemists. Instead of turning metals into gold, pedagogy and curriculum transform and reterritorialize disciplinary fields of practice into the spaces of schooling. Alchemies are necessary. Children’s learning of science, mathematics, art, and music requires translation tools that order and classify the content of school subjects (see, e.g., Popkewitz et  al., 2017; Popkewitz, 2018). The translation tools  are important not only to teaching, but give  form to  the phenomena assessed as scientific and mathematical  literacy in international assessments as well as in policy debates and research.

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The question, then, is not that translations exist. The question is about the tools of the translations that make the alchemy as a fold in the infrastructures of schooling and their assessments. The alchemies of the curriculum travel in the externalities of Europe and international assessments, internalized in national policies and pedagogical practices. While the namesakes of mathematics and science in assessments and the school curriculum appear as merely registering their disciplinary origin, the movements to the school pedagogies are something else. The school subjects of the curriculum are not replications of the disciplinary practices. They are new territories. A range of international studies continually make visible an infrastructure of the school curriculum as cultural spaces of comparative practices about kinds of children. Catarina Martins’ (2014a, b, 2017) studies on Portuguese art education, for example, explores the curriculum as inventions of notions of creativity and genius producing the artist in the differentiation of kinds of people in cross-Atlantic movements. Different social and cultural movements were inscribed in psychologies of child and pedagogical practices to give direction to the interiority or “soul” of the child in organizing, managing, and assessing “art” as a comparative and differentiated ability. Pedagogical practices link virtue, participation, allegiances, and attachments with subjectivities as the activation of the desires about human potentialities to be and not to be (Ó et al., 2013; Paz, 2017). Named as science, mathematics, and art education, the school subjects have little to do with the cultural and technical apparatuses that produce disciplinary knowledge. Pedagogical practices are concerned with norms related to differences and moral (dis)order. Scientific and mathematical literacies discussed earlier, for example, are calculative practices that erase the multiple epistemic machinery and cultural fields in which different disciplinary fields operate. The alchemy produces new territories of knowledge in the teaching and evaluations of science and mathematics education. Disciplinary practices are (re)visioned as discrete concepts, skills, and information operationalized as evidence of school learning. The benchmarks representing literacies in different fields are given their architecture and cartography through the school system’s categories, and distinctions. Literacies of science and mathematics are abstractions represented as analytical distinct represented as information activated as objects of pedagogy, psychologies of learning, and psychometrics. The alchemy travels as a fold in “Europe” as externalities entering national policy as what is real and decides the matters of what science and mathematics are. The alchemy is inscribed in calculative reason of PISA as well as IEA’s TIMSS (mathematics and science) and PIRLS (literacy), which are influential in European policy about standards and competencies (Popkewitz, 2022a, b). Science, for example, is revisioned and remade in the territory of psychometrics. The interpretive concepts are translated into test items, such as “acid rain”. The concepts carry the symbolic resemblance to science but in a new grammar and syntax that substitutes for the discursivity of the disciplinary presentations. Substitution is an analytic language whose representative values form as a space of information that children are to know. The science measured as its knowledge is translated through a Cartesian logic

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of concepts, generalizations, and propositions organized as discrete units for the mind to apprehend as the knowledge giving relevancy to the world. The question of science is reformulated as a knowledge re-spatialized as a register of the norms of cultural competences, mental processes, and modes of living about children’s well-­ being and qualities related to social participation – knowledge “developed into analytically different fields of competences, knowledge, and attitudes” (OECD, 2013, p. 12).10 The school subjects are longer in the onto-epistemic spaces of disciplines. The concepts of science education are an alchemic play of substitutes that accomplish appropriations, terms of truth, and expressive values that represents disciplinary roles as the making of the self. The calculations of scientific and mathematical literacies are given as indicators of preparing the competences children need for the future global world.11 If I bring the prior discussions together, thinking of Europe as an indigenous foreigner in traveling libraries requires attention to how the infrastructure discussed activates patterns of recognition and expectations of experience. The alchemy acts as a unity of a multiplicity of epistemic machinery that forms science, mathematics, the humanities and the arts. The unity forms in the infrastructure as a social and individual memory that imagines the location of the self in a global comparative space in which there is the distribution of differences.

Comparative Reasoning and Its Double Gestures Thinking of Europe as an indigenous foreigner in traveling libraries requires attention to another fold in the infrastructure of the calculative, which is that the calculations are comparative and distribute differences as the phenomena of education. That comparativeness is taken as natural and as a  matter of fact, a necessity for understanding the problem of change and social improvement. The psychologies and sociology of schooling, for example, create continua of values to differentiate and distinguish the qualities and characteristics of the successful school, the expert teacher, the effective school system, and the kinds of children “educated”. Logics of comparing reach into the interiorities of the child as different kinds of people as measures that relate achievement to motivation, engagement, self-esteem and well-­ being. The naturalizing of comparing elides the historicity of representation and its philosophy of consciousness that orders utopic/dystopic notions inscribed as the human kinds of policy and research (see, e.g., López, 2018; Mignolo, 2002; Popkewitz, 2022b; Mertanen & Brunila, 2022; Zhao et al., 2022). If criticisms are raised, the criticisms are internal and self-referenital to the system of reason applied  This is discussed in Popkewitz (2020).  That sentiments of a global attachment and affiliation, however, are not global, but specific historical enactments that travel and reassembled as universal, non-polemic in different historical social and cultural settlements. 10 11

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and not about the epistemics of the representational logic of the comparisons applied. The non-polemic qualities in which the comparing occurs are historical cultural and social principles taken as “the nature” of society, pedagogy, and the humanness of the child. The “natures” of the child’s curiosity, motivation, creativity, engagement and self-esteem are folded in with literacies and become the objects to assess and affect as desires of the hopes of education as social commitments. Yet as continually explored earlier, the comparative ordering are inscriptions of the double gestures of hopes and fears. As part of the same phenomenon and simultaneously generated are hopes that policies and social programs will create a child whose potentialities relate to values given for a more progressive, equitable and just society and fears of the dangers and dangerous populations that will constrain those hopes. The double gestures are not the intent of human actors and institutions who make policy or the professionals of the schools. Just the opposite. The intent, if I can use that word, is generated in the calculations produced as desires in “the will to know” about the potentialities of kinds of people. Mertanen and Brunila (2022), for example, explore how notions of youth expressed in OECD documents embody utopian and dystopian narratives of a particular individualized “self” that is drawn into Finnish policies (Also, see, Simola, 2015). Potentialities to activate in schooling and research are comparative and exclude in the impulses to include (Normand, 2021). The potentialities appear as watertight categories of people and affirm particular populations as the problem, distinguished as students of immigrant backgrounds, for example, across nations whose belonging, well-being, integration and language become objects of care related to an unspoken normalcy of “natives” (see, e,g.,  OECD, 2017). The immigrant, as the disadvantaged and ethnic child, is a space of action of the potential of integration of the person not yet integrated, and of the potential threat to harmony and order (Kowalczyk, 2014, 2015). The representations travel as “borders” regulating pattern recognition that shape and fashion distinctions of differences. The dangerous populations are recognized to be included through their proper development yet placed in oppositional spaces that can never be of the averages (see Faas, 2011; Eurydice, 2009, p. 3). The motivated, engaged, self-activated child are dualities in “the good life” generated through theories of childhood, psychologies of learning, research on school improvement, and the pedagogical knowledge. The production of differences inscribes “others”, people who are divided into spaces excluded and abjected as “the child left behind”, the disadvantaged, and urban or rural kinds of people outside of the normalized spaces. Differences are projected in an affective economy of an anticipated future. That anticipated future is gestured in reports, policies, teacher research and pedagogy as salvation and redemption narratives of the potentials of the child’s “literacies” to be activated as global competencies. Different European national school policies and comparative international assessment of students enunciate measures of what are global competences, well-being, and the literacies that all students need in the imagined society and economy.

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Literacy as a Mode of Living Anticipating the Future The notions of scientific and mathematical literacy are exemplars of the anticipatory hope of the non-polemic knowledge. The categories of literacy work in OECD’s PISA and different national educational systems are projections of the global knowledge and skills of imagined human potentialities embodying the future good society and the happiness of people (OECD, PISA, 2019b). Literacy is registered as a non-­ polemic, homeless knowledge whose affect is the promise of ushering in inscribed global competences for The Knowledge Society. Literacy is an index of new phenomena created through the infrastructures of the assessments. The phenomena is a project of the infrastructure of phantasmagrams of anticipatory modes of living formed in the practices of the folding of memory/forgetting, non-polemic knowledge, the alchemy, and the distribution of differences.12 Literacy is imprinted as a method of revelation in which problem-solving performs as the moral claim of modes of living made possible through changing the interiority of child – “the soul” – in making the responsible citizen who is to value the alchemies of science and technology in enacting existence. The student learning to become literate is to authorize science and mathematics as an oracle of finding salvation in personal and social well-being (see e.g., OECD, 2017). The epistemic form of the alchemy  is internalized as the interior of a child’s problem-solving bounded as a desire of a mode of living “the broadest possible range of individual interests and with the range of situations which individuals operate in the 21st century” (OECD, 2019a, p. 87). Literacy affectively gestures to hopes of the Enlightenments, the universality of reason, progress, and happiness. These hopes are (re)visioned, shaped, and fashioned through the infrastructure of the calculations as a kind of person – the “rational” reasonable citizen and qualities of belonging and individuality. The space created as literacy in OECD’s PISA, for example, embodies continua of values as the moral characteristics of the interiority of the soul and body. The literacies of science and mathematics are phantasmagrams and a coloniality (Coello, 2022). Like the seventeenth century magic lanterns that projected imaginary screens of what is real, the calculations produce mappings or cartographies and architectures that fabricate images and narratives about people. The fabrications are desires  generated as the will to know that projects  and differentiates future potentialities. The phantasmagrams compare, differentiate utopic/dystopic expectations as an imagined light against the darkness. The coloniality is in the travel and settlements of historical philosophical ideals that have particular historical locations and power relations.  The historicity  enunciating kinds of people and displacements that inscribe notions of the good life in other locations and historical spaces as national policies and the mundane rules and standards organizing school life.

12

 This is discussed in Popkewitz (2020, 2022a, b).

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Concluding Thoughts The chapter gave attention to “Europe” as an external space in which different historical lines travel and settle in libraries at the interstices of national policy and programs. I explored Europe as an infrastructure or grid of historical practices that create patterns and expectations as spaces of action in nations. Those actions are practices of making kinds of people. Embodied in “Europe” are affective economies activating ways of ordering and classifying who the child is, should be and who does not “fit” – comparative desires about the double potentialities of people – to-be and not-to-be that school is to activate. I played theoretically and methodologically with the problem of school policy and reform, with Europe as a calculative reasoning exterior to the nation but interiorized in national policy and educational practices. Notions of indigenous foreigner and traveling libraries were to think about how different sets of ideas, narratives, and stories about education external to the nation travel and are (re)visioned in the encounters of “belonging” and affiliated with salvation and redemptive narratives about the potentialities of societies and people. Important to the analysis is how calculations create new phenomena as phantasmagrams. Projections of imaginary cartographies and architectures of people are indexed as, for example, literacy and well-being. The indexes are data points that become the origin of the subjects and subjectifications by which policy and reforms define the problems and the pathways for educational solutions. The storage places and memory of students’ knowledge, skills, and well-being have a providentialism visualized and materialize as actionable for policy and reforms. While the chapter operated to think about how to think of the exteriorities of policies as interior to the rules and standards of the reason of policy, the question that underlies this chapter is how to think of the technologies of governing at work and their elisions in the practices of policy and schooling.

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Chapter 14

Discussion: The Importance of Context in European School Policy Reforms Lejf Moos

and John Benedicto Krejsler

Abstract  The chapter discusses relations between transnational alignments and national contestations in school reform policies in Europe in the movements and traffic between country and regional cases and transnational discourses. Influences from transnational agencies are discussed in relation to all country cases. Discussed is also whether soft governance instruments create more homogenized school systems across Europe over time, or whether national recontextualization and contestation make a difference that maintains different trajectories in school policies across Europe. The integration into the transnational collaborations made country politics more comparable, through the demand for performance in education and the demand for autonomy in governance. A pivotal policy advice involves devolving authority from the state downwards, to be designated as ‘the need for autonomy’ and the demand for performance and measurement in education. The comparisons in this chapter are built on a shared format of the accounts of the national political contexts, their histories and current situations. Using this material, we were able to identify three regions gathering the country cases, i.e. Central & Eastern Europe + Western Balkans, Southern Europe, and Northwestern Europe. The region-construction illustrates interesting similarities and differences between national policies. Keywords  Context · Comparison · Nations · Regions · Power · Interpretations

L. Moos (*) · J. B. Krejsler Danish School of Education, Aarhus University, Copenhagen, Denmark e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 J. B. Krejsler, L. Moos (eds.), School Policy Reform in Europe, Educational Governance Research 22, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-35434-2_14

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Introduction Our investigation of struggles between transnational alignments and national contestations in school reform policies in Europe (Lawn & Grek, 2012) is based on the connections between country and regional cases and transnational discourses. We regard our setup as being very much in line with Bartlett and Vavrus (2017), who argue that cases used in comparisons should attend simultaneously to macro, meso, and micro dimensions. They do not see these dimensions as bounded, and thus setting fixed borders between levels, often preferring to see things slide from one level to other fields in ultracomplex contexts. In taking this perspective, we recognize that influences often slide unnoticed into the minds and practices of agents, remaining hidden and undiscussed in discourses and practice, and producing professional reflection and institutions. The strategically important question here is whether this creates more homogenized school systems across Europe over time, or whether national recontextualization and contestation make a difference which is sufficient to maintain different trajectories in school policies across Europe. One sign of sliding occurs when authorities shift their form of governance from the regulations and frameworks of hard governance towards the use of soft governance, which often means adapting to suit national particularities, as shown in the 10 country case chapters (Moos, 2019). One important aspect of soft governance consists of social technologies: tools, mechanisms, procedures, instruments, tactics, techniques, technologies, and vocabularies through which governance is carried out (Dean, 1999). These technologies are not neutral, but they do have a purpose: they are intended to conduct people to conduct themselves (Foucault, 2001). Social technologies generally have more than one purpose: some are explicit, while others are implicit, which often implies that discourses and interpretations undetected slide ‘under the radar.’ More specifically, our analyses locate social technologies and their particular developments as effects of the interplays between transnational alignments and national contestations. This means that we understand the particular ways in which social technologies such as standards, statistics, and benchmarks have developed as being deeply embedded in transnational collaborations in the major transnational organizations in which all the countries represented in this collection have participated, following different trajectories to align and develop their school and education systems. These organizations include two major players: the OECD and the European Union (EU). Both have an overarching economic focus, expressed in concepts like human capital and knowledge economies; and two smaller organizations with a more particular educational focus, the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA), and the Bologna Process focusing on the development of a European higher education area (Krejsler, 2019). In the wake of integration into these transnational collaborations they have followed the demand to become comparable, the demand for autonomy in governance, and the demand for performance in education and other public institutions. In an OECD document on reforms of public management (1995), pivotal policy advice involves devolving authority from the state

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downwards, to be designated as ‘the need for autonomy’ (OECD, 2008, Section 6). In this connection, governments were reminded to ensure performance, control, and accountability, which were to become an important cornerstone of the PISA project, something which is clearly visible in most country cases in this book on school policy reform in Europe. In addition, the chapters in this book add analyses of how digitalization, Edu-­ business as well as increasing turns to national(ist) solutions impact the national recontextualizations of transnational policies. For instance, this is the case with omnipresent digital technologies that shape the national documentation of educational outcomes into comparable forms, (Williamson, 2017). Examples of these forms are the online test for comparison of student outcomes in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). The same tendency goes for increasing presence of business in education across European nations (Ball, 2012), as well as the increasing impact of nationalism as a counterforce to transnational solutions (Bergmann, 2017; Judis, 2016; Rizvi et al., 2022). In this volume Lingard presents a thought-provoking argument concerning the return of nationalisms in a European context within a more global perspective.

Composition of the Discussion In section “Introduction” we introduce our theoretical perspective as a point of departure for exploring and discussing interpretations (in section “Interpretations of power relations between transnational agencies and national authorities”) in relation to power relations between transnational agencies and national authorities from the country cases within the three regions discussed here, i.e. Central & Eastern Europe + Western Balkans, Southern Europe, and Northwestern Europe. In section “Interpretations of national school reforms and institutional reactions”, interpretations of national school reforms and institutional reactions from the country chapters are explored and discussed in order to conclude with section “General findings”, which presents our general findings, and a discussion of comparison and context, sliding and homogenization.

Comparison in Context We investigate relations between transnational influences and national school reform policies, and we focus on transnational, regional and national policy. As we involve multiple national education systems in interplays with the region in which they are situated as well as with transnational agencies, our project compares relations of many sorts. In order to understand the school reform policies, we need to investigate diverse levels of contexts in which these policies are developed: “Context

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is an indispensable tool of comparative inquiry… connections between the object of inquiry and its surroundings” (Piattoeva et al., 2019, p. 202). Consequently, we present the way in which we regard relations between context and comparison. We agree with Steiner-Khamsi and Gorur (Steiner-Khamsi & Gorur, 2019) when they say: “… we have to move beyond the traditional notion of context as a location or space, and rather investigate meaning making, or meaning concealing, respectively, embedded in context” (p. 165). Popkewitz (in this volume) continues this thinking when he describes his research interest as the movements and translation of imaginaries and experiences based on which agents can understand, act on, and create materiality, like social technologies and meaning. We have constructed this discussion on three levels: The global and transnational level, the regional level, and the national level. The global level is concerned with international and transnational policies and institutions. The OECD, the European Commission, the IEA and the Bologna Process are taken as examples of general and European overarching policy interests, initiatives, and pivotal relations to national agencies and agents (Ydesen et al., 2022). Our field of interest is European nations, and these transnational institutions or agencies are seen as the most important for those nations (Krejsler, 2018, 2019). Other institutions like the World Bank, UNICEF and the WTO (the World Trade Organization) are important, but they operate on another, more general level. One key issue of the analyses in this edited volume is the emphasis on context when carrying out comparative studies, something which is often neglected in analyses of education governance. Our discussion shows clearly that such neglect results in severe analytical limitations. The regional level is our analytical construction in this project. We consider three regions: Northwestern Europe, Southern Europe, and Central & Eastern Europe + Western Balkans, including a total of 11 national cases (10 EU member countries and England). In several of these national cases, neighboring nations are analyzed as well, with a view to comparing national reform policies on an intermediate level whenever neighboring countries have an important influence (and have had this influence in the past). We are thus interested in investigating relations between national policies and practices to find signs of similarities and differences: are nations more similar within specific regions than across regions? We have constructed this new level between global and national agency and institution by constructing ‘policy scapes’, as Stephen Carney names them (2008): mental landscapes for thinking about society and state, which are influenced by global forces and imaginaries. The third level consists of nations. These cases are based on a shared format used by the authors as national experts. We agree with Bartlett and Vavrus (2019) that a pivotal element in any critical comparison of education and education research is the description and analyses of context, because context can give meaning to the outcomes of comparison. For instance, we remind ourselves that comparing national PISA results – or anything else for that matter – without considering context is seldom meaningful. In order to ensure that our case descriptions are productive, we produced a framework for all authors of national cases that include analyses of

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development of national social structures, cultures and governance as well as educational structures, cultures and governance. We also asked for analyses of main policy reforms and key transnational agendas, where key contestation and re-­ contextualization was enacted in relations to local regions. Referring to these analyses in the case stories gave us a deeper understanding of the contexts of education in all countries which has guided our discussion of differences and similarities in reform policies and therefore generated greater understanding of the comparisons. Bob Lingard (this volume) discusses in some detail the need for descriptions of the interconnectedness of culture, policy, governance, and education. We discuss individual national cases within each region in order to investigate similarities and differences. Two relations are important here: (A) the power between transnational and national authorities and agencies, and (B) the relations between governments and institutions/professionals. Relations are carried out and developed in discourses and social technologies. The discussion focuses on these two sets of relations and the interconnections between them. First summary of interpretations of transformations in the three regions. Positioning ourselves at a distance to the cases in this volume, we see a two-sided sliding of agency in Europe: one is the transformation of decisions from state-level towards regional, municipal, and institutional levels – in the contemporary transnational discourse named ‘the move to autonomy’. The other involves a transformation of influence from classroom and school levels towards meta-state level, transnational level – named competence and performance and outcomes technologies. In short, we have also registered similarities within regions, most clearly in Central & Eastern Europe and + Western Balkans, where economy is in the forefront in all nation case-analyses. To some degree there are similarities in centralist state-construction in Central & Eastern Europe and + Western Balkans, founded in the communist eras, and in the relatively – and different - close relation to transnational, government-relations, new public management (NPM), in the Northwestern Europe, founded in the very close relations between the nations here. These analyses will be continued in sections “Interpretations of power relations between transnational agencies and national authorities” and “Interpretations of national school reforms and institutional reactions”.

Transnational Agencies and National Governance Reading the 10 country cases – two of which include neighboring nations – gives the overall impression that European education systems function on the basis of a set of relatively homogenous values and logics at the more general level of commonalities, whereas they operate according to diverse traditions and histories when you get closer to specific educational contexts. Following World War II, European nations collaborated on economic development with inspiration and assistance from the same transnational agencies – most importantly Marshall Aid and the OEEC, which eventually developed into the OECD (Organisation for Economic

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Co-operation and Development), and the European Coal and Steel Community, which eventually developed into the EU and the Single Market. Around the 1980s this would have developed into a neo-liberally marketplace-oriented western economic model that would increasingly include education in the forms of human capital, knowledge economy and lifelong learning (see Introductory chapter as well for elaboration). In 2001 the OECD finally established its general directorate for education, and the European Commission (EC) became increasingly involved in education after the Maastricht Treaty (1993) and the Lisbon Declaration (2000). But both organizations were still governed primarily by economic rationalities (Krejsler, 2018). As neither had supranational powers in education, both developed diverse forms of influence ranging from hard to soft governance technologies (Moos, 2009). The homogenization of governance and institutions in terms of producing common discourse, and technologies is one of the effects of their work (Ball, 2012; Beck, 1998; Communities, 2001, July 25; Czarniawska-Joerges & Sevón, 2005; Krejsler, 2021; Krejsler & Moos, 2021b). Transnational ideas from the OECD and the EC are supported and transformed in national contexts by national agencies and agents such as researchers and policy makers (Ydesen et al., 2022). Obviously, many changes of national reform policy over time and sectors are caused by globalization trends like marketplace policies and logics. Simultaneously transnational agencies issue many discourses and social technologies for their institutions and professionals. All nations are different in terms of how policy is contextualized at the national level, but the transnational language and technologies employed in governance have become increasingly identical (Lawn, 2011; Lingard, 2000; Moos & Krejsler, 2021b).

I nterpretations of Power Relations Between Transnational Agencies and National Authorities Central & Eastern Europe + Western Balkans, Southern Europe, and Northwestern Europe To manage, transform, or circumvent national demands for autonomy and self-­ government over education, transnational agencies have developed diverse forms of soft governance such as the peer pressure of the OECD’s multilateral surveillance or the open method of coordination of the EC and the Bologna Process (Brøgger, 2018; Krejsler, 2018). Together with the tools or social technologies of other agencies, the agencies have formed very intricate patterns of governance and collaboration, involving many political and private layers and agents within countries and across systems. The concept of policy reform has often been used to describe relations between national government and regional, local, and institutional agents. As our national cases clearly illustrate, this is not the appropriate model in contemporary European

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education systems. Transnational agencies have established themselves firmly in the guidance and governance of education through financial support, soft governance, peer pressure, and the use of social technologies like international standards, tests, and comparisons. Transnational co-operations across borders between a few agencies are also spreading consistently. Nations have opened governance up to private enterprises, for profit or philanthropic foundations, professional and popular associations, and trade unions. Several cases describe such mixture, networks, assemblage, or bricolage of collaboration between various agents or agencies and through diverse tools of power or digital influence (Ball, 2012; Cone & Moos, 2022). In general, the OECD has proposed that policy reforms and practice should be based on a strict, technocratic interpretation of evidence. This has attracted many proponents amongst policy makers and researchers, but is often contested in education discourses because of methodological uncertainty and a lack of focus on specificity of purposes of education (Eryaman & Schneider, 2017; Krejsler, 2017; Verger, 2022). Consequently, we are currently experiencing the formation of diverse societal structures and procedures in education, some of which are accepted on an open and democratic basis, whereas others are working in opaque guises. In this chapter we discuss and compare a number of forms of governance that appear in this complex field of agents. The ‘Education governance reform’ section will focus on the influence of transnational agencies on national governments, whereas the ‘National school reforms’ section will focus on perspectives from transnational and national agencies to local authorities and organizations.

 ducation Governance Reform: Central & Eastern Europe + E Western Balkans (CEE + WB) Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovenia and Croatia The history of the post-socialist countries of Eastern Europe and the Western Balkans (CEE + WB) illustrates the importance of the economic perspective on the transformation from post-socialist states towards what initially appeared to be western, liberal states, as all three cases point to the external support for reforms provided by transnational agencies like the World Bank, the OECD, and the EC. The transformation of communist, centralist forms of state governance into more decentralized forms of governance was one of the main goals of the support. It was also a main demand for accession to the European Union: “Phare assistance is granted conditional upon stability in the country concerned, and a continuing commitment to democratic ideals and free market principles” (Parliament, 1998). They also explain how all education systems very soon joined the programs of social technologies like the TIMSS surveys and PISA comparisons, which were and are managed by transnational agencies.

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Soviet influence up until the 1990s is clearly described in the cases. The communist ideology, policy and practice were spread to all nations. It was the foundation for influence and power. As it is mentioned in the cases that the Soviet development of education was not only an inspiration to the region, but rather the model on which they had to build. It is seen as a specific internationalization or harmonization of educational policy (Czech case). That can be seen as a parallel to the Western, marketplace development, that has the potential to monopolize Western policy development through developing global standards and what works, for education and learning as discussed in the national case stories. The history and context are analyzed in the case stories and summarized in the abstracts in the introduction. In this section we focus on the economic context: the economic support given to the post-communist nations by the World Bank, the OECD, and the European Commission are written in italic. The Polish transition following the fall of the communist regime focused on the introduction of a market economy, and thus on the decentralization and democratization of governance. This development was assisted by joining the Council of Europe, the OECD, NATO, and the European Union. The pivotal value of these actions is described as follows in the Polish case: ‘The Polish affiliation to the group of developed countries in the OECD had a special significance for the transforming economy and the emerging democratic structures.’ And it was of great significance for the development of education. Polish students perform at the top level in PISA comparisons. The decentralization of the education system by giving influence to local agents and financing them appropriately has been a core effort of the government, but the government has also had to struggle with the legacy of the past, when local agencies and school supervision were closely controlled by the government with regard to finances, curriculum, and staffing. Transforming the offices into self-­ managing units has been difficult. Finances are generally distributed based on performance- and quality standards, which are in line with OECD and EC market values. The Czech Republic was part of Czechoslovakia from 1918 to 1993, and was ruled by the communist party during the Soviet occupation. Centralized and directive-­given governance were a good background for education reforms and later for student performance in the TIMSS survey. The post-socialist state- and network-­ driven transformation brought radical de-centralizations, curriculum reform and inclusive education. The World Bank and the European Union financed some of the reforms with the demand for certain governance initiative towards marketplace governance. International institutions were established to guide and assist countries wishing to join the EU  – see introduction to the PHARE program and the PUMA institution in the next paragraph. The Czech case states that this can be seen as an example of ‘traveling policies’ (Steiner-Khamsi, 2016) where international policies interact with local traditions and ideologies. In this case a meeting of transnational marketplace thinking with CEE tradition of a mix of communist management with older liberal education. Slovenia and Croatia were members of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia until the fall of the Soviet Union in 1989 and the break-up of Yugoslavia and the transition of their socialist, traditional societies into what initially appeared

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to be Western modernity market economies and parliamentary democracies with a rise in living conditions. This development was prepared thanks to considerable assistance from the World Bank, which provided the normative affirmation of the Western modernity project and education reforms. Both countries have joined (or are working on joining) the EU and the OECD (Slovenia joined the EU in 2003 and Croatia in 2013. Slovenia fully accessed the OECD in 2007, and the roadmap for the accession of Croatia was agreed in 2022). This means that some of the national education standards developed in traditional Slovenia are no different from the European standards, but, as both are designed to work centrally and thus were seen to form good foundation for being transformed into European models if the transition were to be step by step. Croatia was initially more focused on developing the national dimensions of their education, but within a European perspective and with funds and technical assistance from the World Bank and EU. Both countries are deeply involved in so-called evidence-based policy making (based on Western and transnational surveys and comparisons), because they want to depoliticize socialist education policymaking. Economic influences The economy has influenced these nations in several ways. One way is a hard governance instrument that can regulate policies through structural and economic programs. This instrument is obviously the PHARE program, which is sponsored by transnational agencies, as mentioned above. The other set of influences, soft governance, consists of the discursive guidelines and influences provided by the introduction of evidence-based and best-practice activities: the contract in public management and the international comparisons (like TIMSS, PISA and the Bologna Process) or transnational what works social technologies. Some of those sponsorships may be seen as ‘sliding technologies’: receiving governments, policy makers and practitioners may see only the explicit function, to provide economic support, while the conditions under which the sponsorships are given are taking receivers into transnationally described directions. Examples could be that taking funds to transform public management to decentralization and contracts carries the core logics of neoliberal governance: self-management but in accordance with transnational perspectives on top down driven autonomy (Normand et al., 2021). In the mid-1990s, the EC established three programs in connection with the enlargement of the EU by 14 countries, including the Central and Eastern European countries (CEE). The first of these three programs is the PHARE program.1 The activities described in this program are detailed and in accordance with EC and OECD public management guidelines (Parliament, 1998). Consequently, the program became the driving force of internalization – partly because the agencies were generous in providing consultants to help governments understand and translate the guidelines. The two other programs are closely connected to the PHARE program:

 PHARE program: Poland and Hungary: Assistance for Restructuring CEE Economies.

1

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PUMA2 and SIGMA3 . The SIGMA papers consist of a series of specialized reports focusing on issues of public governance and management, such as expenditure control and administration. All these activities are based on the analysis known as ‘Governance in Transition’, which was carried out in 1995 (OECD, 1995). One of the core messages in this publication is that countries need to devolve authority in public management, while also strengthening steering functions at the center. One of the SIGMA publications is on contract management (OECD, 2016a), which is believed to strike a balance between those two conflicting demands (Moos & Krejsler, 2021a). In all the EE + WB case countries we have seen, however, within the last decade or so increasing questioning of transnational solutions: In Poland carried by the Kaczynski brothers and the Law-and-Order Party, who together with Hungary has been on collision course with the European Union for years, Andrej Babis in the Czech Republic, Janez Jansa in Slovenia and so forth. This can be seen – it could be argued  – as a reaction to initial post-1989 euphoria and subsequent resistance to what is often perceived as Western European domination and overreach in interventions that clash with national values and traditions.

Education Governance Reform: Southern Europe France, Italy, Spain (Catalonia) The French state has always had a view on democracy and governance that differed from mainstream European views. The French heritage is a highly centralized and bureaucratic form of governance, founded more than 200  years ago during the Napoleonic period. The school system was formed as a republican nationalistic system because the parliament did not trust other agencies to work wholeheartedly for the main aims of education: emancipation and egality. Thus, any form of regional or local management was delegated from the state to its local representatives through bureaucratic legislation. The general conception of transnational discourses and influences is described as follows in the French case analysis: “Indeed the market, privatization, and managerialism are hardly accepted by French policy makers, educators, and researchers alike.” Only recently have some aspects of education governance been decentralized through intermediary networks and policy assemblages. Some of the transnational social technologies, like comparison and accountability, are being implemented into the national curriculum. Like France, Italy is considered to be a centralist, Napoleonic state that is reluctant to align with new public management and building on state legacy and bureaucratic centralism; the Italian state, however, is altogether more fractured and less  PUMA: the OECD’s Public Management Service.  SIGMA: Support for Improvement in Governance and Management, a joint initiative of the OECD and the EU, principally financed by the EU. 2 3

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governable than France, not least owing to the considerable friction between richer and modern northern Italy and traditionalist and less developed Mezzogiorno, i.e., Italy below Rome. The legacy of fascism has been difficult to dismantle, and the Catholic church and private schooling are still very influential. Education is often seen as weak system, which is characterized by low performance, a high level of early school leaving, a good deal of school elitism with regard to performance, and low participation in adult education. The general principles of centralist government were challenged by a law on school autonomy some 20 years ago. With the introduction of new public management, new forms of bureaucracy were introduced based on self-regulation and site-based management was inspired by the transnational reform-ideas, but still building on the centralist, transnational centralist, principle with assessment, standardization, and accountability. Recent reform has given rise to a nuanced NPM assemblage including centralism and bureaucracy and including school effectiveness and improvement instruments like large-scale assessment surveys. Since the 1990s, however, Italian loyalty as a core member of the European project has been challenged by economic challenges. For many years, Spain has struggled to reform the highly centralized education system that was established under the Franco dictatorship and create a democratic system with a more federal framework and more autonomy for the regions. The main ideas of the reforms involved decentralizing governance and finding new balances between the private and public provision of education, diminishing somewhat the influence of the Catholic church. The reform processes were conducted differently in different regions, some of them taking the lead from the 1970 – still under the dictatorship until 1975 – and some following around 2000. Often regions used transnational education policy as a lever for general policy and often for regional autonomy like Catalonia while advice and technologies from transnational agencies were very often welcomed, but also translated into local culture and policy. Transnational influences: The Southern European countries in our case have struggled for autonomy from centralist states and even dictatorship in big part of the Post World War II epoch. The church has had (and to some extent still has) a considerable influence on education. They have all made use of the discourses and technologies, the soft governance and assistance and inspiration from transnational agencies, like the OECD and EC, albeit with very different national variations.

Education Governance Reform: Northwestern Europe Denmark, England, Germany, (Austria, Switzerland), the Netherlands Before the 1990s, the Danish education system was relatively decentralized: Parliament issued legislation on the purposes and aims of schooling, municipal authorities interpreted and translated this legislation into practical principles, and schools and professionals then interpreted the guides into to culture and classroom context, as had been the case since WW II. In this period education governance was

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described as a combination of an elected branch and an administrative agency at three levels: national, municipal, and institutional. This model was transformed from the 1990s onwards, deriving inspiration from transnational neo-liberal principles of new public management and outcomes and contracts management at several levels of governance with partnerships of external agents: public and private, national and local. The outcomes management was given priority in the sweeping school act reform of 2013: national standards and testing were preferred, alongside a strong focus on accountability and employability. But educational reforms were made extremely difficult as the school reform was accompanied by legislation that increased the power of school principals to control the working lives of their teachers, something which teachers regarded as a punitive step to take. This reform was accompanied by an act on inclusion which stated that all students with learning, behavioral and other disabilities should be included in regular classes. This made huge demands on differentiation, as well as making classroom management and teaching more difficult. From around 2016, however, previous transnational borrowings like standardized curricula and testing is increasingly being questioned. Following World War II, England had a relatively liberal governance system in education, with the municipal level of governance being a major player in the state-­ driven system. Teachers were given some degree of autonomy within the frameworks of the National Curriculum and national and international standards and tests. From the late 1970s onwards, England became a transnational and global role model in reframing education as part of emerging neo-liberal and neo-conservative public reforms of governance. From then on Thatcherite Tory and New Labour governments have established increasingly thorough national standards-based curricula and high-stakes testing regimes with the purpose of incentivizing school and education practice and administration. This has been done by NPM-mixtures of centralized controlling systems carried out as quasi-market decentralization. The developments in England – and in parallel in the USA - have been immensely influential in inspiring and driving policy developments in transnational agencies like the OECD and the EU, and thus in influencing national school policy in other European countries. These moves effectively helped to remove the municipal aspects and insert private interests and market-place procedures and principles in school and education policy. In recent years, privately owned and governed Academies have been established and are now proliferating. Up until the beginning of the year 2000, Germany was governed in an input- and Bildung-oriented governance system. Like Austria and Switzerland, Germany is a federal state in which education is largely devolved as a regional responsibility (Länder and Kantons), although this is more evident in Germany and Switzerland than it is in Austria. However, all Austrian states are marked by traditions of centralized and bureaucratic governance traditions, although this is less evident in Switzerland, that had (and have) their own education system with hard tracking and with their own governance system. Although Austrian states are different, there are similarities, like: self-managing schools, evidence-based standards, performance control, guiding school authorities and competing schools. Reforms in the last 10 to

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20 years have been inspired by transnational principles and social technologies, but the traditional education/Bildung discourse is still alive and influential when transnational norms, standards and social technologies have to be recontextualized in national and regional contexts. The freedom of schools and education has been guaranteed in the Dutch constitution since 1920, but it was based on and guaranteed by a tight system of national control of school output through national tests and examinations. From the 1970s onwards, the Dutch government became part of transnational (and largely OECDand EU-mediated) NPM trends to make governments legislation smaller and, thereby making schools more autonomous by removing many regulations. Transnational influence: The forming and proliferation of new public management is often ascribed to the OECD, but the most important members of that organization (the US and the UK) have had a particular influence. These two nations above all have been the key players in setting the standards and dominating discourses like effective teaching, evidence-based education, comparisons, and tests (Krejsler, 2020; Krejsler & Moos, 2021a). This also includes setting the direction for the transformation of decision-making from state-level towards quasi-market models for decentralized regional, municipal, and institutional autonomy. The freedom, however, is a particular conception of freedom according to NPM- developments of global standards and accountability.

Hierarchy of Regions There seems to be a relative alignment and hierarchy of regions when it comes to the acceptance and implementation of transnational influence on educational governance. However, this alignment is precarious, as it is built on crude and overlapping categories: decentralization or autonomy, outcomes, or results, 1. The Northwestern region can be placed at the top of the hierarchy. England has often been a forerunner in neoliberal governance because it often inspires and tests NPM as well as the instruments, discourses and social technologies of the OECD and EC, and because it has been a role model for developing neo-liberal policies for more than 40 years. Denmark, the other Nordic countries, and the Netherlands follow suit as efficient implementers of these trends, although they each pursue their own particular trajectories. Germany is eager to make use of the OECD’s social outcomes technologies but is persistently hampered by the friction arising with its traditions of hierarchy and bureaucracy in education. 2. Southern Europe, mostly struggling to get rid of the centralist and Church heritage, can be placed second in the hierarchy. Italy struggles to transform parts of its original bureaucracy into new public management, but still has to contend with a good deal of influence from the Church and the fragmenting effects of an unstable political system and uneven development in the country. Spain lives

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with a history of transformation from dictatorship, hierarchy and bureaucracy towards more regional autonomy within a looser federal framework. Here Catalonia is probably the most conspicuous example of a region working for more regional autonomy and using education as a lever for that policy. France is the third nation at this level of the hierarchy, holding on to a Napoleonic tradition of centralism and bureaucracy, but accepting some aspects of NPM and transnational technologies. 3. The third region is Central & Eastern Europe + Western Balkans. Here, all the case nations described in the book are struggling to get rid of communist traditions, centralism and bureaucracy while facing economic challenges as they seek to transform their education systems. The Czech Republic seems to have largely accepted the requirements attached to European funding in developing education. Slovenia and Croatia borrow policy from Western European nations to varying degrees, but many issues are still national. Poland is eager to acquire transnational funds for general purposes and in joining some transnational agencies. At the same time, Poland is eager to challenge the so-called European values and bureaucracy. All the case countries joined the post-1989 euphoria in leaving Soviet and communist traditions by aligning with western norms and standards, typically set by the OECD and the EU. In all the countries considered here, however, there has been a certain amount of backlash against and resistance toward what is increasingly perceived as Western European overreach in terms of intervention in economic affairs as well as national values.

I nterpretations of National School Reforms and Institutional Reactions It may not come as a surprise that all the cases discussed here describe similar governance policies at a general level, albeit according to their relative positions within the power relations of dominant discourses and policy practices in Europe: governments are striving to survive and prosper in the global competition for market-place shares through education  – in schools and universities and lifelong learning  – as shown in transnational comparisons, global learning standards, and the ensuing testing practices. We see the integration of national school policy towards network governance, involving multiple agencies and groups, or contract governance, that manages relations to a great level of details, albeit according to different national trajectories (Ball, 2012, 2017). Most NPM-inspired and transnationally inspired governance tools aim to produce self-management within more fixed national frameworks and goals for schools, i.e. autonomy in the Foucauldian governmentality sense, where governing by freedom essentially means striving to make people do what they have to do as if they had chosen to do it themselves (Foucault, 1991).

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 ational School Reforms: Central & Eastern Europe + Western N Balkans (CEE + WB) Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovenia and Croatia For many years, the Polish government has struggled to decentralize decisions to local levels. This has been difficult because the traditions of communist governance have been difficult to change. The most recent reforms in 2017 met with considerable resistance. This may have been because the intention was to change the very basis of schooling, the tracking system. But the government also wanted to continue the reform of curriculum, control, standards etc. to promote student employability – again in line with OECD policy advice (OECD, 2016b). The reform borrowed policy ideas from other nations, but was perceived as too radical in relation to past practices (Steiner-Khamsi, 2014). The Czech Republic has been traveling routes similar to those of Poland in an attempt to escape the highly centralized governance system of the communist era. During the last years of the communist regime’s legislation from the 1970s to 1990, Czech students were among the best performers in the TIMSS survey. Reforming the education system, post-socialist, however, meant de-centralizing governance into quasi-market mechanisms and network-driven initiatives by including non-­ profit organizations. The decentralization of the education system took place parallel to broader political initiatives such as the ‘Velvet revolution’ from 1989, which may have facilitated the reform greatly as the process was more transparent and consensus-building than was the tradition. The case story indicates ways in which the curricular reform in the Czech Republic and other nations can be understood: “Theories of policy borrowing point to global culture of education that dominates the reform processes. Some countries, however, imitate the global models quite superficially. The concept of ‘loose coupling’ explains why this could happen in pointing to the ‘loose couplings’ and isomorphy of organizations” (Meyer & Rowan, 1977; Powell & DiMaggio, 1992). Slovenia and Croatia initiated education reforms in slightly different ways in the Europeanization period. This period meant departing from the communist governance of the Yugoslav period in such a radical manner that the changes were regarded as too drastic and the concept of ‘reform’ was avoided because of widespread fear of yet another experiment in education. Both governments were interested in aligning national values to European values, for instance in terms of student performance, as measured by PISA and other programs. For this purpose, many policy makers and education experts openly borrowed ideas and social technologies from other European countries and from regional cooperation. The plan was to make the reform processes incremental in order to honor the effects of past dependency. The reform of institutions was thus seen as a gradual, incremental, and renegotiated process of change (Mahoney & Thelen, 2010). Again, it must be mentioned that this process of reform has been bumpy from initial euphoria towards more

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recent contestation of what is increasingly also perceived as Western European intervention and imposition of values that do not always align well with national and local models and traditions.

National School Reforms: Southern Europe France, Italy, Spain (Catalonia) Education reforms were traditionally a very centralistic, government-managed issue in France, and only recently have alternative networks of experts, practitioners, and policy makers begun to gain influence. The traditional evaluation system, managed by the French Ministry of Education, was easily translated to match the transnational, European trends in education, outcomes- and test-based evaluation. Value-­ added indicators were borrowed from the School Effectiveness Unit in England. However, adopting a basic skills and competence framework on the background of a tradition of discipline-based school subjects and transmission of knowledge was a major reform which was contested. So combining the national visions with a European transnational influence demanded involvement and discussions with many interest groups of practitioners, inspectorates, and curriculum experts. The ministry did not intend to lose control of this wide-ranging process, and therefore appointed the heads of all working groups. The reform of education is basically still a centralistic managed process of negotiations with input from borrowings. Italy has been engaged for decades in two general reforms: the decentralization of governance, and the standardization of education. The European move towards decentralized governance is made on the background of Napoleonic-inspired state ideals. Therefore, there is a need to re-culture governance in line with new public management visions. At the end of the 1990s, a law on school autonomy changed governance from being bureaucratic and centralistic to being decentralized with a focus on outcomes and performance. The reform on standardization was a national issue that developed into a transnational issue: accountability, educational standards, datafication is being discussed not only as a matter of idea, but also an issue of policy instrumentations. The case description makes use of theory about networks of discourses and technologies as a process of reassemblage in order to detect processes of sensemaking, processes of concern. Within the Spanish federal framework, Catalonia has been struggling with the transnational agenda on public-private partnership, professionalization, and the decentralization of governance. Catalonia has combined education reforms with general public reforms in ways that support the wish for more regional self-­ management, or even independence. This, in some ways, makes Catalonia a radical case in the sense that transnational networks also become an opportunity to balance Catalonia’s position within the Spanish federal framework in new ways. Catalonia combines recommendations from international organizations and international networks with bottom-up initiatives, which seems to have been a rather successful strategy. This strategy can be described as a vernacular globalization in a

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combination of path dependence: It is dependent on complex combinations of past decisions, current institutions, and legislation, on bricolage, incremental change and renegotiations, coexistence, and combinations of old and new, and bricolage of assembly of heterogenous elements, and translation of ideas and instruments. Spain is a federal state which must take both the federal and the regional levels into account. Regional education policy can be, but need not be, a transmitter of policy. At present, the Catalonian policy on language differs from the Spanish policy, and is seen as both a territorial and an identity conflict which gives an extra layer to the conflicts between national and transnational policies. Catalonia has plans to follow up on this situation by developing digital educational delivery with funding from European funds.

National School Reforms: Northwestern Europe Denmark, England, Germany, (Austria, Switzerland), the Netherlands The Danish education system used to align with ideas of a school based on democracy and broad ideas of general education, often inspired by recontextualized German ideas of pedagogik, Bildung and didactics. The building of a different school began some 20–30  years ago, when more Anglo-American-inspired ideas were introduced and strengthened over time, such as standards-based education, learning standards and testing, most often mediated via transnational agencies like the OECD and the IEA. A country report about the lack of systematic evaluation culture in Danish schools commissioned by the OECD in 2004 started a long political discussion that served as leverage for introducing national testing and municipal quality reports, among other measures. In 2013 the government launched a comprehensive school reform, nominally inspired by Ontario. Here a focus on performance and accountability was linked closely to participation in all the OECD and IEA transnational comparisons that existed. The main School Act was not changed, but comprehensive learning goals and ambitions were detailed in circulars issued by the ministry, with more than 3000 aims and sub-aims that complied strongly with transnational standards-based knowledge, skills and competence discourse and technologies. At the same time, the traditional agreement on teacher’s wages and working conditions was changed into an act that made teachers teach many more lessons per week. More than anything else, the number of learning aims in this national standards-­based education framework constituted the final transformation from the previous general education ideal into a standard- and performance-based school. That was not really an issue in the public discussion before. Since 2016, however, standards-based education, testing and other transnationally inspired reforms were subject to increasing opposition in Denmark. As a champion of NPM and source of inspiration for standards-based education, testing and accountability for transnational agencies, England has followed the road from public education to private delivery for many years. First and foremost, in taking out the municipal authority in governance, replacing it with national or private

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authority in the Academies. However, this has not meant decentralization in real life, because hierarchical national control persists despite the prevalence of performance data, direct ministerial intervention, and the increasing presence of regional commissioners. This hierarchical control has also been intensified by the datafication of performance management and social technologies involving the prescription, codification, economization and instrumentalization of controllable educational processes and outcomes. Germany, Austria, and Switzerland are federal nation-states in which a good deal of autonomy resides with the Länder and Kantons, leading to considerable differences within these countries in terms of the ways in which education and other policy areas are dealt with. Nonetheless, authorities at all levels in all three countries have considered reforming relations between the federal and the country governance following PISA Shocks after 2000, most conspicuously in Germany and less so in Switzerland, whereas school policy in Austria has adhered to national standards to a larger degree since 2000. In addition, the impetus from and effects of increasingly participating in transnational collaborations have led to more collaboration between Länder/Kantons and the national level when it comes to teaching, learning and leadership in schools. UNESCO, the IEA and the OECD play a role through the Länder ministries and the Standing Conference of Ministers of Education and Cultural Affairs of the Federal Republic of Germany. The Federal Republic cannot legislate on educational issues, but the conference can make sure that ministers of Länder can derive inspiration from each other. The case chapter in this book points to outcomes and evidence-based initiatives as well as the development of organizational quality systems as examples of alignment with transnational policy advice. Educational researchers, policy makers and practitioners in the Netherlands have been discussing the question of teacher and school effectiveness in terms of student performance for many years. The discipline of organizing curriculum has been rather stable for years, but when the transnational agencies argued that knowledge societies needed to teach new cross-curricular skills and competences, the ministry started a program of dialogues with the public and professionals with a view to reforming the curriculum. A proposal was written but was not supported by teachers nor researchers; but even so the ministry decided to continue and further elaborate the plans for a transnationally relevant curriculum. In that sense, Dutch school policy has derived considerable inspiration from its participation in transnational collaborations.

General Findings Local Interpretation and Implementation The interpretations of country cases relating to education governance and reforms in the rough outlines presented above are of course in no way complete or representative: a few examples were chosen because they seemed relevant in order to discuss

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the transformation, the borrowings, the ‘slidings’ from one discourse to other. But it is remarkable that governments have chosen similar social technologies – like the standards and tests of outcomes from the PISA program – as well as similar discourses like the NPM-driven understandings of autonomy, accountability, and school leadership. The technologies are adapted to local interests and contexts, but their general logics are preserved. Three explanations seem feasible to us. The transnational influence, inspiration, or use of power originate from the same sources (big agencies like the OECD and the European Commission, and private agencies like Pearson) (Hogan et al., 2015). The second explanation is that Anglo-American norms now permeate educational discourse and practice mediated by the OECD and the EU in terms of human capital, evidence, and school effectiveness and improvement discourse (Krejsler, 2020; Krejsler & Moos, 2021a). The third explanation is that a great number of research institutions and professional associations are adapting normative isomorphism (DiMaggio & Powell, 1991), so the spectacles through which we are affiliated to the institutions, and observe and analyze governance cases, are homogenizing the movements. With considerable inspiration from transnational initiatives, policies and governance methods at national levels have developed from hard towards soft governance strategies (Moos, 2009, 2020), or combinations of hard and soft governance. One reason for the widespread use of soft governance seems to be that schools and education constitute a very sensitive area at national, cultural level, being seen as one of the most important sources of national and cultural identity. So, at this stage of development of transnational agencies and authorities, local institutions are not allowed to override national education governance. This can be illustrated by examples from Poland and Slovenia: Slovenia cannot use the word ‘reform’, because it reminds them too much of the former regime. Poland wanted to follow European Commission (EC) advice and abolish tracking, but met a great deal of popular and professional resistance to the idea of getting rid of what was regarded as a very sound system. In the cases from Central & Eastern Europe + Western Balkans, it is obvious that the EC makes use of combinations of hard and soft governance using economic incentives: in many cases, it is more or less impossible to get full funding from the European Commission unless certain criteria are met that mean abiding to European ways of governing. Again, one of the groundbreaking transformations of integration into transnational collaboration is the change of a bureaucratic, centralistic, top-down mode of governance into a largely NPM-inspired, decentralized form of governance, giving the power to make decisions to municipalities and institutions. This was welcomed in Central and Eastern Europe as well as in the Western Balkans because it meant a fundamental change from the communist legacy. Recently, however, there has been increasing resistance across the region to what is often perceived as Western European overreach in interventions in relation to economic models as well as national values. In the Southern European region transnationally, induced transformations have also met resistance: Italy only went halfway in not implementing a full NPM-inspired decentralization but rather forming a de-concentration of governance, treating local agents as representatives of central government. In France

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networking was initiated to find French ways of doing things, but centralized government stayed in command of the work, for instance by appointing leaders of the key working groups involved in reform issues. Catalonia used the decentralization of education governance as a pathway to furthering regional freedom and improving the development of a Catalonian identity by effectively using transnational policy collaborations as leverage to act more independently within the federal Spanish framework. All the cases presented here describe a widespread use of transnationally inspired social technologies in school policy reform that draw on Anglo-American norms in particular (Foucault, 2001; Krejsler, 2020; Krejsler & Moos, 2021b; Moos, 2009). Many of these social technologies have spread to other policy fields and throughout everyday life, so many people have grown used to them. They are therefore easily accepted in education – indeed, they are scarcely noticed. One example of this tendency is the Danish and English focus on individuals and self-steering, contracting, commercialization, and privatization (Andersen, 2003; Ball & Junemann, 2012; Cone & Brøgger, 2020; Cone & Moos, 2022; Moos, 2021a). Some of the cases (Spain and Denmark) illustrate the need to be aware of the digital tools and platforms that are used (Williamson, 2017). Transnational comparisons of learning-centered standards and tests are social technologies that are used in education all over Europe. They are often called ‘what works’ technologies (Eryaman & Schneider, 2017; Krejsler, 2017; Krejsler & Moos, 2021b). They were all invented and are implemented to make schools and education accountable and manageable in the competitive global, transnational, or European marketplace. They were originally forms of soft governance but are often transformed into forms of hard governance when they are implemented by national governments because individual organizations cannot refuse to use them. In order to persuade people to accept them as democratic technologies, they are often sold as the need to do like the neighbor and borrow their good ideas. In some cases nobody cared if the foundation of the technology is comparable to the user’s situation, but used them anyhow (Steiner-Khamsi, 2006, 2014).

Sliding Through History In the literature there are two general trends in analyses of school reforms. One focuses on political decisions and regulations performed by national parliaments/ governments. The other has its gaze focused more on the changes and developments that occur over time and are initiated at institutional, practical, or governmental levels or networks of practitioners, consultants, union representatives, universities etc. The latter may involve incremental, continuous negotiations and ‘sliding’ in the form of gradual institutional change (Mahoney & Thelen, 2010). Powell and DiMaggio discuss similar movements as ‘isomorphism’ (1992). The political regulation is most often not visible or discussed by policy makers or practitioners, and furthermore they often build on long term developments that are continuously

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growing in education and culture. There is also a third form: Over time legislation point at small changes that are hardly noticed by anyone, it is ‘a matter of shifting commas’ and thus often they stay unnoticed and undiscussed, and thus contributes to the drifting movements of school administration and practice. One important aspect of this discussion is whether there are opportunities for agency, for democratic participation in policy development (Moos, 2017). The situation in post-socialist states underscores this point of view. The communist regime left very deep impressions on institutions and on the people; and in many instances these institutions are very difficult to transform because change could be as challenging as the communist changes. One example of the drifting kind of development is the gradual and sliding development of standards and accountability in Danish education policies over a 50-year period is that the description of school subject aims was changed five times going from guidelines towards 3000 prescribing competency-goals. At the beginning of this period many decisions regarding teaching aims were left to local, municipal, institutional, and professional discretion  – diverse degrees of soft governance. However, when the Danish state school [Folkeskole] was reformed in 2013, the gradual development towards standards-based national curriculum of more than 3000 goals and subgoals were prescribed – as hard governance – by government (Moos, 2019).

Comparisons and Homogenization One major trend in European transnational and national reforms is that they are very often based on comparisons of performances. International surveys and league tables of tests are a very obvious example of this (Steiner-Khamsi, 2010, 2016). Comparisons are often based on theories of borrowing and lending. Agencies and authorities tend to make use of comparisons because good results of comparisons produce international standards and examples of best practice (Krejsler & Moos, 2021b), serving as a form of certification in  local policies which practitioners can follow. The theory of policy borrowing (Steiner-Khamsi, 2006) argues that ideas need to be translated from the policy, culture, and context of the sender to the policy, culture, and context of the receiver because the field of those comparisons is the field of education and thus a very cultural and political sensitive field. But, as the Czech case shows, the theories of comparison posit that in some cases educational reforms are borrowed on the principle of ‘solutions first’. They are adopted without a local problem to solve or without actually solving a problem that really exists in the school system that adopts them. One goal for performance-based theories  – also named scientific education – and practices is to identify and implement best practice and the most effective way to act (Eryaman & Schneider, 2017; Krejsler & Moos, 2021b). This way can be found, the proponents claim across borders, worldwide, and it would then override any local, national models or theories.

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Our cases in this book demonstrate that such transnational alignments are pervasive aspects of contemporary education policy reforms across national school policies in Europe. European agencies are working hard to achieve the general, global homogenization of education, and at the national level recontextualization takes place along many different trajectories that comply with what is politically and educationally possible in the different national and regional contexts. A few similarities between cases should be noted. All the national governments are embarking on the NPM quasimarket-place logics in their ways of reforming school and education. The norms and standards applying in this connection are largely Anglo-American, and they are mediated via transnational agencies like the OECD, the EU, the IEA, and the Bologna Process (Krejsler, 2020). In that way national school systems become comparable with other systems and subsequently work hard to succeed in the global competition. They follow the basics of education as conceived of as a driver for economic growth in global knowledge economies (OECD, 1996; Ydesen, 2019). The post-socialist countries have been incentivized in particular by the lure of the community funding them, and because of the inertia of an increasingly compelling transnational tradition. A second similarity is that educational policy and development in all the nations that are highlighted in this edited volume have been inspired to follow different trajectories to different degrees. They are using a panoply of shared social technologies that have been mediated by transnational collaborations. As argued in the different country chapters, this has led to considerable changes in discourse and practice in national schools. In the Danish case, for instance, it has led to a change from understanding school as an institution of general education that highlighted participation and democracy, to a discourse and a practice that increasingly highlights performativity, accountability and employability (Moos, 2021b). This edited volume on school policy in Europe also underscores that looking at national educational policy processes of reform through a national, regional, and transnational lens reveals that policy reforms are extremely complex and interwoven. These processes change relations in policy development, in governance, and in a number of other important educational aspects by alignment to similar perspectives according to different national and regional pathways. This book project thus demonstrates how nations embark on governance processes like new public management, while also reforming education by focusing on educational output and accountability. The two perspectives and practices are often accompanied and assisted by the digitalization and datafication of education, and the commercialization and privatization of public institutions like education. This is intensified by an often strong focus on national or transnational standards and output of public institutions. This edited volume shows how much the European Community and the OECD contribute to the development of a shared European imaginary (see Popkewitz’s reflections in this volume) all over the case nations. It can hardly be a surprise to learn that the EU has this effect, because this is one of the main purposes of the EU. The fact that the OECD does so may be surprising, having the biggest share of

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members outside Europe, like the USA, whose influence in the association is huge (Brøgger, 2018; Moos & Krejsler, 2021c; Ydesen, 2019). Reflecting upon the recent more outspoken resistance to transnational solutions, we could ask, however, whether the development in European policy is still moving towards Europeanization and globalization, or whether a return to national(ist) (Moos, 2021b) solutions (as registered in different forms in the country chapters) will define the trajectories of school policy reforms in Europe in the coming years. As Lingard argues in his chapter in this book, Europe seems to be at a turning point at which nationalism is surging, which also reminds us of darker aspects of the histories of European nations.

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