The Australian "National Indigenous Reform Agreement" (Closing the Gap) aims to address inequalities in various aspects of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples' lives. Scholars have repeatedly critiqued its failure to tackle structural inequalities. The agreement was revised in 2020. The current study adopts Carol Bacchi's…

This article considers the realm of knowledge in early childhood education (ECE); what knowledge is valued, and how different types of knowledge position children and educators. To this end, two different examples of practice informed by different types of knowledge are provided: one from an educator working in a long day care service (Duncan) and…

Concerns about racism and race equality have been widely reported in the first decades of the 21st century, following the Black Lives Matter protests and campaigns such as 'Rhodes Must Fall'. Yet 'race' remains largely absent from policy debate and research concerning further education colleges in the four countries of the UK, particularly in…

This study seeks to explore the effect of tools of school governance advanced by the global reform agenda (1) on student performance and (2) on reducing the effect of sociodemographic variables on this performance. To do so, we compare two Nordic welfare states with an egalitarian tradition: Sweden and Finland. The Swedish school system has…

Self-regulation in the governance of higher education systems is often assumed to improve institutional performance, accountability, and responsiveness. Although studies of higher education governance have addressed the extent of self-regulation across national systems, there has been less investigation of the links between self-regulation and…

In this article, we examine how policymakers from three Nordic countries, Finland, Iceland and Sweden, reflect on the future at 2 different points in time: just before the first PISA study (1998-1999) and more than 15 years later (2015-2017). The empirical data consist of interviews (N = 37) with national policymakers, collected in two comparative…

In the recent Australian 2021 census, the socio-technical construct of algorithmically driven decision-making processes made LGBTQI+ data as a category of diversity, inclusion and belonging an absent presence. In this paper, we position the notion of 'data justice' in relation to the entrenchment of inequalities and exclusion of LGBTQI+ lives and…

Equity policies in higher education are focused on dismantling barriers and redressing inequalities that restrict the participation and success of students from historically excluded groups. In some Universities across Oceania, "underrepresented" includes students of Pacific heritage alongside students from low socioeconomic backgrounds,…

This study focuses on the debate surrounding global policies and practices related to the sector of Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC), utilizing the Greek policy context as an example. Drawing on the critical education policy studies literature, this paper interrogates the complex concepts of quality and autonomy, which are core in the…

This study aims to investigate the impact of women empowerment and free senior high school on secondary school enrolment in Ghana. The Autoregressive Distributed Lags (ARDL) estimation method, which examines both short- and long-term effects, was utilized to analyze data obtained from the World Bank database and the ILO database covering the…

Purpose: Academic institutions have the power to generate positive change by implementing sustainable development initiatives. This study aims to make a holistic assessment of the universities' sustainability practices by explicitly focusing on equality and communication and by providing a general model for a university sustainability structure.…

This article analyses the media coverage of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) by progressive and conservative media outlets in South Korea from 2000 to 2018. Through systemic content analysis, the study reveals that the tones and content of PISA-related articles were largely influenced by the political alignment between the…

The school system in England has undergone significant change following the introduction of the academies policy and the subsequent mass conversion of secondary schools to academies. In this article we address two issues arising from this process of academisation, namely equality of opportunity and local democratic accountability, both of which…

Equity and redress, in and through education, are fundamental commitments of the new South African democratic government that ensued in 1994 after a brutal and protracted history of colonial and apartheid segregation and oppression denied the majority black population the fundamental right to equitable and quality education. A raft of ambitious…

International policy trends point to an increased focus on student achievement, teaching quality, and school outcomes. Attention to Swedish students' poor academic achievement over the past two decades has resulted in an increased emphasis on the responsibility of municipalities and schools to create a better educational atmosphere through…