Austerity and the Remaking of Education Policy in Europe since 2008

The literature about education policy-making in Europe tends to keep education closely in focus, while education’s wider determinations are presented in less precise ways. We don’t wish in this chapter to lose sight of the detail of education – but we do intend to locate the emergence of new forms of governance, management and curriculum in broader contexts of policy and social and economic change. The main aim of the chapter is to understand central features of educational change by analyzing the kinds of flow and pressure, originating outside, as well as within, the field of education, which impact on the education systems of European states and on transnational institutions. Acknowledging the accelerating pace of change, we discuss it in terms of such vectors of transformation as adaptation to the wave of financial and economic shock that began in 2008, the commitment of mainstream political parties and transnational institutions to austerity measures and the consolidation of neoliberal paradigms, even after the moment of the ‘credit crunch’ which was momentarily thought to have destabilised them. Alongside these largely economic dimensions of crisis, conflict and change, we will discuss the significance of other forces and events, especially mass movements of migration into Europe, and the renaissance of nationalism and xenophobia that has accompanied them. In complex ways, which vary across European states, these tendencies act to frame educational debates, and to prompt policy changes