This book discusses national school policy reforms in a number of key European countries and shows how these are framed in transnational collaborations that meet with national particularities and contestations. It gives an overview of school policy developments that represents the diversity of Europe within a comparative framework. It takes point…

During the COVID-19 pandemic, students in higher education experienced mental health issues whereby National Unions Students & local unions, Higher Education Institutions, and governments played a role in addressing them. Mental health and wellbeing among students have been analysed by external actors as the topic has been talked about already…

Motivated by empirical reality of differences in the scope and meaning of school choice and private schooling this article focuses on the public demand for increasing diversity of educational options In Europe and the division of public and private provision in it. We aim to test self-interest and ideology-driven logics of education policy…

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…

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…

In December 2021, the Department for Education (DfE) appointed Ecorys UK to undertake a research project: Future opportunities for education technology in England. The project aimed to provide insights to the future of the EdTech market in England, considering likely developments in digital technology and education policy. This report presents the…

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…

This chapter describes the national reform processes of six European countries: Austria, Denmark, Finland, France, the Netherlands and Portugal. The approach opted for here has been to give the voice to the individual university rectors and officials that played an important role during the reform processes. By hearing their stories, we obtain a…

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…

The aim of this report is threefold. Its first section provides an overall sketch of the situation across Europe and the underlying mechanisms for the differences in European countries. The second section focuses on the heterogeneities within each country. It examines the disparities among students in order to understand which of those correlate…

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…