“…The global education reform model Various multi-lateral educational organisations such as the IEA, UNESCO, World Bank and OECD promote a package of reforms in school leadership, governance and autonomy (Grimmett, 2018;Klees, 2008;Sahlberg, 2016;Shahjahan, 2016;Verger et al, 2018b), which have been termed the global education reform model (GERM; Sahlberg, 2006). Among other prescriptions GERM proposes that school leaders and teachers should have high levels of autonomy, schools should be responsible for staff training and development and that schools should be accountable to parents (Sahlberg, 2016); PISA data have been used to justify such reforms in various Asian jurisdictions, including Hong Kong (Adamson et al, 2017), Japan (Kimura and Tatsuno, 2017;Tasaki, 2017), Shanghai (Ngok, 2007;Sellar and Lingard, 2013;Tan, 2012Tan, , 2017 and Singapore (Lee et al, 2014;Tan, 2011).…”