The travelling inspector is a new phenomenon –although education in Europe has always ‘travelled’, inspectors were firmly rooted and derived influence from their local and authoritative standing as education ‘connoisseurs’. However the creation of SICI, the Standing International Conference of Inspectorates 20 years ago and its increasing influence in bringing school inspectors together across Europe   …Continue Reading

Jill Rutter of the Institute for Government writes about the UK Government’s approach to ‘open policy making’. One of the questions at the SKAPE launch on Thursday was whether the UK government was pursuing open policy making for procedural (increasing involvement, democratic engagement in the policy making process) or for instrumental reasons (getting better results).   …Continue Reading

Many of us recently went through the painful experience of trying to evidence the impact of research on policy, as part of the REF 2014 process. One of the problems with this endeavour is that policy-makers are likely to be reticent about the influence of research precisely in cases where it has affected policy. Yes,   …Continue Reading

For the last two centuries or so the countries that now make up the core of the Western democratic and industrialized world have – on their good days – sought to honour two political and constitutional principles: to allow freedom of thought and belief, and to accept the role of reason in political, legal and   …Continue Reading

For the last two centuries or so the countries that now make up the core of the Western democratic and industrialized world have – on their good days – sought to honour two political and constitutional principles: to allow freedom of thought and belief, and to accept the role of reason in political, legal and   …Continue Reading

Targets have become a popular tool for galvanising improvements to public services across OECD countries. But targets also have an important signaling function: they they can be adopted to signal commitment to, or underscore achievement of, a range of political or organizational goals. In a new paper prepared as part of the Politics of Monitoring   …Continue Reading