In this chapter, the authors analyse and discuss conceptual and methodological issues related to international benchmarking and its effect on educational policy and practice in selected European countries. Benchmarking is viewed as a process of comparing educational outcomes in schooling systems, identifying strengths and weaknesses and serving as a platform to identify best-practice examples, thus providing a foundation for school development and other improvements in the education system. Using data from international surveys, the authors compare educational outcomes over time for a sample of European countries, discuss recent trends and identify the main similarities/differences. The data on educational outcomes come primarily from the wide-ranging OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), as well as from other relevant sources of data on European education. The chapter is concluded with the lessons learnt from international benchmarking, in the context of challenges in the social and education environment of the selected European countries. [For the complete volume, "Educational Leadership, Improvement and Change: Discourse and Systems in Europe," see ED611634.]