What’s England Got to Do with It? British Underestimation of International Initiatives in Education Policy

Education governance and standardised tests in Denmark and England

“…Whilst traditionally liberal and individualist, the turn to techno-rationalism and preoccupation with accountability began in England more than twenty years ago (Goodson and Lindblad 2011), and standardised tests, particularly in English and mathematics, have been used to monitor and compare student and thereby teacher and school performance since the early 1990s indeed, this has been central to education reform. Because of this, the 'shock' (Wiseman 2013) of the PISA 2000 results (OECD 2001) provoked little reaction in England (Knodel and Walkenhorst 2010), whereas in Denmark and elsewhere, the policy response included an increased focus on standardised national testing and evaluation strategies (Andreasen et al 2015;Egelund 2008). Behind these changes we can identify dominant Danish education discourses since 2002 as having partly moved from humanist and socially-orientated (Hermann 2007) towards skills-competence and individualist.…”

The Policy Impact of PISA

“…In contrast, the United Kingdom, New Zealand and the USA did not show a shift in national education agendas in response to PISA. Knodel and Walkenhorst (2010) argue that the United Kingdom's lack of policy response to its moderate performance was due to the significant education reforms enacted in England in the years prior to the release of the PISA results. For New Zealand, Dobbins (2010) concluded that high performance on PISA seemed to reinforce existing policies and thus there was no impetus for substantial change.…”

Soft governance by hard fact? The OECD as a knowledge broker in education policy

“…England performed well in the first round of PISA in 2000 but dropped in later rounds. Although results did not improve significantly, reactions to PISA were moderate, and the British government employed a ‘pick-and-choose’ strategy to adopting OECD recommendations (Knodel and Walkenhorst, 2010). In Finland, reactions vary by status groups.…”