PISA is increasingly focusing the minds of national policy-makers.  There is a desperate desire for knowledge about how certain countries achieve ‘success’ in these global league tables, with the temptation to indulge in ‘policy borrowing’; an approach that ‘searches the international experience for examples of a unique, transferable “best practice”’ (Raffe, 2011: 1).

Building on previous ECER contributions (Hodgson and Spours, 2010, 2012, 2013a), we will use the distinction between ‘policy borrowing’ and ‘policy learning’ to explore the conditions by which countries can create an evidence-based dialogue on how they are innovating in upper secondary education (USE) within the context of globalisation.  By policy learning we are referring to the capacity of policy-makers and practitioners to use international and historical evidence to better understand their own national systems and to identify trends that might affect all systems (Raffe and Spours, 2007).  

 We use the case of the four countries of the UK (England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland), whose USE systems are increasingly diverging, as our illustration.  We argue that ‘deep’ policy learning is not simply the responsibility of national governments, but also results from the involvement of education professionals, researchers and key stakeholders, such as employers, teacher unions and professional associations.

The theoretical dimensions used to frame this paper are the distinction and relationship between ‘policy borrowing’ and ‘policy learning’ and how these processes take place within particular national governance systems that may have different characteristics – marketised or public; centralised or devolved (Lundgren, 2002).  We also explore the impact of policy learning on the processes of ‘convergence’ and ‘divergence’ between national systems.

The argument for the involvement of a range of stakeholders in processes of knowledge exchange arises from the need for USE systems to be constructed from below as well as from above.  This is particularly the case in the fostering of 21^st century competences because learners develop these not only through subject disciplines, but also through integrative activities and the utilisation of wider learning opportunities in local communities and workplaces (Sahlberg, 2007; Halasz and Michel, 2011).  This suggests that building USE systems with these integrative characteristics arises from both national policies on curriculum, qualifications, institutional arrangements and quality assurance processes and also from particular local governance relationships and knowledge exchanges practices involving a range of stakeholders.

The four countries of the UK have increasingly different sets of curriculum, qualifications, institutional, governance and quality assurance arrangements.  Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have, since ‘democratic devolution’, continued to build what might be characterised as a consensual ‘social partnership’ approach to reform, whereas England has developed a more marketised and centralised approach to policy-making and implementation (Hodgson et al., 2011).

However, all four countries are dependent on one another in that they broadly share the same economy and there is still considerable interchange in relation to higher education and employment.  Despite this, there is little evidence of systematic national policy learning taking place and we argue that this is an opportunity missed.  In the light of this, we examine some small-scale examples of how knowledge exchange is beginning to take place, highlight the role of researchers in the process and suggest the parameters within which ‘deep’ policy learning is likely to take place.

The paper thus addresses the following questions:

1. What are the key characteristics of ‘policy borrowing’ and how is this exemplified across the four countries of the UK in relation to USE?
2.  What are the potential conditions for ‘deep’ policy learning that can be identified currently across USE systems in these countries?
3. What type of knowledge and practice exchange might support ‘deep’ policy learning?

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