'Institutionalized Organizations: Formal Structure as Myth and Ceremony', American Journal of Sociology, 83, pp. 340-63.

THE chorus of approval with which Mr. Mundella's report on the progress of elementary education was received on Monday cannot but be gratifying to all who have at heart the highest welfare of the country. With one or two unimportant exceptions—members whose vision is so bizarre as to discern communism in the education of the children of the working classes, and who connect the increase of weeds with the spread of education'what criticism there was referred to details of method. All the members whose opinions are of any weight agreed that vast good had resulted to the country by the working of the Code. As to the special subjects, among which science is included, the weight of opinion was decidedly in favour of their retention. The greatest friends of the Fourth Schedule will admit that there is still much room for improvement in the teaching of these subjects; it cannot be expected that so great a novelty in the system of elementary education in the country can all at once be taught to perfection. About the success of the compulsory system of education it may be said that the House was all but unanimous. The analogy between the treatment of paupers and the free education of the children of the working classes will not hold water. In the one case we are simply keeping from starvation people whose improvidence or misfortune have made them a dead burden on their fellows; in the other case we are feeding the minds of those who one day will have to bear the brunt of the work of the nation; The better these future workers are educated, the more intelligently and the more effectively are they likely to do their work, and the less likely are they to become inmates of our workhouses and prisons. As Serjeant Simon testified, even already is there a marked decrease of embryo criminals in our streets. The conclusion come to by Mr. Mimdella and those who,like him, have the interests of education at heart, is not that we have gone too far, but that we have not gone far enough; not that we have reached finality, but that we have only made a good beginning. The figures he adduced to prove the success of the existing Education Act were practically admitted to be irrefutable; and we only trust the progress in the next ten years will be at an equal ratio to that achieved during the past decade. “Many of us,” he truly said, “would pass away without seeing the full effect of the work we are doing.” As to the propriety of encouraging the retention of exceptionally clever boys in elementary schools beyond the regulation age, the figures showed that it would be cruel and unjust to forbid this. Until we have a State system of secondary education in England similar to that about to be sanctioned in Scotland, until air equally decisive step is taken with regard to educational endowments in the one country as in the other, the nation would be doing a gross injustice to force exceptionally clever boys to leave school just when their intellects were beginning to shoot into full vigour. Mr. Mundella showed by his figures that Scotland is still ahead of England in the matter of education; that extra or special subjects are more widely sought after and with greater success, and that a larger percentage of children in elementary schools proceed to secondary education. But it should be remembered that this is the result of many generations of universal education, and that in Scotland it has long been considered as great a disgrace to be uneducated as in England it is considered to be immoral. There among the great majority of the working classes compulsory education was scarcely needed, and this will no doubt be the case in England in the course of a century or so, when education will have become as great a necessity as decent clothing. Again during the debate was it shown by those who have the best means of knowing that where science is properly taught there the children are as a rule more intelligent and bright, and better up in the ordinary subjects than in schools where science is neglected. Sir John Lubbock gave a remarkable instance of the favour with which properly conducted science-teaching is received by the children themselves:—

The Education Debate

The Control of EducationBy John Vaizey. Pp. 263. (London: Faber and Faber, 1963.) 30s.

/pdf/economics-of-education-tmm6gmb547.pdf

Economics of Education

The Sustainable Development Goals map out a broad spectrum of objectives. Analytical tools in form of the Index and Dashboards provide a starting point to set national baselines, and allow comparison of the SDGs with other indices of well-being. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) — agreed in 2015 by all 193 member states of the United Nations and complemented by commitments made in the Paris Agreement — map out a broad spectrum of economic, social and environmental objectives to be achieved by 2030. Reaching these goals will require deep transformations in every country, as well as major efforts in monitoring and measuring progress. Here we introduce the SDG Index and Dashboards as analytical tools for assessing countries' baselines for the SDGs that can be applied by researchers in the cross-disciplinary analyses required for implementation. The Index and Dashboards synthesize available country-level data for all 17 goals, and for each country estimate the size of the gap towards achieving the SDGs. They will be updated annually. All 149 countries for which sufficient data is available face significant challenges in achieving the goals, and many countries' development strategies are imbalanced across the economic, social and environmental priorities. We illustrate the analytical value of the index by examining its relationship with other widely used development indices and by showing how it accounts for cross-national differences in subjective well-being. Given significant data gaps, scope and coverage of the Index and Dashboards are limited, but we suggest that these analyses represent a starting point for a comprehensive assessment of national SDG baselines and can help policymakers determine priorities for early action and monitor progress. The tools also identify data gaps that must be closed for SDG monitoring.

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National baselines for the Sustainable Development Goals assessed in the SDG Index and Dashboards

The Reality of the Mass Media

World Yearbook of Education 2012 : Policy Borrowing and Lending in Education

The article compares how the success of the ‘Asian Tiger’ countries in PISA, especially PISA 2009, was depicted in the media discussion in Australia, Germany and South Korea. It argues that even in the times of today's ‘globalised education policy field’, local factors are important in determining whether or not a country becomes a reference society for educational reform. The article aims to uncover some of these factors, identifying the globally disseminated stereotypes about Asian education, economic relations and the sense of ‘crisis’ induced through the relative position and change of position in PISA league tables in the countries in question.

Rethinking the Pattern of External Policy Referencing: Media Discourses over the "Asian Tigers" PISA Success in Australia, Germany and South Korea.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.2304/eerj.2009.8.3.476

What PISA Did and Did Not Do: Germany after the ‘PISA-shock’

Introduction 1. Understanding Policy Borrowing and Lending, Building Comparative Policy Studies Gita Steiner-Khamsi Part 1. Agencies of Transfer 2. Toward a Critical Grammar of Education Policy Movements Roger Dale and Susan L. Robertson 3. Learning from Meetings and Comparison: A Critical Examination of the Policy Tools of Transnationals Sotiria Grek 4. Toward Post-Bureaucratic Modes of Governance: A European Perspective Christian Maroy 5. Educational Accountability and Global Governmentality Noah W. Sobe 6. Webs of Borrowing and Lending: Social Networks in Vocational Education in Republican China Barbara Schulte Part 2. Externalisation and the Politics of Policy Borrowing and Lending 7. Reimagining Attraction and `Borrowing' in Education: Introducing a Political Production Model Jeremy Rappleye 8. Bringing a Political `Bite' to Educational Transfer Studies: Cultural Politics of PISA and the OECD in Japanese Education Reform Keita Takayama 9. International Benchmarking with the Best: The Varied Role of the State in the Quest for Regional Education Hubs in Malaysia and Hong Kong Ka Ho Mok 10. Policy Borrowing and the Rise of a Vocational Education and Training System: The Case of Switzerland Philipp Gonon 11. Education Policy Borrowing Across African Borders: Histories of Learner-Centred Education in Botswana and South Africa Linda Chisholm Part 3. Selective Borrowing and the Local Adaptation of Imported Reforms 12. Contested Meanings of Educational Borrowing Iveta Silova 13. Teacher License Renewal System: Global and Local Influences on Teacher Accountability Policy in Japan Motoko Akiba and Kazuhiko Shimizu 14. The Transformation of Education Policy in Israel Julia Resnik 15. In the Shadow of Global Discourses: Gender, Education and Modernity in the Arabian Peninsula Natasha Ridge 16. Conditional Cash Transfers: Paying to Keep Children in School and Conquering the World. Three Selected Case Studies Michelle Morais de Sa e Silva Part 4. Diffusion, Travelling Reforms and Policyscapes 17. Imagining Globalisation: Educational Policyscapes Stephen Carney 18. Policy Tourism and Policy Borrowing in Education: A Trans-Atlantic Case Study Geoff Whitty 19. Flowing Discourses and Border Crossing: The Slogan of `Respect for Diversity' in Latin America Jason Beech and Emmanuel Lista 20. Facilitating Transfer: International Organisations as Central Nodes for Policy Diffusion Anja P. Jakobi Conclusions 21. Standardisation and Legitimacy: Two Central Concepts in Research on Educational Borrowing and Lending Florian Waldow

Policy borrowing and lending in education

Research on educational policy borrowing has mostly focused on explicit transfer processes, often highlighting how explicit reference to the international has served legitimatory purposes in the borrowing country. In contrast, this paper focuses on ‘silent’ borrowing, i.e. non‐acknowledged processes of policy transfer. The paper argues that keeping processes of policy transfer ‘silent’ can also follow a logic of legitimation, depending on which patterns of legitimation are favoured in a political culture. Three propositions are argued in the paper, using the case of Sweden as an empirical example: (1) educational policy‐making in Sweden has been heavily influenced by international discursive currents; this, however, has largely been left unacknowledged by policy‐makers; (2) The educational research community has largely followed the official image of policy‐making in its exclusive focus on the national context; and (3) Silent borrowing was so prevalent in Sweden for a long time because political culture w...

Florian Waldow

Papers

World Yearbook of Education 2012 : Policy Borrowing and Lending in Education

Rethinking the Pattern of External Policy Referencing: Media Discourses over the "Asian Tigers" PISA Success in Australia, Germany and South Korea.

What PISA Did and Did Not Do: Germany after the ‘PISA-shock’

Policy borrowing and lending in education

Undeclared imports: silent borrowing in educational policy‐making and research in Sweden