This paper considers the rather neglected issue of the European Schools, a particular type of school that is not integrated into any national education system but constitute a European School System (ESS) of ‘official educational establishments controlled jointly by the governments of the Member States of the European Union’ (Schola Europaea, 2009). This positioning creates particularly interesting issues of governance that mirror aspects of governing education in Europe, albeit on a smaller scale. This paper makes the argument that the ESS, like the European Commission (EC), operates within and across formal national boundaries in a ‘new’ Policy Space of European Schooling. It suggests that analysis of this ‘space’ as a microcosm of European governance of education is enabled through integrating interdisciplinary concepts such as re-spatialisation (Sassen, 2006; Massey, 2005) with attention to new approaches to governance that stress fluid and mobile relations (Clarke, 2009; Rose&Miller, 2008; Castells, 1996) in analysing Europeanisation (Delanty&Rumford, 2005; Rumford, 2005). In this study the focus is on actors who exercise power and their power relations: these actors are identified as having reason to believe they have the ‘legitimacy to make decisions and allocate values within communities’ (Brennan & Popkewitz, 1997: 303). They are primarily policy actors and formally seen as such, but there are also other actors that through their constant interaction within networks contribute substantially, and thus exercise power, to the imagining and creation of a ’new’ Policy Space of European Schooling. The paper argues that the ESS is an interesting policy case in itself, but also suggests that it has value as a microcosm of the extremely complex and novel forms of policy relations in education in Europe, in which elements of the local, the national and the European are merging and emerging in different ways. 

Brennan, M. & Popkewitz, T.S. (1997) Restructuring of social and political theory in education: Foucault and a social epistemology of school practices. Educational Theory, 47 (3), pp. 287-313. Castells, M. (1996) The rise of the network society. Oxford: Blackwell (2nd edn). Clarke, J. (2009) Governance Puzzles. In: Budd, L. & Harris, L. (eds) (2009) E-governance: managing or governing? London: Routledge, pp. 29-52. Delanty, G. & Rumford, C. (2005) Rethinking Europe. Social theory and the implications of Europeanization. London: Routledge. Grek, S. & Lawn, M. (2009) A Short History of Europeanizing Education: The new political work of calculating the future. European Education-Issues and Studies. 41 (1), pp. 32-54. Jessop, R., Fairclough, N., Wodak, R. (eds) (2008) Education and the Knowledge-Based Economy in Europe. Rotterdam: SensePublishers. Lawn, M. (2008) ‘An Intellectual Homeland: Governing Mobilities and Space in European Education’. In: C. Rumford (ed.) Sage Handbook of European Studies, London: Sage. Massey, D. (2005) For Space. Sage: London Miller, P. & Rose, N. (2008) Governing the Present: Administering Economic, Social and Personal Life. Cambridge: Polity Press. Ozga, J. (2000) Policy Research in Educational settings: contested Terrain. Buckingham: Open University Press. Ozga, J., Dahler-Larsen, P., Simola, H., Segerholm, C. (eds) (2011) Fabricating Quality in Education: Data and Governance in Europe. London: Routledge. Rumford, C. (2005) Rethinking European Spaces: Territory, Borders, Governance. Comparative European Politics. 4, pp. 127–140. Sassen, S. (2006) Territory, Authority, Rights: from Medieval to Global Assemblages. Oxford: Princeton University Press. Schola Europaea (2009) Schola Europaea. Brussels: Office of the Secretary-General of the European Schools. [Online]. Available from: http://www.eursc.eu/index.php?l=2 [Accessed 11/10, 2010]. Wodak, R. & Meyer, M. (eds) (2010) Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis. London: Sage.