Educational monitoring and reporting as governance instruments for evidence-based education policy

Education and education policy have been set up and run under the control of the nation-state since the origins of modern education systems. Thus, national education systems have been exposed to strong political and normative control from the very beginning. The analytical perspective on issues concerning political regulation and governance of education systems was for a long time state centered and norm oriented. Even if this is still true to a varying extent in many countries, we recently witness a shift in the examination of issues concerning educational governance. This chapter examines educational governance with respect to the topical discourse in Germany and identifies significant actors, governance instruments, and governance practices. It points out that the appearance of new instruments of educational governance coincides with and supports an emerging governance model in the educational field: evidence-based education policy. Drawing on empirical findings from an international comparative project at the University of Tuebingen,11The international comparative project was partly funded by the Hans-Böckler Foundation. The project goals were to reconstruct the concept of lifelong learning with respect to its political and empirical aspects and to examine its implementation into national and international monitoring and reporting systems on education and training. The project was based on the theoretical approaches of path-dependent development and actor-centred institutionalism both emanating from political science. Using this theoretical framework, OECD's and EU's educational policies and activities with respect to monitoring lifelong learning have been analyzed and compared to demonstrate their adoption among differently structured national systems (Germany, Finland, and Greece) and to comment on their influence upon the evaluation, design, and governance of national education systems. The methods applied were document analysis, expert interviews, and meta-analysis of educational monitoring and reporting systems. Germany, the chapter focuses on educational monitoring and reporting as new instruments of educational governance, reveals their impact, and claims that the new governance instruments are based on knowledge and expertise.