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This paper examines the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), which has become a major and influential component of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development's (OECD) educational work. This measure of comparative performance of educational systems of member and other nations is based on tests commissioned by the OECD. The paper discusses the role of the OECD in establishing the 'comparative' turn and also describes PISA, its management and effects. It provides three examples of the impact of PISA in Finland, Germany and the UK before moving the focus to its impacts at the transnational level, through an examination of how key European policy actors see PISA and its effects. The paper concludes that PISA, through its direct impact on national education systems in Europe and beyond, has become an indirect, but nonetheless influential tool of the new political technology of governing the European education space by numbers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One area where the financial crisis has shown the limitation of neo-liberal thinking is the area of educational reform. By studying the different ranges of national responses and by understanding the differing contexts for educational change in historical periods, we can begin to think differently about educational restructuring. In this paper I report on some of the findings from a four-year study of educational reforms in seven European countries undertaken for the European Commission. The countries covered are: England and Wales, Ireland, Portugal, Spain, Finland, Sweden and Greece and the research was conducted from 2004 to 2008. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]