[MUSIC] So looking for the key trends around, around the world about how education's being organized. What are the key trends that are happening right now? >> Well there's an, there's A scary, a scary simplicity to, to, to the answer to that question. Because they're basically three tracks which sum up what's happening in almost all countries around the world. And this is what Pasi Sahlberg, the Finnish. Educational commentator calls GERM. The Global Education Reform Movement. Or I talk about it as global education policy. And it has 3 elements to it which relate to things that we've talked about already. One element is, is to do with, with school choice and, and, and markets and privatization. And, and that's the trend of, are creating some kind of market form in educational services. Introducing new providers, allowing profit participants, having systems of school choice or vouchers, there's slightly different versions of that in different places, different degrees in different places. But that's one of the key trends and its, its flowing out across, throughout more and more places, countries adopting that the second one, and it goes alongside the first, is, is to do with management or leadership. And that's the idea that educational institutions should be run like businesses, to be more business like in how they operate. So the tenants of management or more recently the tenants of tenants, of leadership, have been introduced in to schools. And again that's flying around the world, and consultants, and policy entrepreneurs from, from England, and, and other Western Countries are, are scattering themselves across the world and telling other countries that they need to have store managers and leaders and running courses and programs for them to support that move. So that's also a very powerful trend, and the third one, and of course, these all fit together as one package is, is to do with performance, performance management to various kinds. This is the notion that, that, that quality can be driven and managed by performance regulation of various kinds. That is the requirement to the school's generate performance, indicators,. That they're measured or assessed in various ways. And that they're compared and ranked in various ways. So, again, there are variations in this. But we have a global system of this now. It doesn't cover every country. But the, the Pisa tests. The OECD run. Compare between countries but can be used internally in relation to education policy in, in different countries. But many countries now have their own systems. They have systems of inspection, and the English inspection system is also being exported. Indeed, it's being sold by various education businesses throughout the countries around the world. And other forms of assessment and testing are being used to, to, to set benchmarks for school performance and also to compare schools through system of ranking. So, there are three things, the market, management, and performance are the dominate trends in education policy across the globe. >> So if we take the first one of those, the market, and you said earlier, that, that's proven to be not terribly successful. >> Well we've got examples of it being not very successful. >> So, so why is that becoming such a large trend then, if it's, if it's, if we have examples of it not being successful? >> To a great extent, there's a disconnect between policy and evidence. we, we perversely and paradoxically, we, we, we live in a period where rhetorically, at least. Policy is supposed to be increasingly informed by evidence, but that only operates where there is a, a match between policy preferences and available evidence, that way there is a mismatch, policy makers tend to systematically ignore the evidence. And go ahead with what seems to be the common sense policy imperative with which they're presented by advisors or policy entrepreneur based on models borrowed from other countries. So in this, in, in, in each of these cases, you can assemble some evidence; which, which supports them as having positive effects. But you can also assemble enormous bodies of evidence which suggest that there are, are problems involved in terms of their e, effects on the education system. One example would be research on school choice. I, I, I would assert, that there's probably more in terms of policy issues there's probably more research globally about school choice, parental choice than almost anything else. There are thousands of studies of scholarship choice, and the overwhelming majority of those studies would indicate that school choice creates access of problems in relation to things like increase social segregation. But that in no way inhibits policy makers from introducing school choice, programs around the world. Because there are very strong advocates for school choice and there are social groups, particular middle class, parents who are advantaged by school choice, and are staunchly in favor of school choice. >> Which is why school choice is popular. >> It's one of the reasons why school choice is popular. I mean, it's an easy policy because for a politician to stand up and say we're giving parents choice, that you can choose the school for your child. It, it's actually something that's then very difficult for another politician to stand up and say no, no parents can't have school choice. We're going to make them go to their local school. So it's, it's, it's a very easy policy to, to advocate. It's a very difficult policy to propose, but research suggests that it creates. A lot more problems than it, than it sounds.
