Governing Education in England and France

This article investigates changes in educational governance in England and France. Paradigms of new governance are required to make sense of organisational complexity in both countries. English-style educational governance encompasses new forms of central steering, private techniques of public management, a culture of consumer-led evaluation, and new (bounded) forms of school autonomy. French-style educational governance is exemplified by organisational change, enhanced political and administrative decentralisation, the growth of educational partnerships and the circulation of new policy ideas. National administrative, institutional and political traditions provide conceptual lenses to understand change, but the two countries share common ground on many substantive issues of policy.