The Education Policy Sector

Capano, G; Zito, AR; Toth, F; Rayner, J

doi:10.1007/978-3-031-07457-8_3

The Education Policy Sector

Lookup NU author(s): Professor Anthony Zito

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Abstract

© 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG. This chapter reconstructs the developments of education policies in the six case countries. Over the last three decades, governments have intervened to redesign governance modes in education, through a process in which the same policy tools have been mixed in different ways to give substantially similar results, that is the stronger role of government (through a mix of new regulations, assessment and evaluation, new financial incentives and leverages); the stronger role of stakeholders (mainly families, thanks to a more transparent system of systemic features and performance); the greater ‘targeted’ autonomy of educational institutions (which are led to behave in a specific manner, and to be more accountable, by governmental steering at a distance); increased competition and greater room for private schools. Therefore, the toolkit has basically remained the same, as has the move towards new governance modes, although the contents and final results of change (in terms of governance modes) have been substantially different. The chapter finds that although there are some convergent points (especially with respect to the general policy instruments adopted and the apparently common ideas), national systemic differences persist based, above all, on the national regulatory tradition and the social perception of the goods at stake.