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Imagining school autonomy in high-performing education systems: East Asia as a source of policy referencing in England

You, Y; Morris, P; (2016) Imagining school autonomy in high-performing education systems: East Asia as a source of policy referencing in England. Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education , 46 (6) pp. 882-905. 10.1080/03057925.2015.1080115. Green open access

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Abstract

Education reform is increasingly based on emulating the features of ‘world-class’ systems that top international attainment surveys and, in England specifically, East Asia is referenced as the ‘inspiration’ for their education reforms. However, the extent to which the features identified by the UK Government accord with the situation within East Asia is problematic. This paper examines the relationship between the English representation and the ‘reality’ of East Asian education systems, using school autonomy as an illustrative example. We focus on Singapore, Hong Kong and Shanghai, which are cited extensively to legitimate policies providing greater autonomy for schools in England. We argue firstly that the English representation has been largely discursive and inaccurate; has failed to recognise the variations across the region; and has been selected to endorse the Government’s ideological preferences. Secondly, the scope, form and nature of school autonomy vary markedly, and are operationalised in each

Type: Article
Title: Imagining school autonomy in high-performing education systems: East Asia as a source of policy referencing in England
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
DOI: 10.1080/03057925.2015.1080115
Publisher version: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03057925.2015.1080115
Language: English
Additional information: © 2015 The Author(s). Published by Taylor & Francis. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecom mons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Keywords: School autonomy; East Asia; England; policy borrowing/ referencing
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education > UCL Institute of Education
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education > UCL Institute of Education > IOE - Education, Practice and Society
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1474011
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