This work is published on the responsibility of the Secretary-General of the OECD. The opinions expressed and arguments employed herein do not necessarily reflect the official views of the OECD or of the governments of its member countries or those of the European Union.This document and any map included herein are without prejudice to the status of or sovereignty over any territory, to the delimitation of international frontiers and boundaries and to the name of any territory, city or area.  The statistical data for Israel are supplied by and under the responsibility of the relevant Israeli authorities. The use of such data by the OECD is without prejudice to the status of the Golan Heights, East Jerusalem and Israeli settlements in the West Bank under the terms of international law.Photo credits: Cover © VLADGRIN/Shutterstock.com.Corrigenda to OECD publications may be found on line at: www.oecd.org/about/publishing/corrigenda.htm. © OECD 2016You can copy, download or print OECD content for your own use, and you can include excerpts from OECD publications, databases and multimedia products in your own documents, presentations, blogs, websites and teaching materials, provided that suitable acknowledgment of the source and copyright owner is given. All requests for public or commercial use and translation rights should be submitted to rights@oecd.org. Requests for permission to photocopy portions of this material for public or commercial use shall be addressed directly to the Copyright Clearance Center (CCC) at info@copyright.com or the Centre français d'exploitation du droit de copie (CFC) at contact@cfcopies.com. Nusche, D. et al. (2016) Please cite this publication as: Austria was one of the education systems which opted to participate in the country review strand and host a visit by an external review team. Members of the review team were Deborah Nusche (OECD), Thomas Radinger (OECD), Marius R. Busemeyer (University of Konstanz) and Henno Theisens (The Hague University for Applied Sciences). Deborah Nusche co-ordinated the review between January 2015 and January 2016 and Thomas Radinger co-ordinated the review between February and June 2016. The biographies of the members of the review team are provided in Annex B. This publication is the report of the review team. It provides, from an international perspective, an independent analysis of major issues facing the use of school resources in Austria, current policy initiatives, and possible future approaches. The report serves three purposes: i) to provide insights and advice to the Austrian education authorities; ii) to help other countries understand the Austrian approach to the use of school resources; and iii) to provide input for the final comparative analysis of the OECD School Resources Review. The scope for analysis in this report includes public primary and lower secondary education (including Volksschule, Hauptschule/Neue Mittelschule and AHS Unterstufe). At the request of the Austrian authorities, the focus areas of the Review of School Resources...

Many policy systems and education systems have grown more complex in the last three decades. Power has moved away from central governments in different directions: upwards towards international organisations, sideways towards private institutions and non‐governmental organisations and downwards towards local governments and public enterprises such as schools. Where once we had central government, we now have governance, which can be defined as the processes of establishing priorities, formulating and implementing policies, and being accountable in complex networks with many different actors. Steering in such complex education systems emerges from the activities, tasks and responsibilities of state and non‐state actors, operating at different levels and from different positions and often has un‐deliberate, un‐intentional and un‐foreseen consequences. There are many conceptual models that encapsulate this complexity, but this article suggests that there is a real need for empirical research. Without empirical research it remains unknown whether and how steering in complex networks works out in practice, what are its effects and for whom. Moreover, it is only through empirical research that we can find out whether central government has become less dominant, or rather whether its appearance has changed and it has become less visible, but not necessarily less influential. Foucault's governmentality perspective is a useful notion on which to build such a framework for empirical research which allows for a careful study of the interactions that signify steering. Inspired by Foucault, this article develops a trilogy of assumed conditions for steering to take effect in modern societies. Following this reasoning, ‘something' first needs to be made thinkable, calculable and practicable by different actors for steering to occur. This trilogy is a promising starting point for empirical research into very specific phenomena which can help us to understand how steering in complex education systems works.

This article aims at deepening the understanding of how central governments enact meta-governance. Drawing on meta-governance and policy network theory, a heuristic analytical framework of meta-governance strategies was applied on two contrasting Dutch education policy cases. The results show that the use of metagovernance strategies differs according to the degree of formal responsibility of the central government. Creating nodes in a policy network turns out to be a specific strategy, and the effectiveness of different meta-governance strategies is interrelated. Lastly, the lack of involvement of education practice impinge on the adequacy of meta-governance practice.

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