Governing education systems: International trends and main topics

Abstract

The paper presents different approaches and international trends in governing education systems and analyses the causes of the perceived convergence of education policies in this field. An overview of the situation in countries throughout the world indicates an increasingly greater mutual similarity in governing education systems, especially when it comes to insisting on the following: searching for balance in (de)centralization of the system, increasing school autonomy, reinforcing the role of evaluation and professional accountability, and developing quasi-market regulatory mechanisms in education. The author argues that convergence of governing education systems is conditioned by common, primarily, economic challenges and increasingly greater importance of transnational regulation in education. Besides the traditional ways of transferring, such as borrowing solutions from other systems, numerous multilateral organizations have lately had a significant role in transnational spreading of education policy. In the concluding part, the author argues that a relatively neglected model of internal school development, based on the idea of organizational learning, has a potential to significantly complement the prevailing regulatory models and thereby enhance their effectiveness and efficiency.