This research is concerned with the relationship between educational policy and the media in England and Germany. Whereas schools-related educational policy-making in England is highly centralized in Westminster and regional political layers play a lesser role, German federalism involves the 16 Länder taking charge of school education while the Bund is merely responsibly for funding digital infrastructure (e.g. via the Digitalpakt Schule). Forms of centralist vs federal state organization are also reflected in media system characteristics as well as in domestic journalism cultures (Henkel, Thurman & Deffner 2019). Further, public administration in each country has been subject to different degrees of marketization; extensively in England and less so in the neo-Weberian German state (Pollitt & Bouckaert, 2011).

Discarding the Foucauldian-inspired perspective according to which state power is diffused into governmentality (Wiklund 2018), in alignment with Bourdieu’s thinking we conceive states as ‘qualitatively significant concentrations of power that merit specific analytical attention’ (Morgan & Orloff 2017 in Swartz 2018: 16). Drawing on mediatization (Hepp 2020; Hesmondhalgh 2006; Ignatow & Robinson 2017) and Bourdieu’s theories of the state (Bourdieu 2014), we investigate how the news media report about school education and policy issues. Empirical studies which analyze news articles with regards to school education and related policy issues are scarce (e.g. Cohen 2010; Baroutsis 2016; Bierbaum 2021; Head & Pryiomka 2020) with press coverage of PISA being one focal point of interest (e.g. Baroutsis & Lingard 2017; Hopfenbeck & Görgen 2017; Hu 2022; Waldow, Takayama & Sung 2014). This research builds up on this body of scholarship while it has a different focus and orientation.

Adopting a comparative case study research design which allows us to ‘contrast specific instances of a given phenomenon as a means of grasping the peculiarities of each case’ (Tilly 1984: 82), we investigate similarities and differences in how the news media at the regional and national levels report about school education and policy in the two countries under study. During the three-month period April to June 2022, which did not coincide with school holidays, we gathered national- as well as regional press coverage from two emblematic regions: South-West England and Schleswig-Holstein. Both regions are suitable for comparison as they feature striking similarities. Both are rural coastal regions, remote from the capital with resemblant number of inhabitants. Taking into account the average household income both regions are poor. They exhibit ‘the worst educational outcomes for disadvantaged young people in the [UK]’ (Sim & Major 2022: 3) and, in the case of Schleswig-Holstein, an exceptionally high proportion of young adults, aged 30–35 years, which lack occupational qualification (Hollstein et al. 2021: 65). This makes them prime cases for investigating issues of educational inequality and the public good.

In England we collected coverage related to school education from four regional newspapers (n = 67) and two national newspapers (The Guardian, Observer; n = 120). In Germany we investigated two regional (n = 176) and two national newspapers (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung; n = 40). The total amount of press articles in our data sets adds up to 187 in the UK and 216 in Germany (n = 403). First, we classified the articles from both data sets according to article types. We distinguish between positioned articles and more objective information-centered articles. The former take a particular stance in an area of contention and debate whereas the latter report factual information in an apparently neutral, objective and balanced manner. Second, to gain a more thorough understanding of the data, it is useful to disaggregate in which departments the articles under study were published. We distinguish between Regional/Local, Politics, Education/Schools, Feuilleton/Panorama and five other categories. Third, to compare the occurance of speaking actors between (a) the national and the regional press in each country under study, and, (b) on this basis, to bring to the fore cross-country similarities and differences, we investigated the prevalence of actors in all news articles under study. Following an inductive proceeding, first, we listed all actors who are either cited with direct speech or given voice in that their views and statements are indirectly cited. In the next step, we created categories – in a variety of cases also sub-categories – for the various types of actors. Fourth, we subjected the articles from our data sets to a thematic analysis using Braun and Clarke’s ‘organic’ approach (Braun & Clarke, 2006; 2013). Having become familiar with the data, open coding was performed in an inductive manner across the entire data set and initial codes were generated. Individual sentences, at time paragraphs, were designated as data items for coding (Braun & Clarke, 2021). In the following steps the codes were reworked and refined, assessed in relation to the whole data set, and sorted into themes and sub-themes by collating all data relevant to each of them. Thematic analysis was conducted from a constructionist perspective, aiming to contextualize the societal discourses and sociocultural conditions that affect the meanings within the examined written accounts (Braun & Clarke, 2006, p. 85). Furthermore, the analysis was conducted at the semantic level and was informed by the theoretical mediatization perspective.

We find that, at the local level, media reports in England focus largely on events and local issues. However, at a national level there is considerable and extended debate about education policy, including position pieces from different actors and editorial commentaries. In terms of who is given voice in regional press coverage actors from politics (government departments, politicians, public administration) and schools (head teachers, teachers) feature most prominently while families are rather neglected. In the national press it is striking that, apart from actors from politics and schools, actors from trade unions, think tanks other interest groups and non-governmental organizations are given ample space to express their views, opinions and concerns (Hilton et al. 2013). Meanwhile in Germany, the regional press in its coverage of school-related issues, apart from dealing with local issues and events, also raises more general educational concerns while making links to broader (national) policy issues with immediate effects for regional/local layers (e.g. the challenge of schooling pupils from Ukraine). On the regional layer, schools, politics and families are the most prevalent actor groups who are given voice in the data. On the national level, apart from the actor groups politics, schools and families, interest groups, scientists and public intellectuals are present but less prevalent as in England. Nationally, in Germany issues of general educational concerns are covered from multiple perspectives while one-on-one debates play a subordinate role. Arguably, the findings reflect the characteristics of domestic media systems and nature of states, with England a centralizing public interest state and Germany a federal bureaucratic state (Pollitt and Bouckaert 2011). They also demonstrate that a wider range of actors are engaged in publicly negotiating education policy and seeking consensus for their positions in the fragmented English market state, whereas this is not obvious in the German neo-Weberian state.

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