With three million participants since 1987, Erasmus promotes educational and cross-cultural exchange. It claims to be the world's most successful student exchange scheme. The pertinent question is, successful for whom? This mixed-methods study of 758 survey respondents and over 100 interviews of Erasmus participants and non-participants in…

This article introduces the National Educational Panel Study (NEPS). This German longitudinal study produces a vast amount of data for the scientific community, and researchers all around Europe are invited to use the data to address various research questions empirically. Therefore, the authors provide information about the purpose as well as the…

In recent years, the degree of choice in education systems has increased in most countries. Still, the variation of choice policies across countries is substantial. The authors ask under what combinations of conditions (i.e. institutional features of education systems) choice policy succeeds in balancing educational efficiency and equity. Using…

New forms of activities now shape and govern the Swedish education system, based on governance through comparison. The focus on comparison can be regarded as soft governance and different types of (self-) evaluations and valuations are, at present, deeply embedded keystones in the decentralised education system. Recently this has, together with…

The higher education system in Flanders is characterised by tight regulation and a tradition of excluding private providers from the sector. However, as in other European countries, the Belgian public sector has been confronted with the principles of New Public Management (NPM) and trends of liberalisation and privatisation. The same goes for the…

This article reports the findings of a comparative study of pedagogy in lower-secondary school mathematics in Denmark and England. Lesson observations and interviews identified the range of goals towards which teachers in each country worked and the actions these prompted. These were clustered using the lens of Bernstein's pedagogic discourse…

A number of studies in the past few decades address how the governing of educational systems are changing as a result of intensified measurement and use of statistics. This article suggests that another consequence may be the construction of solutions, tools, and methods which target the problems constructed through comparable indicators and…

This article explores the increasing commercialisation of education through the empirical case of Teach For All, a network of social enterprises which is spreading a new model of teacher training across Europe and around the world. This model, which is supported and funded by a heterogeneous mix of public institutions and private sector…

Unequal labour market outcomes between Roma and non-Roma have typically been explained by either the low level of educational attainment on the one hand or labour marked discrimination on the other--or both. A number of studies have found that significant labour market inequalities persist even after the low levels of educational attainment…

The idea of a system of education has never been fully accepted in England. A more realistic translation of the realities of English education is that of systems of education, folded inside each other. Although it is possible to outline the building blocks of a national system (primary, secondary, further and higher), the political, spatial and…

During the last few decades, educational research has increasingly tried to legitimise itself by its alleged capacity to contribute to the solution of certain societal problems. The article discusses this claim on the basis of historical evidence. It addresses two episodes of educational change aimed at a 'freer' pedagogy and society and…

Several notions have been proposed to understand the specificity of schooling and its persistence across time and space, despite several attempts to reform it. In this article, the author analyses more closely the notions of the "grammar of schooling", "forme scolaire", and "school organisational culture". These…

This article aims to question the relevance of notions such as "laforme scolair"' in the account of the French state action in keeping up with the development of mass schooling, over a long historical process (from the late nineteenth century to the present day). Through its origin, this model is linked to a Universalist…

During the nineteenth century many European countries proclaimed sovereignty of the people and simultaneously founded their national educational systems. In order to provide public schooling, free and compulsory education was established. Political and sociocultural revolutions led to the rise of nation states, based on democratic or…

This article consists of five sections. First, it briefly describes the results of the authors' previous studies on the history of colonial education in view of the problem introduced by the special issue of which this article is a part. Second, it links these results to such central concepts as the so-called grammars of schooling and…