It comes without saying that the current popular narrative is that education is in crisis. As it is argued elsewhere, the role of education seems to be shifting from knowledge-­based activities towards the development of specific character, skills, competencies, types of emotion and resilience while education is turning into learning and learning industry.

Also, especially in policy texts and public media discussions, education is repeatedly characterised by a sense of disorientation about the purpose, content, and values of education. As previous sociological research has shown, educational institutions have been active in promoting and dis­seminating psychologically and therapeutically oriented policies and practices with an increasing concern with scientific and personalised management of populations from children to adults (Brunila et al., 2020; Wright, 2011). We are also witnessing a shift towards neuro-based knowledge and behavioural genetics, giving power to scientifically engineer individual traits, strengths, and vulnerabilities from birth (Gillies, Edwards, & Horsley, 2017; Whitehead, Jones, Lilley, Pykett, & Howell, 2018). Simultaneously, marketisation and privatisation have strengthened their grasp alongside supporting transnational networks with various types of interests and agendas (McGimpsey, 2017; Sellar & Lingard, 2013). Alongside these changes, digitalisation and datafication are gaining an evermore stronger foothold in education (Ideland, 2020; Williamson, 2019) The current reforms within and beyond education have worked towards de­politicizing and decontextualising education (Saari, 2021). 

We argue that a new constitution of governance of education is emerging. This new type of governance is shifting towards more individually and personally tailored education requiring a specific type of ideal learning subjectivity. In this theoretical paper, we will explore these changes with the concept of precision education governance (PEG). 

The PEG is an umbrella concept that enables analysing lines of changing education governance on multiple dimensions. In this paper, we coin PEG through four emerging lines of governance we have traced based on our project findings. The lines relate to the introduction of multiple IGO's (International Governmental Organisations), such as OECD, WTO; ILO, UNESCO, World Bank, and UN to education governance, and ii) depoliticisation and decontextualisation of education through combining international and national policy with private, public and non-governmental organisations (NGO's) into flexible assemblages operating according to logics of social investment and marketised values. Also, in PEG governance can be traced through distinct directions: iii) increased usage of knowledge from the fields of psychology, neurosciences and genetics as a basis for governing human conduct and iv) promoting the use of AI and technological solutions in the form of so-called precision education.

We have derived the conceptualisation of PEG from the understanding of precision education. In short, precision education refers to individually tailored and personalised behavioural management, teaching and learning  (Brunila et al., 2020; Saari, 2021). Precision education can be defined by modifying the definition of precision medicine by Ferryman and Pitcan (in Williamson, 2019, p. 6) as an effort to collect, integrate, and analyse multiple sources of genetic and nongenetic data, harnessing methods of big data analysis and machine learning, in order to develop insights about education, teaching and learning that are tailored to the individual.

Education has always come with the promise of a better future, and PEG makes no difference. The promise in PEG is an enhancement of education's efficiency through individualisation and 'precision' through which it becomes possible to assess, control and calculate individuals' learning, and thus shape human subjectivity as its outcome (Brunila et al., 2020; Williamson, 2019). PEG promises a seemingly neutral framework and tools for comparing and analysing the effectiveness of education, no matter the context.

In this paper, we are combining the results of our previous research with other literature to examine how the lines of PEG seem to be forming and reshaping education. Our starting point is understanding PEG as governance - emerging dynamics between policy, practices, and knowledge defining and exploring the possibilities for the future of education. Governance in our work refers to multiple ways in which people are steered and guided into the 'right' direction (Foucault, 2007). Hence, governance in PEG is built upon the normalisation, and normative ways of being and acting in society. Governance in PEG is based on the circulation of discourses as constitutive and normative practices produced in language that is attached to norms and values of society (Foucault, 2007). Discourses circulate in networks of the public, private and third sector. Thus, power in PEG is formed in interactions, where some discourses gain the position of being 'right' and 'sensible', and some as 'impossible' or 'unrealistic' (Ball & Junemann, 2012). We examine with both the results of our previous research (e.g. Brunila et al., 2020; Mertanen, 2020) and other literature, what is thought as 'sensible' in the aforementioned 'lines' of PEG: globalisation, decontextualisation, psychologisation and digitalisation of education. First, we examine how IGO's such as the OECD and ILO form education assemblages combining social, educational and economic questions. This examination sheds light, especially on the IGO's role as disseminators of knowledge and 'best practices' about education (see Rizvi & Lingard, 2010). Second, we focus on the decontextualisation of education through the promotion of education as social investment, and evidence-based education that aims towards building, as efficiently as possible, future economically productive and employable citizens with sufficient skills (Brunila et al., 2020; De St Croix, Mcgimpsey, & Owens, 2019). Third, we will scrutinise PEG not only from the point of view of the political arrangement of education but as something affecting the contents of education through the emerging theme of wellbeing, happiness, cognitive skills and learning (Cabanas & Illouz, 2019; Rose, 1998; Wright, 2011). Fourth and final 'line' we examine is the shift towards arranging education not only in traditional classroom settings but also in various platforms both online and offline. We connect this shift to digitalisation, privatisation and marketisation of education (Saltman, 2020; Williamson, 2019).

We connect PEG to the emerging late neoliberalism. In late neoliberalism, market dynamics are not equated only as a 'natural' organisation of society through exchange of goods between rationally functioning individuals, but rather as in a language of investments, the return of investments, and risk-analysis. Late neoliberalism does not focus only on the input and output of resources and 'product quality' in nation-state enabled markets. Instead of privatisation as a nation-state -led effort to ensure quality and competitions in arranging public services, in late neoliberalism state becomes a centralised hub of governance connecting both local and global actors, discourses and ideals (Ball & Junemann, 2012; De St Croix et al., 2019; McGimpsey, 2017). Late neoliberalism also provides more opportunities for governing not only 'rational' choices people make but uses knowledge from neurosciences, psychiatry and psychology to ensure that people's choices are both rational and producing desired futures to society. In a sense, PEG in late neoliberalism manages to solve the problem of neoliberalism: how to save people from the 'irrational' choices they make without coercion. (see Isin, 2004; Rose, 1998; Whitehead, Jones, Lilley, Pykett, & Howell, 2018). In common with all 'lines' examined in this paper, are the shared ideals about human subjectivity as controllable, individualised and governable. In the global networks governing education structures are becoming more and more unstable, unofficial and network-based (see Ball & Junemann, 2012; Rizvi & Lingard, 2010). Consequently, subjects of PEG produced in these networks are not seen as future or current citizens of nation-states, but as targets of different policy initiatives that need to be moulded towards future citizenship (see Mertanen, 2020).

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