This article examines how education policies developed in the European Union(EU) through the open method of co-ordination (OMC) are received at the member state level of the United Kingdom (UK). We argue that the UK's response to the education OMC can be understood mainly in terms of deflecting EU influence on the process and in particular content of national education policy-making. We focus on three manifestations of deflecting EU influence on national education policies. On a level of institutional structures, first, few organizational resources are made available for responding to the education OMC. Second, there is limited communication between domestic policy teams and UK civil servants involved in international work. Third, on a level of discourse UK education policy makers have retained a commitment to the continued sovereignty of the UK over education policy and its role as a potential leader of education policy agendas in the EU. Deflecting the education OMC involves here constructing images of 'fit' between UK and EU OMC education policies.KEY WORDS: European Integration, education policy making, Open Method of Co-Ordination, peer learning, discursive institutionalism
Education Policy-Making in Europeanisation StudiesEducation policy making is an important but still neglected field in the study of policy and politics (Jakobi et al. 2010). It combines questions about the relationship between the state, institutions, and citizens, in a way that very few other fields of public policy do, given that education is central to both social and economic governance. Within the field of europeanisation studies, an analysis of education policy-making offers a very interesting example of the integration project with its dual emphasis on widening and deepening the functions of the EU.