Anne Homme

Policy Tools and Institutional Change: Comparing education policies in Norway, Sweden and England

The main question raised in this article is how educational reforms reflect convergence or divergence between the English, the Norwegian and the Swedish educational systems. We claim that the answer depends on how convergence is conceptualised. At the level of decisions on tools, the countries seem more similar than two decades ago. However, to explain policy changes our analytical perspective must be broadened. We demonstrate how values based on different welfare state models, political economies and different types of institutional evolution can explain processes of change in education over the last decades. In paying attention to broader processes of change, a certain degree of variation occurs. The countries seem to develop according to nationally specific trajectories: England has strengthened the liberal and elitist values of education while social democratic values of comprehensiveness and equality have impact on the aims and effects of policy tools in Norway and Sweden.

Path-dependent Implementation of the European Qualifications Framework in Education. A Comparison of Norway, Germany and England

Abstract By comparing the implementation of the European Qualifications Framework (EQF) in three education systems, this article advances the understanding of implementation processes and outcomes. The analytical framework combines concepts of norm diffusion with institutional, political and practical dimensions of implementation. Although a certain degree of norm diffusion is revealed, we find a variety of points of correspondence between national problem definitions and the EQF, varying levels of stakeholder involvement, as well as national institutional robustness against full EQF implementation. The national implementations represent different mind-sets and signify translation processes that reflect continuation of established institutional practices.

Educational Reforms and Marketization in Norway--A Challenge to the Tradition of the Social Democratic, Inclusive School?.

A social democratic, egalitarian public sector and a corporatist political economy have been strong, distinctive and enduring characteristics of Norwegian education. However, this article demonstrates that the education sector has experienced a period of rapid and extensive implementation of New Public Management (NPM) reforms and post-NPM reforms the past 15 years. In contrast to other scholars, who claim that NPM is not contested but rather consistently promoted and maintained by centre-left governments, we argue that from 2005 such governments have added new ideas of government and implemented new methods of steering education in line with post-NPM reforms. To regain central capacity and control and to compensate for the negative effects of NPM on social inclusion and equality, new measures for input control were adopted, and the negative effects of marketization were to some degree moderated by later educational reforms.

Increasing parental participation at school level: a ‘citizen to serve’ or a ‘customer to steer’?

ABSTRACT Collaboration between schools and parents has become increasingly prominent on the political agenda in Norway. Schools are obliged to promote parent–school cooperation in accordance with parents’ rights as stakeholders in education. This article explores the governing strategies of seven primary or lower-secondary schools that have taken initiatives to improve parent–school collaboration. The main intention is to explore how New Public Management (NPM) measures (such as market values, decentralization, competition, and output control) and New Public Service (NPS) tools (including coalition building and citizens’ involvement) are reproduced at the local level when parent–school collaboration is put on the agenda. The analysis shows that street-level discretion at school level implies considerable uncertainty around the achievement of policy objectives. Different opinions on parents as a target group seem prominent in explaining how frontline workers act and strategize. Two distinct collaboration strategies are identified: serving and steering. The serving strategy is based on a linear partnership by making use of local knowledge in order to reach parents and enable their participation. The steering strategy is characterized by non-linear relationships with parents and certain steering mechanisms by routinizing collaboration activities, modifying goals for parent–school collaboration and rationing school services to parents.

Innovative government initiatives to prevent upper secondary school dropout: organisational learning and institutional change at the local level

This paper investigates how a specific public innovation in Norway, the New Possibilities Strategy, has influenced the implementation of anti-dropout measures at local education authority levels. In Norway, approximately 100% of all 16-year-olds start upper secondary education. However, about one-third of the students does not complete or graduate within a five-year period. Dropout rates have received increasing political attention as a societal problem, resulting in a number of different policy strategies. The paper aims to reduce the lack of knowledge on how innovations in education may contribute to solving an apparently stable educational problem, by enhancing learning outcomes and reducing the number of young people that do not complete and graduate from upper secondary education. Utilising a framework for government and public sector innovation and implementation, together with concepts of institutional change, will give a new understanding of how a public innovative strategy influences organisational learning.