This paper examines the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), which has become a major and influential component of the OECD's educational work. This measure of comparative performance of educational systems of member and other nations is based on tests commissioned by the OECD. The paper discusses the role of the OECD in establishing the 'comparative' turn and also describes PISA, its management and effects. It provides three examples of the impact of PISA in Finland, Germany and the United Kingdom before moving the focus to its impacts at the transnational level, through an examination of how key European policy actors see PISA and its effects. The paper concludes that PISA, through its direct impact on national education systems in Europe and beyond, has become an indirect, but nonetheless influential tool of the new political technology of governing the European education space by numbers.

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This paper draws on a comparative study of the growth of data and the changing governance of education in Europe. It looks at data and the 'making' of a European Education Policy Space, with a focus on 'policy brokers' in translating and mediating demands for data from the European Commission. It considers the ways in which such brokers use data production pressures from the Commission to justify policy directions in their national systems. The systems under consideration are Finland, Sweden, and England and Scotland. The paper focuses on the rise of Quality Assurance and Evaluation mechanisms and processes as providing the overarching rationale for data demands, both for accountability and performance improvement purposes. The theoretical resources that are drawn on to enable interpretation of the data are those that suggest a move from governing to governance and the use of comparison as a form of governance.

Over recent years, research has shown the ways that national governments have seemingly ceded some of their autonomy in education policy development to international organisations (IOs) in the context of globalisation and one of its conduits, Europeanisation. This article develops the idea that IOs, and particularly the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), have had significant policy influence within the context of education policy development in the European education space. The article focuses on an examination of the OECD's Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) and the more recent Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) in order to discuss processes of problematisation and normalisation of the notions of 'skills' and 'competencies' by the two major European IOs, the OECD and the European Commission. It examines the ways both concepts have turned into a policy problem in need of soft governance through new data, standards and policy solutions.

Through a sociological analysis of the knowledge and actors that have become central to international assessments, the paper focuses on the processes that influence the production of shared narratives and agendas, adopting the position that their existence is not organic, but rather the product of undertakings that often fabricate and manage, rather than strive for 'real' consensus. The paper suggests that limiting the analysis to the role of travel and exchanges of experts and policy-makers in the making of policy is, in fact, the construction of an 'ideal-type' of an international policy-making world. Recent research on these encounters suggests that one needs to focus on actors' conflict and struggles, rather than processes of 'collective puzzling'. Using the concept of 'political work', as well as elements of Bourdieu's field theory, the paper shows the ways that international comparative testing in the field of education has not only offered policy-makers with much needed data to govern, but has in fact almost fused the realms of knowledge and policy; expertise and the selling of undisputed, universal policy solutions have now drifted into one single entity and function.

This article focuses on the changing nature of education governance in Europe. It looks at the shifting discourses and policy practices in the ways in which the European Commission has aligned itself to education and discusses the reasons for what is presented as a substantial shift in the tools and resources for governing the European education space. The article suggests that, alongside other significant developments, the knowledge economy has had two significant effects on education governance in Europe: first, a rapid change of policy discourse and practice, moving from constructing a European 'culture' to a Europe of learning governed by numbers; and second, education is slowly moving from the margins of European governance to the very centre of its policy making. The article discusses the new technologies of governance that have powered this shift and makes a case for the significance of recognising and studying them further. Constructing Europe: from Adonnino (1985) to Maastricht (1992) Cooperation in the field of education in Europe started as early as the 1970s with the first Community action programme (1975). The first 10 years of its implementation (1976-84) established the processes of the collaboration through transnational pilot projects, study visits and exchanges of information and experience. These developments engendered a form of cooperation within the Community framework, which, in a way, was the first application of the principle of subsidiarity before it was defined and the first demonstration that it was possible, in a Community that was on the path to integration, to cooperate in areas Shifting Technologies of Education Governance 209 that were fundamental to the structure of the nation states while fully respecting the diversity of national situations and the powers of Member States. (Pépin, 2006, p. 25) Education, although on the cusp of the Community's broader agenda, was paving the way for integration, not only on the symbolic and discursive plane, but also through cooperation at a policy level, mobilising networks, associations and a number of education players across Europe. The second half of the 1980s would be marked by the emergence of major Community programmes in higher education and vocational training (Pépin, 2006).[2] The Erasmus programme, named after the widely travelled philosopher, theologian and humanist Erasmus of Rotterdam, became the most well known of all and perhaps the symbol of European cooperation in education in the minds of university students across Europe. In 1983, the European Community heads of government signed the 'Solemn Declaration on European Union' in Stuttgart, inviting Member States to work together in the field of culture in order to promote European identity (Commission of the European Communities, 1983)-these were information, education, audiovisual policy and the arts. A year later, through the Television without Frontiers directive, it was suggested that 'European unification will only be achieved if Europeans want it. Europeans will only want ...

This paper draws on interview data from national policy makers in England, Scotland and the European Commission to illustrate differences in the referencing of ‘Europe’ in education policy‐making in England and Scotland in order to highlight the emergent complexity of post‐devolution policy‐making in education through a focus on relations and interactions with Europe, as expressed in the negotiation and development of performance data systems. We suggest that policy‐makers in England reference global influences, rather than Europe, while policy‐makers in Scotland reference Europe in order to project a new positioning of Scotland in closer alignment with Europe. Europeanisation in education thus produces differing policy responses from closely aligned, indeed, in the case of England and Scotland, contiguous policy spaces. Thus the paper seeks to contribute to the literature on ‘travelling’ education policy and its ‘local’ mediation and to connect the development of devolution and the changing policy space of education in Europe.

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