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This study aims to fill a gap in our understanding of the relationship between two major topics in educational research: higher education choices and students' conceptions of employability. It explores, first, the balance between vocational calling, instrumental considerations and chance in subject choice and, second, the relation between vocational calling and two alternative conceptions of employability (thin and thick) articulated in the article. Using survey data from 'Education' students in Spain, the results show an association between a strong vocational calling in subject choice and a 'thick' conception of employability that goes beyond credential performance and underlines the importance of an economy of experience. By contrast, students with lower vocational calling adopt a narrower ('thin') conception of employability, based on credential performance. The consequences of these results for theory and for practice are discussed, highlighting the need to better acknowledge the role of interests, and not only skills, in the employability agenda.

This article reframes the debate on the validation of non-formal and informal learning by connecting it to the sociology of education and curriculum studies literatures. Building on these literatures, the article differentiates between four types of validation: (a) covert and implicit, (b) covert but embedded, (c) overt and functional and (d) overt and institutional. Based on this classification, I problematise the widespread view that there is little validation in formal education. Instead, I argue, much validation takes place in formal education, but it is mostly covert and goes unnoticed. Validation is a common practice when it contributes to the performance metrics of formal education institutions, when it enables institutions to take credit for learning that occurs outside of them, when the non-formal and informal learning that is validated aligns with their established curricula and when it does not require changes in pedagogy or assessment practices. Validation in formal education is not so much characterised by rejection or disregard as by selectivity and instrumentality.

The link between higher education and employment is central to the understanding of social stratification and social mobility. We use three theories to analyse the importance of education and credentials in recruitment decisions in European graduate labour markets: human capital (HC), network capital (NC) and reputational capital (RC) theory. Latent class modelling was applied to data from over 5,000 European private-sector companies to allow segmentation. The results identify four groups of companies using different HC, NC and RC mixes in the recruitment process. A 'complementary effect' was found between these forms of capital at the time of recruitment. Company classes, however, vary in their emphasis on different types of capital according to their characteristics. The article further contributes to the literature by exploring how national political economies relate to segmentation patterns, and questioning some of the central tenets of the Varieties of Capitalism literature.

Over the last decades, there has been increasing interest in the topic of international student mobility (ISM). However, there is surprisingly little analysis of the ways in which different characteristics and types of short-term ISM or the importance of host education systems and labour markets may affect early career outcomes of formerly mobile graduates. Therefore, in this study we explore, first, the relationship between participation in ISM at the Bachelor and Master level and graduates' wages and the duration of education-to-work transitions. Second, we investigate variations in ISM labour market outcomes according to the type of mobility: study, internships, or combinations of both. Third, we examine the relationship between labour market outcomes of formerly mobile students and the country of destination's position in higher education international prestige hierarchies and labour market competitiveness. We use the Dutch National Alumni Survey 2015, a representative survey of higher education graduates in the Netherlands, conducted 1.5 years after graduation. Before controlling for selection into ISM, the results suggest the existence of labour market returns to ISM and that the heterogeneity of ISM experiences matters as labour market outcomes vary according to the level of study, the type of mobility, and the positioning of the country of destination in international prestige hierarchies. However, after controlling for selection into ISM through propensity score matching, the differences in early career outcomes between formerly mobile and non-mobile graduates disappear, suggesting that they cannot be causally attributed to their ISM experience. We explain these results with reference to the characteristics of the Dutch education system and labour market, where restricted possibilities for upward vertical mobility limit returns to ISM in the local labour market., Author(s): Christof Van Mol [sup.1] , Kim Caarls [sup.2] , Manuel Souto-Otero [sup.3] Author Affiliations: (1) grid.12295.3d, 0000 0001 0943 3265, Department of Sociology, Tilburg University, , Warandelaan 2, 5037 [...]

A major focus of sociological research is on the role of the credential as a 'currency of opportunity', mediating the relationship between education and occupational destinations. However, the labour market has largely remained a 'black box' in sociological and education policy studies. This article draws on 'big data' from over 21,000,000 job adverts to explore how employers in the UK describe job requirements, with particular reference to the role of credentials. It challenges existing theories premised upon the notion that higher levels of formal education determine individual (dis)advantage in the competition for jobs. Although they have different views of the relationship between credentials, opportunity and efficiency, these theories assume that credentials largely determine occupational hiring. Our analysis suggests that formal academic credentials play a relatively minor differentiating role in the UK labour market, as the majority of employer's place greater emphasis on 'job readiness'. This raises a number of issues for sociological and policy analysis, including the future role of credentials in the (re)production of educational and labour market inequalities. Methodologically, the article highlights how the use of big data can contribute to the analysis of education, skills and the labour market.

This article explores the relationship between education, training and the single market, focusing on the market for the production of policy evaluations in the areas of education and training, culture and youth of the European Commission. Two questions are addressed: the first question relates to the geographical distribution of the organisations that deliver policy evaluation services to the European Commission ('Commission') in those areas; and the second relates to the nature of the ideas for policy development put forward in the evaluations examined. Based on information gathered from 23 evaluations carried out between 2012 and 2016 (in particular, the circa 300 recommendations they included), the analysis reveals that although the Commission relied on competitive processes for the award of those evaluations, competition was somewhat restricted: there is a marked dominance of a limited number of countries as the powerhouses for the Commission's education policy evaluation. In relation to the second question, and by contrast to other policy spaces, the analysis provided little evidence of unfettered penetration of private sector 'ideological repertoires', lexicons and sensitivities into the European policy evaluation space.

The relationship between students and higher education is seen to have become increasingly transactional. We approach the study of the student–HE relationship in a novel way, by focusing on students' behaviour post-university, rather than on student narratives. Conceptually, the article builds on multidimensional views of student engagement and the differentiation between psychological transactional contracts – where students who achieve better academic results are more likely to donate – and relational contracts – where students donate more following engagement in social experiences. Making use of longitudinal data on donation behaviour from over 50,000 alumni from an English university over two decades, we find that while students who get better degree outcomes are more likely to donate, the association between participation in social experiences and donations is much stronger. This questions prevalent transactional models of HE and underlines the limitations of purely consumerist views of the relation between students and higher education institutions, even in the marketized UK context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines, primarily based on large-scale survey data, the functionalist proposition that HE customers, students and employers, demand rankings to be able to adopt informed decisions on where to study and who to recruit respectively. This is contrasted to a Weberian "conflict" perspective on rankings in which positional competition is key. The article concludes that rankings are better understood as instruments in positional competition for a minority of global players. They are a crucial source of information only for particular groups of international students and employers. The empirical analysis further suggests that the state of economic development, cultural aspects and the availability of top-ranked institutions in the home HE system are important factors in explaining differences in the importance of rankings across countries. We conclude by arguing that national governments and HE institutions should re-visit the assumption of a wide-spread importance of rankings for students and employers.

"Delayed participation" in higher education (HE) is an increasingly important feature of modern HE systems in many countries. Despite this, surprisingly little empirical research has been undertaken seeking to better understand levels of delayed adult participation in HE across Europe. The present article responds to this gap by analysing country-level data on delayed adult participation in HE across 15 European countries and by modelling associations between participation levels and a range of theoretically derived economic, social, demographic and systemic factors. The findings suggest that there is considerably more cross-national variation in levels of adult delayed participation and that prevalent typologies of HE, such as Trow's, fail to give recognition to the importance of delayed participation. The modelling work finds that social and demographic factors exhibit relatively strong associations with delayed participation in HE. This questions the pre-eminence of economic factors within much of the academic literature, policy discourse and policy activity.

How the labour market operates in an increasingly digital context has remained under-researched. The article explains why the digital labour market is in urgent need of study, as digitalisation transforms how labour markets are structured and shape the competition for jobs. Digital tools give job seekers new ways of describing themselves and give employers access to new sources of data on candidates, in real-time and at low cost. We identify three dimensions of digital labour markets that distinguish them from earlier 'analogue' models – Information, Control and Engagement (ICE). We explain how changes in these dimensions contribute to a restructuring of the recruitment process, and outline implications for theories on the education–work relationship and for the analysis of social opportunity and inequalities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Increasing participation in the Erasmus study abroad program in Europe is a clear policy goal, and student-reported barriers and drivers are regularly monitored. This article uses student survey data from seven countries to examine the extent to which student-level barriers can explain the considerable cross-country variation in Erasmus participation rates. We observe remarkable similarities between countries with respect to how barriers cluster for students and what barriers characterize non-participants compared with participants. The study confirms that home ties and lack of interest are most robust predictors for non-participation. Data on student-level barriers and motivations, however, give surprisingly little information to explain why students in some countries are considerably more active participants. For further understanding, we need to study more how national and institutional policies and context influence students' decision making and help them overcome perceived barriers to mobility.

The article argues that current discussions about governance through data in education can be fruitfully extended through: (1) the establishment of connections with wider debates about the role of commensuration processes and governmentality in the recreation of education systems; (2) greater emphasis on the "artefacts" through which data--increasingly in the form of digital data--is collected, displayed and retrieved; and (3) the strategies of alignment and resistance that social actors adopt to deal with the increase in data availability and capacity for the automated interrogation of that data. The article concludes that these artefacts and strategies are providing a wide set of "active" social actors with new resources in, and arenas for, their struggles for economic as well as social advancement, processes of self-monitoring and also, crucially, of self-formation. The article focuses on the interplay and tensions between governments and bureaucracies, private companies, education institutions, and various types of "active" individuals (the individual customer, the individual manager and the individual worker) in the process of surveillance and recreation of education through digital data.

This article explores (1) the degree to which immigrants can be considered dominant groups in the area of validation of non-formal and informal learning and are subject to specific validation measures in 33 European countries; (2) whether country clusters can be identified within Europe with regard to the dominance of immigrants in the area of validation; and (3) whether validation systems are likely to lead to the inclusion of immigrants or foster a process of "devaluation" of their skills and competences in their host countries. Based on the "European Inventory on validation of non-formal and informal learning" project (chiefly its 2014 update) as well as a review of 124 EU-funded (Lifelong Learning Programme and European Social Fund) validation projects, the authors present the following findings: (1) in the majority of European countries, immigrants are not a dominant group in the area of validation. (2) In terms of country clusters, Central European and Nordic countries tend to consider immigrants a dominant target group for validation to a greater extent than Southern and Eastern European countries. (3) Finally, few initiatives aim to ensure that immigrants' skills and competences are not devalued in their host country, and those initiatives which are in place benefit particularly those defined as "highly skilled" individuals, on the basis of their productive potential. There is, thus, a "low road" and a "high road" to validation, leading to a process of polarisation in the recognition of the skills and competences of immigrants.

This article explores the initial results produced by the European Commission's "better regulation agenda", which aims to stimulate productivity and employment, on the use of evidence and its potential to enhance democratic governance. The article finds that implausible rational models of policy making dictate the ways in which the Commission is expected to conceive its programmes, and these models are adopted to legitimise rather than inform decisions. This negatively affects the processes by which interventions are designed and their social credibility. These processes are illustrated through an analysis of EU regulatory impact assessments in lifelong learning, culture, youth and citizenship during 2002-07.

In this article, we look at the barriers to international student mobility, with particular reference to the European Erasmus program. Much is known about factors that support or limit student mobility, but very few studies have made comparisons between participants and nonparticipants. Making use of a large data set on Erasmus and non-Erasmus students in seven European countries, we look at the barriers for participation. Results reveal the overall impact of financial barriers but suggest that it is personal barriers that help us to better differentiate between Erasmus and non-Erasmus students. The analysis suggests a two-pronged approach to increase participation: one focusing on better information and communication and the other stressing the benefits of Erasmus mobility. (Contains 3 tables and 1 note.)

The paper analyses continuing vocational education and training policies in the UK in the period 1979-2010 with a focus on regulation and governance. It reviews Conservative and Labour party policies to ascertain their principal components and explore their evolution through time. More specifically, the paper reviews the paradoxical existence of three seemingly opposed accounts of recent dynamics in the management of continuing vocational training: one that sees it moving inexorably to the political right, one that emphasises the singularity of social-democratic policies and one that focuses on the difficulties of any movement, towards the political left or right. The paper concludes that while there has been a degree of convergence between right and left, differences remained in terms of their favoured institutional decision-making structures. However, Labour played a two-level game, which combined the establishment of new channels for dialogue and coordination with key stakeholders, with a limited scope for meaningful stakeholder input to policy. (Contains 3 notes.)

This study aims to fill a gap in our understanding of the relationship between two major topics in educational research: higher education choices and students' conceptions of employability. It explores, first, the balance between vocational calling, instrumental considerations and chance in subject choice and, second, the relation between vocational calling and two alternative conceptions of employability (thin and thick) articulated in the article. Using survey data from 'Education' students in Spain, the results show an association between a strong vocational calling in subject choice and a 'thick' conception of employability that goes beyond credential performance and underlines the importance of an economy of experience. By contrast, students with lower vocational calling adopt a narrower ('thin') conception of employability, based on credential performance. The consequences of these results for theory and for practice are discussed, highlighting the need to better acknowledge the role of interests, and not only skills, in the employability agenda. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Coherence of national education and training systems is increasingly tabled in European policy debates. Leaning on literature about the emergence and consolidation of national education systems, this article explores the rationale for VET reforms in Norway and Spain by scrutinising attempts to strengthen the coherence of their VET systems. Coherence has been sought through the unification of different strands of vocational education; initial, continuing and active labour market policies (what we call "horizontal coherence") and the mainstreaming of VET curricular elements; plus the systematisation of VET practices across educational levels ("vertical coherence"). While both countries looked for coherence, their motivations, how they operationalised the term and the emphasis of their actions differed substantially. Spain has experienced a move from the three largely unrelated strands into a more unified system; Norway from a fragile VET system to the availability of more VET courses and apprenticeship arrangements at all educational levels. (Contains 1 figure, 1 table, and 2 notes.)

This article elaborates a model of social democratic and conservative discourses in relation to access, financing, management, and results of higher education. The model is contrasted with the position of the Conservative Party and the Labour Party in the United Kingdom from the late 1970s to 2010 as expressed in their electoral manifestos. The findings show how the ideological differences between parties diminished over time, although not uniformly across themes. Explanations for this trend are provided through examination of the role of electoral institutions and "median voter" and "political partisanship" arguments. (Contains 5 footnotes and 1 table.)

The paper contributes to the debate on the implementation of policy reforms developing a typology for implementation based on the initial agreement on means and goals at the time of reform design. It is argued that the volume and nature of knowledge gathering and stakeholder involvement required to gain approval of a policy and avoid the possibility of implementation failure should differ depending on the initial level of agreement, providing thus a more nuanced view on the importance of these factors than previous work. The argument is illustrated through a case study of the 2004 reform of the Mexican Technical Baccalaureate. This case study shows how knowledge gathering and stakeholder involvement affected both the design and implementation of a reform process and how political, social and cultural factors shape reform processes. (Contains 1 table.)

The paper aims to contribute to the European education policy literature through an analysis of what I refer to as "discretional policies", which are now instrumentally used by the EU but that have so far been largely overlooked by this literature, and to the literature on transparency of qualifications. The paper argues, first, that the education policy literature--as other policy literatures--has overlooked individual "discretional policies", to which greater attention should now be paid as they are employed by EU institutions to bypass Member States in particularly difficult policy areas and to try to address their often alleged detachment from citizens. Second, the paper looks at the crucial aspect of the effectiveness of discretionary policies and their consequences for individuals and Member States, with reference to a case study of the Europass framework in education and training. (Contains 1 table.)

This paper analyses the relationship between education, meritocracy and redistribution. It first questions the meritocratic ideal highlighting how it relates to normative expectations that do not hold fully neither in their logic nor in practice. It then complements the literature on persistent inequalities by focusing on the opportunities for change created by current trends in the economy and in social aspirations. As the meritocratic argument that education is strongly linked to certain rewards in the labour market comes under pressure, increasing social dissatisfaction with education and skills wastage could be expected, as already noted in part of the political economy literature. This literature, however, has tended to conclude from such observations that educational expansion cannot deliver equality. The paper contributes to the debate by focusing on the opportunities created by current trends for the reorganisation of the relationship between education, the economy and society.

The article addresses the way in which EU policy-making operates, explains the relevance of "lifelong learning" for the European Commission and analyses the mechanisms by which the Commission has advanced policy-making in education and training since the Lisbon Summit. The article reviews in particular the alleged lack of effectiveness of the Open Method of Coordination in education and, second, the notion that the EU advances "slowly and persistently" in its acquisition of competences in this area. (Contains 1 figure and 1 note.)

The link between higher education and employment is central to the understanding of social stratification and social mobility. We use three theories to analyse the importance of education and credentials in recruitment decisions in European graduate labour markets: human capital (HC), network capital (NC) and reputational capital (RC) theory. Latent class modelling was applied to data from over 5,000 European private-sector companies to allow segmentation. The results identify four groups of companies using different HC, NC and RC mixes in the recruitment process. A 'complementary effect' was found between these forms of capital at the time of recruitment. Company classes, however, vary in their emphasis on different types of capital according to their characteristics. The article further contributes to the literature by exploring how national political economies relate to segmentation patterns, and questioning some of the central tenets of the Varieties of Capitalism literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A major focus of sociological research is on the role of the credential as a 'currency of opportunity', mediating the relationship between education and occupational destinations. However, the labour market has largely remained a 'black box' in sociological and education policy studies. This article draws on 'big data' from over 21,000,000 job adverts to explore how employers in the UK describe job requirements, with particular reference to the role of credentials. It challenges existing theories premised upon the notion that higher levels of formal education determine individual (dis)advantage in the competition for jobs. Although they have different views of the relationship between credentials, opportunity and efficiency, these theories assume that credentials largely determine occupational hiring. Our analysis suggests that formal academic credentials play a relatively minor differentiating role in the UK labour market, as the majority of employer's place greater emphasis on 'job readiness'. This raises a number of issues for sociological and policy analysis, including the future role of credentials in the (re)production of educational and labour market inequalities. Methodologically, the article highlights how the use of big data can contribute to the analysis of education, skills and the labour market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the relationship between education, training and the single market, focusing on the market for the production of policy evaluations in the areas of education and training, culture and youth of the European Commission. Two questions are addressed: the first question relates to the geographical distribution of the organisations that deliver policy evaluation services to the European Commission ('Commission') in those areas; and the second relates to the nature of the ideas for policy development put forward in the evaluations examined. Based on information gathered from 23 evaluations carried out between 2012 and 2016 (in particular, the circa 300 recommendations they included), the analysis reveals that although the Commission relied on competitive processes for the award of those evaluations, competition was somewhat restricted: there is a marked dominance of a limited number of countries as the powerhouses for the Commission's education policy evaluation. In relation to the second question, and by contrast to other policy spaces, the analysis provided little evidence of unfettered penetration of private sector 'ideological repertoires', lexicons and sensitivities into the European policy evaluation space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines, primarily based on large-scale survey data, the functionalist proposition that HE customers, students and employers, demand rankings to be able to adopt informed decisions on where to study and who to recruit respectively. This is contrasted to a Weberian ‘conflict’ perspective on rankings in which positional competition is key. The article concludes that rankings are better understood as instruments in positional competition for a minority of global players. They are a crucial source of information only for particular groups of international students and employers. The empirical analysis further suggests that the state of economic development, cultural aspects and the availability of top-ranked institutions in the home HE system are important factors in explaining differences in the importance of rankings across countries. We conclude by arguing that national governments and HE institutions should re-visit the assumption of a wide-spread importance of rankings for students and employers. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article contributes to a better understanding of the social acceptance of the investment model of volunteering, that is, the view that volunteering can enhance employability through the development of professionally relevant knowledge and competences. Based on the analysis of Eurobarometer data, the article explores (1) the prevalence of the investment model of volunteering in the EU-27 countries and the extent to which this varies between individuals with the potential to make hiring decisions (IHP) and the general population, (2) the demographic factors associated with the acceptance of this model, (3) whether national differences in the acceptance of the model are better explained by variation between countries or cross-national demographic factors and (4) whether national institutional characteristics related to the competitiveness of the national labour market, the specificity of the education system, the strength of the continuing vocational training system and cultural factors influence acceptance. The results show that the acceptance of the investment model of volunteering is relatively widespread in Europe and that variation in the acceptance of the investment model among the general population is driven by both individual (age and class) and between-country differences (related to the strength of training for unemployed people), but variation is more attributable to differences between countries than cross-national demographic groups. IHP, on the other hand, tend to be more homogenous in their acceptance of the investment model than the general population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims to contribute to a better understanding of the role of youth organisations in enhancing the employability of young people through the development of different forms of capital: human, social and psychological. Instead of asking questions about who access extra-curricular activities that may provide young people with positional advantages in the labour market and the class biases that arise in access, the article explores whether the benefits obtained from participation vary by socio-economic background. We make use of the Youth organisations and employability (YOE) database, which contains data from over 1000 young people in more than 40 European countries on the effects of involvement in youth organisations on different forms of capital: human, social and psychological. We find positive effects of involvement on all three forms of capital. The analysis suggests that the characteristics of the involvement in youth organisations are better predictors of its outcomes than are personal characteristics, and find no significant effects of socio-economic background on the reported benefits of participation in our sample. Policy implications are derived from these findings, calling for greater policy support to increase opportunities for the involvement of young people from lower socio-economic backgrounds in youth organisations and for better informing young people of the benefits of sustained involvement with youth organisations. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Increasing participation in the Erasmus study abroad program in Europe is a clear policy goal, and student-reported barriers and drivers are regularly monitored. This article uses student survey data from seven countries to examine the extent to which student-level barriers can explain the considerable cross-country variation in Erasmus participation rates. We observe remarkable similarities between countries with respect to how barriers cluster for students and what barriers characterize non-participants compared with participants. The study confirms that home ties and lack of interest are most robust predictors for non-participation. Data on student-level barriers and motivations, however, give surprisingly little information to explain why students in some countries are considerably more active participants. For further understanding, we need to study more how national and institutional policies and context influence students’ decision making and help them overcome perceived barriers to mobility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article argues that current discussions about governance through data in education can be fruitfully extended through: (1) the establishment of connections with wider debates about the role of commensuration processes and governmentality in the recreation of education systems; (2) greater emphasis on the ‘artefacts’ through which data – increasingly in the form of digital data – is collected, displayed and retrieved; and (3) the strategies of alignment and resistance that social actors adopt to deal with the increase in data availability and capacity for the automated interrogation of that data. The article concludes that these artefacts and strategies are providing a wide set of ‘active’ social actors with new resources in, and arenas for, their struggles for economic as well as social advancement, processes of self-monitoring and also, crucially, of self-formation. The article focuses on the interplay and tensions between governments and bureaucracies, private companies, education institutions, and various types of ‘active’ individuals (the individual customer, the individual manager and the individual worker) in the process of surveillance and recreation of education through digital data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper aims to contribute to the sociological analysis of power through the study of the structuration and retrieval of information on the internet. The main argument of the paper is that, paradoxically, in an age when the availability of information has increased exponentially, there is a risk that diversity in the use of sources for the construction of knowledge becomes more restricted than in the past and that information search moves towards greater objectification and centralisation. Knowledge management systems increasingly shape the ways in which we think about the questions we ask and how we try to answer them, which raises fundamental and largely neglected questions for education policy. The paper illustrates these trends with particular reference to the use of Google and Google Scholar. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper analyses continuing vocational education and training policies in the UK in the period 1979–2010 with a focus on regulation and governance. It reviews Conservative and Labour party policies to ascertain their principal components and explore their evolution through time. More specifically, the paper reviews the paradoxical existence of three seemingly opposed accounts of recent dynamics in the management of continuing vocational training: one that sees it moving inexorably to the political right, one that emphasises the singularity of social-democratic policies and one that focuses on the difficulties of any movement, towards the political left or right. The paper concludes that while there has been a degree of convergence between right and left, differences remained in terms of their favoured institutional decision-making structures. However, Labour played a two-level game, which combined the establishment of new channels for dialogue and coordination with key stakeholders, with a limited scope for meaningful stakeholder input to policy. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses various reports within the issue on topics including development in education policy, learning outcomes approach and educational transparency.

Coherence of national education and training systems is increasingly tabled in European policy debates. Leaning on literature about the emergence and consolidation of national education systems, this article explores the rationale for VET reforms in Norway and Spain by scrutinising attempts to strengthen the coherence of their VET systems. Coherence has been sought through the unification of different strands of vocational education; initial, continuing and active labour market policies (what we call ‘horizontal coherence’) and the mainstreaming of VET curricular elements; plus the systematisation of VET practices across educational levels (‘vertical coherence’). While both countries looked for coherence, their motivations, how they operationalised the term and the emphasis of their actions differed substantially. Spain has experienced a move from the three largely unrelated strands into a more unified system; Norway from a fragile VET system to the availability of more VET courses and apprenticeship arrangements at all educational levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper contributes to the debate on the implementation of policy reforms developing a typology for implementation based on the initial agreement on means and goals at the time of reform design. It is argued that the volume and nature of knowledge gathering and stakeholder involvement required to gain approval of a policy and avoid the possibility of implementation failure should differ depending on the initial level of agreement, providing thus a more nuanced view on the importance of these factors than previous work. The argument is illustrated through a case study of the 2004 reform of the Mexican Technical Baccalaureate. This case study shows how knowledge gathering and stakeholder involvement affected both the design and implementation of a reform process and how political, social and cultural factors shape reform processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the relationship between education, meritocracy and redistribution. It first questions the meritocratic ideal highlighting how it relates to normative expectations that do not hold fully neither in their logic nor in practice. It then complements the literature on persistent inequalities by focusing on the opportunities for change created by current trends in the economy and in social aspirations. As the meritocratic argument that education is strongly linked to certain rewards in the labour market comes under pressure, increasing social dissatisfaction with education and skills wastage could be expected, as already noted in part of the political economy literature. This literature, however, has tended to conclude from such observations that educational expansion cannot deliver equality. The paper contributes to the debate by focusing on the opportunities created by current trends for the reorganisation of the relationship between education, the economy and society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article addresses the way in which EU policy-making operates, explains the relevance of 'lifelong learning' for the European Commission and analyses the mechanisms by which the Commission has advanced policy-making in education and training since the Lisbon Summit. The article reviews in particular the alleged lack of effectiveness of the Open Method of Coordination in education and, second, the notion that the EU advances 'slowly and persistently' in its acquisition of competences in this area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the financial issues and family background of Erasmus students. It examines the costs of Erasmus study periods in the academic year 2004/05 and the socio-economic background of Erasmus students that year, based on over 15000 survey responses. Results are compared with those of a similar survey undertaken in 1998 to track changes over the last decade. The main question that the article addresses is whether international mobility of higher education students within the Erasmus programme has been expanded to more students from lower socio-economic backgrounds during this period. We find that, in spite of still important socio-economic barriers to the take-up of the programme, access has been moderately widened. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article enquires about why some countries have specialised their further education provision more than others, focusing on three types of specialisation: by subject, by geographical area and by age group. The article proposes an analytical framework to understand the drivers for further education provider specialisation, based on four variables: inputs to the further education system, regulatory framework, demand and supporting clusters. It then applies this framework to review the experience of Germany, New Zealand and the Netherlands in recent years. Drawing on this review, the last section of the paper provides some lessons for England and issues for further debate. It is concluded that the model proposed helps to explain the evolution of provider specialisation in the countries covered and that the UK's current specialisation profile suggests that greater efforts should be made to increase geographical specialisation, whereas action in stimulating further specialisation by subject and age group should be subject to caveats. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]