Our  paper explores the ‘europeanisation’ of education policies in national contexts, and in particular, how the Open Method of Coordination (OMC) impinges on domestic education policy making in the UK. The OMC is a fairly new governance mechanism that aims to steer education reform in domestic systems, but it is also a powerful strategy of the EU for constructing a space for policy where new networks and actors exchange information and knowledge about policy priorities and systems (Ozga 2009). Member states are encouraged to ‘learn’ from each others’ successful policies, within a framework of setting common objectives and benchmarks in particular areas of education. These benchmarks clearly reflect policy objectives that tie education to the economic and social objectives of the post-2000 Lisbon strategy (Alexiadou et.al. 2010, Dale 2009). While there is increasingly research in the field of the europeanisation of education policies and the ways these are institutionalized at the EU level, there is little empirical work that tries to understand how EU education policies are being transformed within the member states (for exceptions see Grek et.al 2009, Simons 2007, Štremfel & Lajh 2010).

         We focus on the ways in which the UK receives and mediates the education OMC at the level of central government. Our theoretical framework draws on the literature on europeanisation that examines the relationships between the national and the transnational contexts, as well as discursive institutionalism, in an attempt to make sense of the process of mediation of policy from the EU to the national level.

Alexiadou N., Lange B., Fink-Hafner D. (2010) “Education policy convergence through the Open Method of Co-ordination (OMC): Theoretical reflections and implementation in ‘old’ and ‘new’ national contexts”, European Educational Research Journal, Vol.9, No 3, pp. 346-359 Dale, R. (2009) Studying globalisation and europeanisation in education: Lisbon, the Open Method of Coordination and beyond. In R. Dale and S. Robertson (Eds) Globalisation and europeanisation in education, 121-140. Didcot: Symposium Books. Grek S., Lawn M., Lingard B., Ozga J., Rinne R., Segerholm C. & Simola H. (2009) National policy brokering and the construction of the European Education Space in England, Sweden, Finland and Scotland, Comparative Education, Vol.45, No.1, pp.5–22. Ozga J. (2009) ‘Governing knowledge? Globalisation, Europeanisation and the research imagination’, British Journal of Sociology of Education, Vol.30, No.4, pp.511-517. Simons, M. (2007) To be informed: understanding the role of feedback information for Flemish/European policy. Journal of Education Policy 22, no5: 531-548. Štremfel, U. & Lajh D. (2010) Implementing EU Lifelong Learning Policy through Open Method of Co-ordination in New Member States: Comparative Analysis of the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Slovenia, Journal of Comparative Politics, 3 (2), pp. 64-84