During last year’s ECER conference, six contributions of European countries presented their needs, wishes, and challenges concerning curricular freedom and regulation. Key elements of the discussion involved to what extent substantive and socio-political arguments do influence educational policy, and how such policies improve or hamper the balance between curricular freedom and regulation.

This year’s symposium presents four papers from the CIDREE 2014 yearbook, exploring how political decisions lead or not lead to change in schools and classrooms in four rather different European countries. This year’s contributions involve Scotland, Norway, Hungary and The Netherlands.

Across the world, education systems are looking at ensuring the most appropriate levels of responsibility and autonomy for schools and practitioners.  We know that those practitioners closest to the learners are best placed to improve their learning.  However, as the contributions highlight, arrangements for supporting schools and practitioners are also essential in making change happen.  National education policy and priorities often set out requirements, but often fail to provide advice on how to achieve them, or how to promote innovation in doing so.  What education infrastructures and strategies help the implementation of policy to be effective?  How and why do these work, or not work? 

The contributions help to identify the strategies we use, why we use them, and if there is something in our experience that should make us reconsider our strategies. Currently, there is a considerable interest concerning curricular implementation. The project Governing Complex Educations Systems (CERI/OECD) has, for example, produced several reports focusing on effective government policies at the national and local level, on effective multi-level governance, and on the importance of understanding the complexity of education governance. The contributions to this symposium acknowledge the complexity of implementation of education policy. Not only will policy processes differ from one country to another based upon the history, context, governing structure and culture (Hopmann, 1999), but they also depend upon which implementation strategies the different actors have decided to use, or refrain from using. It is well known from the literature that teachers need to be seen as important and active actors in any implementation of education reform, to make real changes in the classroom (Berryhill et al., 2009). If teachers are left out, and do not understand the policy processes involved, it is more likely that the implementation will fail. 

Berryhill, Joseph, Linney, Jean Ann and Fromewick, Jill (2009). The Effects of Education Accountability on Teachers: Are Policies Too-Stress Provoking for Their Own Good? International Journal of Education Policy and Leadership. vol. 4, no. 5, p. 1-14. Hopmann, S. (1999). The curriculum as a standard of public education. Studies in Philosophy and Education, 18, 89-105.