While the literature in skill formation systems has paid considerable attention to inter-variation between types of national skill formation systems and intra-variation among individual types as in the case of collective skill formation systems, less is known about the role of the European Union in establishing a European model of skill formation.…

The purpose of this study is to compare education and inspection systems and to reveal their similarities and differences in terms of structuring and functioning. Thus, it is aimed to make suggestions about education supervision in the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus by determining its current state. In the study, the educational supervision…

Religious matters have traditionally been considered as a sensitive subject in French state schools. Since 1989 and the first 'Muslim headscarf affair', faith-related conflicts in those institutions have been the subject of a relatively opaque counting policy. Mobilising several state institutions- which alternatively cooperate or compete- this…

This book addresses what is, perhaps, the single most important issue for vocational education; its relatively low standing in an era of high aspiration. The work explores the nature, extent and consequences for an educational sector that whilst having an increasingly important role in contemporary societies is seen to be of low standing across…

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…

This article builds upon Robert Cowen's (1996) work on educational coding in transitological settings and post-spaces by deciphering the efficacy of political and economic compressions in Tunisia from the French protectorate period to the 2011 post-Jasmine revolution. First, I diachronically decrypt and elucidate the specific experiences and…

Over the period 2017-2021 the attitude of the French public and policymakers towards early years education and care changed, resulting in early childhood development (ECD), particularly the affective and social components, increasingly being recognised as a priority, with early childhood education and care (ECEC) services enjoying more government…

Module A of the OECD Higher Education Policy Survey (HEPS) 2022 elicited information on policies to promote digitalisation of higher education in OECD member and accession countries. In total, 30 jurisdictions responded, providing comparative information on various areas of digitalisation policy, from regulation and governance to financial and…

Concise, clear and comprehensive snapshots of vocational education and training systems in EU, Iceland and Norway: this is what the Cedefop Spotlight on VET series offers. Building on individual country Spotlights, this publication provides an overview of VET systems with their distinctive qualities, such as main accession and progression routes…

Academic careers are social processes which involve many members of large populations over long periods of time. This paper outlines a discursive perspective which looks into how academics are categorized in academic systems. From a discursive view, academic careers are organized by categories which can define who academics are (subjectivation)…

Europe's knowledge economies need high-level skills, the capacity to innovate and to support democratic societies. In this perspective, the main objective of this study is to provide a comprehensive analysis of the relevance of higher education and how this is promoted in various countries in Europe and beyond. The evidence, conclusions and…

Europe's knowledge economies need high-level skills, the capacity to innovate and to support democratic societies. In this perspective, the main objective of this study is to provide a comprehensive analysis of the relevance of higher education and how this is promoted in various countries in Europe and beyond. The evidence, conclusions and…

In this article, we analyse changes in the contemporary management of private Catholic schools under State contract in France since the 1980s. Writing from a "policy sociology" perspective, we use data from previous studies on policy and on public and private schools as well as from an ongoing research project comparing policies of…

This paper explores two new perspectives for the research on higher education. Building on the case of Europe with a special focus on France, it first addresses the trend toward more competition and more differentiation that can be observed in countries that traditionally were more egalitarian and the strong implication of European states in…

This study considers the extensive critique of the impact of the "market" or "neoliberal" model on learning and its outcomes in the light of alternative models. The purpose is to consider the potential impacts of the market on learning and its outcomes and to contextualise critique by considering alternative coordination…