Since the 1990s we have seen a totalizing assessment dream in education governance moving from the US, Australia and UK to Continental Europe, Asia and beyond (Krejsler, 2019(forthcoming); Meyer & Benavot, 2013; Rizvi & Lingard, 2010) . It has produced an imaginary that extensive monitoring, evaluation and documentation can become the engine to systematically manage school policy and practice towards more quality and better effects. Drawing on Jean Baudrillard's theoretical framework (e.g. Baudrillard, 1998, 2001), this paper tests the hypothesis of how far this school policy dream can be understood as a ‘grand simulation’ that produces a crisis or ‘a fear of falling behind’, which motivates competition to succeed at local, national and global levels (Baudrillard, 1983/1981). The paper explores how this simulation appears to transform, in alchemy-like processes, education and learning in widely different contexts into quantifiable comparability by reducing difference to numbers that apparently make all similar and hereby comparable (Popkewitz, 2012).

By employing Baudrillard’s concept of simulations the paper explores this phenomenon as a ‘grand simulation’ that expands by integrating national policy into loosely coupled rhizomatic governance networks that extend outward to transnational actors (OECD, IEA and EU) and inward through the ministry to municipalities (Krejsler, 2018; Lawn & Grek, 2012; Rizvi & Lingard, 2010). Using Danish school policy as a European national case the paper explores how the simulation morphs as it moves from transnational over national ministry levels to local schools by means of quality reports, contract policy and so forth whereby it re-formats how teachers and students think and act (Krejsler, Olsson, & Petersson, 2017). The simulation appears to incite each one of us, at individual, school and national levels, to strive to be among those who succeed in competition among knowledge economies, and simultaneously keeps at bay the ubiquitous fear of falling behind (Popkewitz, 2012).

The main objective of the paper is to problematize the drive that produces at transnational, national and local levels the ideas of a school and a student that can be systematically optimized for his/her own and the nation's best (Lawn & Grek, 2012; Rizvi & Lingard, 2010). In the Danish case it detects the symptoms of the simulation's drive in its totalizing search for evidence and What Works approaches; in the imaginary space of learning and education, which, drawing on Bloom-like taxonomies on competencies, knowledge and skills, promises to suspend a finely grained safety net to ensure that the student moves with certainty from grade to grade from simple to increasingly complete mastery of necessary competences in core subjects for the 21st century challenges (Krejsler et al., 2017). The paper explores a circular logic where the successful student is conceived in the image of the notions of knowledge and skills that measure whether this student is sufficiently competent and successful. This works as a self-reinforcing method that proliferates into the capillaries of the school system, its students and staff whose subjectivation practices it produces and guides by continuously measuring, documenting and assessing that which it requires them to become.

By re-articulating school and education policy with a Baudrillardian conceptual framework of simulations this objective makes it possible to observe in new ways national and transnational school and education policy as the effects of a crisis-producing and competition-motivating simulation that produces similarity by systematically excluding difference.

The paper relates to the conference theme of living in an era of risk and to the network’s specific theme by adding to the language of educational sociology in ways that enable new ways of problematizing a transnational education regime that appears increasingly unsustainable in its self-contained rationalities of accountability, evidence and testing.

The paper employs the Baudrillard concept of simulations to explore contemporary school policy as situated in between references to the real and the increasingly self-referencing play of signs of the hyperreal (Baudrillard, 1983/1981, 1985, 1998, 2001). By exploring empirical data from school policy in transnational and Danish national contexts the paper embarks upon an exploratory search for alternative meaning-production in order to comprehend in new ways the drive that produces at transnational, national and local levels the idea of students, schools and nations that can be systematically optimized in comparative templates (Popkewitz, 2012). This objective is achieved by exploring how these ideas emerge in transnational statistical templates, surveys, country reports and policy papers as well as in Danish national policy instruments like national quality assurance reports, policy debates around school legislation, curricular and assessment templates and so forth (e.g. Krejsler et al., 2017). This empirical work is supplemented by arguments and insights from education policy literature (Lawn & Grek, 2012; Meyer & Benavot, 2013; Pereyra, Kotthoff, & Cowen, 2011; Rizvi & Lingard, 2010). This paper adds to an increasing body of post-foundational research that explores the effects of school and education policy by establishing conceptual frameworks that differ from the empirical language employed by policy itself. Hereby it becomes possible to think differently about the rationalities employed by policy-makers, practitioners and the school effectiveness research serving them. In post-Foucauldian traditions one could mention Popkewitz’ work on rationalities and alchemies (Pereyra & Franklin, 2014; Popkewitz, 2012). In Deleuzian traditions one could mention work on becomings and societies of control (Hardt & Negri, 2002). Drawing on Baudrillard’s work on simulations and simulacra this paper adds to sociology of education studies that are still sparse. By re-articulating policy with a Baudrillardian conceptual framework it becomes possible to observe national and transnational policy as the effects of a crisis-producing and competition-motivating simulation. This makes it possible to problematize in a new light a persistent policy trend.

This paper’s exploration of the explanatory power of Baudrillard-inspired analyses of transnational school policy as a ‘grand simulation’ points to new ways of seeing how a network of policy approaches drawing on an aura of objectivity, big data and science work. By employing the notion of ‘the grand simulation’ the paper shows how a transnational policy regime apparently succeeds in producing and spreading what appears to be benevolent visions that the best available knowledge and methods can be made accessible to all. The simulation's most seductive effect appears to be that by means of its spreading everywhere it produces effects in the infected bodies, organizations and nations that it is by no means a simulation but, on the contrary, just a documentation of the real, i.e. of a state of affairs that is documented with evidence and treated with ‘knowledge that works’. The analysis shows that the symptoms of ‘the grand simulation’ become visible (1) in its totalizing search for evidence and What Works solutions; (2) in its reductions of complex learning into taxonomies of competencies, knowledge and skills; (3) in its promises that every student can move systematically towards mastery of necessary competences for 21st century challenges. The paper points to the danger that this simulation risks decoupling us from the real and enclosing us into a simulation space of self-reference (a play of signs) of such complexity that it will be hard to get out of. The question is posed whether we are becoming trapped in a wide-ranging simulacrum that is almost impossible to escape, or whether that is no longer even an option or a wish !?!?

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