Book Review: Global Education Policy and International Development: New Agendas, Issues, and Policies

This edited collection explores the phenomenon of global education policies (GEPs) and is centrally concerned with why policymakers in developing countries ‘buy into’ GEPs, such as school-based management and learner-centred education. The editors (Chapter 1) argue that ‘it is not always clear whether GEPs work or not, or under what conditions they do so’ (p. 19), and direct attention to the processes through which policymakers come to perceive GEPs to work. While GEPs are adopted by governments around the world, low-income countries are particularly susceptible to the agendas of well-resourced international organisations such as the World Bank, donor agencies and NGOs, which influence educational priorities and strategies at the national level. In such contexts, Verger, Novelli and Altinyelken emphasise international organisations’ capacity to promote policies through high profile launch events, briefs and reports, in which policies are framed in technical, ostensibly neutral terms within the ‘common sense’ neo-liberal discourse of cost-effectiveness and efficiency gains (p. 20). An example of this is school-based management, which for the last two decades has been advanced by the World Bank as a means to ‘improve educational outcomes and increase client satisfaction’ (Barrera-Osorio et al., 2009 …