Abstract:

Globalization in education refers to the idea that transnational governance increasingly determines national education agendas and education policy is no longer purely a national issue but part of the global education policy characterized by international benchmarks, measurable outcomes, and ideologies. In the context of globalization, transnational actors such as the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), United Nations (UN) and the European Union (EU) play a central role in promoting global policy agendas through mechanisms of governance. Such actors are key in global governance due to their ability to present a common vision for the next decade, define the challenges that need to be solved, translate these challenges into measurable indicators, monitor and report progress, and disseminate recommendations and best practices.

The European Education Area (EEA) strategic framework, developed by the European Commission, aims to benchmark and monitor progress toward a common European vision and to build convergence in Europe through the shared indicators and common policy goals. Although almost a quarter of a century has passed since the EU implemented strategic frameworks and developed a common education policy for all member states, a heterogeneous situation is still observed among European countries. Nevertheless, the EEA strategic framework, which defines the direction of education policy development for the ongoing decade, sets common goals for all member states. This study aims to promote policy convergence while also highlighting national and subnational diversity. For this purpose, the most suitable strategy toward the vision presented in the EEA strategic framework has been identified for each EU country under evaluation, considering their social, economic, and cultural contexts.

The proposed benchmarking approach, through Data Envelopment Analysis, is employed to set different strategies to improve national performance alignment with the European vision. However, country-level analyses can mask significant sociodemographic and territorial disparities by averaging out the lower scores in some regions with higher scores in others. Internationally comparable data reflecting regional differences in education were integrated into this study. In light of regional differentials, the paper demonstrates that a one-size-fits-all approach is not the most suitable way to move towards the European vision. Instead, a way of identifying region-specific strategies to improve national performance has been proposed.

The proposed approach was applied using the most recent region-level data for 148 regions across 25 EU countries. Results are beneficial for policy interventions as they allow improving performance in education towards the European vision, taking into account regional demographic and economic characteristics. From a policy perspective, moving towards the European vision should not be followed by a one-size-fits-all approach but rather by identifying the most suitable strategy for each country in a region-specific way.

Acknowledgment:
This project was funded by the European Union (project No S-PD-24-183) under the agreement with the Research Council of Lithuania (LMTLT) and CIPROM/2024/34 grant, funded by the Conselleria de Educación, Cultura, Universidades y Empleo, Generalitat Valenciana and the Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación/Agencia Estatal de Investigación, through the grant PID2021-122344NB-I00.

Keywords:

Education, globalization, European countries, EEA strategic framework, benchmarking, education policy.