The work of early childhood educators is conducted in highly regulated environments in many Western nations. This is due to managerialism, the right arm of neoliberal-inspired policies. To explore educators' work within these contexts, our international study highlights the impacts of these systems on educators and the children they teach. This…

Return on investment (ROI) has become part of the policymaking toolkit, particularly pertinent for activities like school-based career guidance deemed optional by some policymakers. There are institutions supporting ideal ROI methods alongside an academic critique, but little research on how ROI has been applied in practice in a guidance setting.…

In this paper, we draw on policy sociology and democratic theory to illustrate how evidence-based practice not only limits teachers' capacities to exercise professional discretion and authority, but also jeopardises the democratic project of schooling more broadly. Using theoretical concepts from Foucault's discipline with Connolly's…

This paper aims to survey the current landscape of education policy evaluation across OECD countries and economies by examining recent trends and contextual factors that can promote more robust education policy evaluation, as well as identifying key challenges. It takes a view of policy evaluation as an activity that takes place throughout the…

This article analyses the ways in which notions of student diversity and student voice are defined in five European countries, two terms directly related to notions of inclusion. In so doing, it examines links between the two terms, noting that, often, they are used in international research without acknowledging the ways that they are defined…

Intersectionality highlights that different aspects of individuals' identities are not independent of each other. Instead, they interact to create unique identities and experiences, which cannot be understood by analysing each identity dimension separately or in isolation from their social and historical contexts. Intersectional approaches in this…

Calls for increased monitoring and evaluation of education policies and practices have not, so far, included widespread and consistent assessments of the inclusiveness of education settings. Measuring inclusion in education has proven to be a challenging exercise, due not only to the complexity and different uses of the concept, but also to its…

Digital technologies are increasingly present in young children's lives. How can early education systems get the best out of digitalisation while minimising its risks? This is especially urgent as the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated our reliance on digital tools -- tools that enabled young children to continue learning when early education…

Teacher shortages have intensified across several OECD countries, making this an urgent priority for education systems. Between 2015 and 2022, the share of students whose principals reported shortages rose from 29% to 46.7% on average across the OECD. Simultaneously, rapid technological advances, such as artificial intelligence (AI), and broader…

Although substantial evidence from the United States suggests that more qualified teachers are disproportionately concentrated in the schools and classrooms of academically and socioeconomically advantaged children, it is not clear whether the problem of teacher sorting is global in scope. This study uses data from the 2013 Teaching and Learning…

Globalisation and policy transfer in education make it incumbent upon decision makers to prioritise among competing policy options, select policy initiatives that are appropriate for their national contexts, and understand how system-specific factors moderate the relationship between those policies and student outcomes. This study used qualitative…

The purpose of this study is to outline a new approach to the comparative analysis of student finance systems based on social rights, an approach widely applied in other areas of social policy. It focuses on rights codified in national legislation and financed by central governments, and the collection of indicators measuring formal eligibility…

This article reviews Education for Sustainability (EfS) in the secondary sector across a range of countries. Drawing on journal articles, book chapters and official reports, it identifies some of the more successful approaches to implementing EfS within the secondary sector. The authors first discuss the importance of educating for sustainability…

The recent refugee crisis has put many Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries under considerable pressure to accommodate and integrate large numbers of refugees. Refugee students are a particularly vulnerable group due to their forced displacement, but their needs are not always met by education systems, which can…

This report projects Northern Ireland's skills base through to 2030 and compares this to a number of Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries. The report shows that on current trends Northern Ireland will continue to lag many other countries on a number of measures of learning and skills in 2030. These shortfalls can…