The domestic and international iteration of significant policy responses in education, is a growing phenomenon and one which is of interest to all those who seek to develop the study of education policy in theory and practice and shed light on the processes of policy change in a 'global' welfare state. The increasing transfer of policy also illuminates the study of comparative education policy.The paper assesses the contribution made by established work on policy transfer to our understanding of how and why policy changes and often fails in a complex arena such as education policy. The existing frameworks of policy transfer, particularly the work of Evans and Davies (1999) and Dolowitz, Hulme, Nellis and O'Neill (2000) are presented as analytical tools, which help to provide a valuable cross- disciplinary dialogue on the role of ideology and the motivations of all actors in the policy process. The paper explores the role of 'epistemic communities' in the development of generic international agendas such as evidence- based practice and audit regimes in education.The paper goes on explore two contrasting case studies of policy transfer in education. In the United Kingdom, the New Labour government's transfer of ideas and policies about evidence-based practice in education from the health sector is examined. Many of these ideas were originally transferred from Canadian and American medical research centres. The paper also examines the preliminary findings of the author's research into the transfer of quality management systems in education from the UK to the Russian Federation through European Union funded TEMPUS projects. The paper concludes that in the case of the New Labour government, the adoption of this approach to EBP represents an attempt at reform based on transfer which is at the same time an attempt a rationalistic response to changing global circumstances but also a search by New Labour for tried and tested policy responses which will bring about their ideological goals. The Russian example differs in terms of form and level of transfer but offers a more positive model of transfer for the purposes of international learning in education. There are important lessons to be learned from both case studies about the motivations of education policy makers and the limitations and pitfalls of transferring policy and practice across cultures in education.