Deflecting European Union Influence on National Education Policy-Making: The Case of the United Kingdom
This article examines how education policies developed in the European Union (EU) through the open method of co-ordination (OMC) are received at the member state level of the United Kingdom (UK). We argue that the UK’s response to the education OMC can be understood mainly in
terms of deflecting EU influence on the process and content of national education policy-making. We focus on three manifestations of deflecting EU influence on national education policies. On a level of institutional structures, first, few organizational resources are made available for responding
to the education OMC. Second, there is limited communication between domestic policy teams and UK civil servants involved in international work. Third, on a level of discourse UK education policy-makers have retained a commitment to the continued sovereignty of the UK over education policy
and its role as a potential leader of education policy agendas in the EU. Deflecting the education OMC involves here constructing images of ‘fit’ between UK and EU OMC education policies.
Keywords: European integration; discursive institutionalism; education policy-making; open method of co-ordination; peer learning
Document Type: Research Article
Affiliations: 1: Department of Applied Educational Science,Umeå University, Umeå, Sweden 2: Centre for Socio-Legal Studies, University of Oxford, UK
Publication date: 01 January 2013
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