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…

The purpose of this study is to determine the direction of causality between the quality of education and technological development for the selected Northern European countries over the period 2006-2017. To this end, we employ the bootstrap panel causality test. The findings of our study indicate that the quality of education leads to changes in…

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…

The policy of inclusion in the Scandinavian countries is often related to the idea of the welfare state, and specifically to notions of equality, equity and democracy. The image of the welfare state seems to live well, even though structural and social barriers seem to maintain inequality when it comes to access to education. Instead of overcoming…

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…

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 five articles in this special issue present studies focusing on two key aspects of vocational education and transitions in the Nordic countries in relation to social justice: (a) impacts of policies and reforms on transitions and (b) content, practices, curriculum and equality. Collectively, the articles outline important similarities and…

This study is a historical investigation of the state education grants and loans system in Denmark during the period 1950-2000. Since 1952, Danish students enrolled in higher education programmes have been subsidised under a unified public financial aid scheme, with varying degrees of general coverage. During the first decades of the state support…

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…

This paper reports on the findings of an Erasmus project entitled 'ReHaRe' (Reaching the Hard to Reach). The aim of this project is to develop more inclusive learning environments. The project adopts an action research approach and gives school pupils a role as researchers who plan, evaluate and develop lesson plans in collaboration with their…

The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted education provision at an unprecedented scale, with education systems around the world being impacted by extended school closures and abrupt changes to normal school operations. The Responses to Educational Disruption Survey (REDS) investigated how teaching and learning were affected by the health crisis, and how…

Many countries are struggling to reconcile greater flexibility in school choice with the need to ensure quality, equity and coherence in their school systems. This report provides an international perspective on issues related to school choice, especially how certain aspects of school-choice policies may be associated with sorting students into…

According to globalisation theories, the importance of international organisations such as UNESCO and EU regarding processes of policy-making is increasing and it is no longer the nation state alone that is regulating policy. Focusing on equity and social justice as central topics of the global discourse, the article raises the question of how…

Higher education systems in Denmark and Poland are interesting not only due to their distinct stages of historical development, but mainly due to their size and complexity resulting in a particular policy. The main challenges faced by higher education and their corresponding policy directions have been grouped into the following categories: (1)…