The early school leaver count as a policy instrument in EU governance: the un/intended effects of an indicator

Abstract

The early school leaver count as a policy instrument in EU governance: The un/intended effects of an indicator The EU has embraced the use of indicators as policy instruments for achieving common aims. One of the indicators, "early school leaver" (ESL), depicts the proportion of young people leaving education and training prematurely. Initially defined as an education policy indicator, it has been transformed into a performance indicator measuring the targets of the current Europe 2020 strategy. In this article, we examine how the indicator works as a policy instrument at different levels of governance applying the conceptual tools provided by the policy instrumentation approach to unpack the components, pinpoint the political effects, and reveal the power relations they produce. Thus challenging the taken-for-grantedness of comparison as a way of knowing we have intended to shift the focus of discussion concerning the role of large-scale comparisons in education towards more productive directions: moving from problematisation and deconstruction of comparison to engaging with processes of measurement. This is the accepted manuscript of the article, which has been published in International Studies in Sociology of Education. 2019.

Adult Education as a Means to Social Inclusion in Nordic Welfare States: Denmark, Finland and Sweden

“…In addition, there is a need to pay attention to the specific needs of those young adults who have not succeeded in their initial education but have interrupted education due to multiple reasons. Even if these young people may become defined in statistics as "early school leavers" or "school-drop-outs" by the indicators that are used in policy-making, the system does not identify or specify their often manifold life-situations that have caused interrupting education (Kuusipalo and Alastalo 2019). As a complex phenomenon, early school leaving is not well enough understood; and thus despite multiple policies and programmes tackling the problem it is not easily solved (Smyth and Hattam 2004).…”