What Educational Policies Underlie the Process Establishing a Longer Common Core Curriculum in the Wallonia-Brussels Federation and in Albania?

This article analyses the educational policies underlying the reforms to the core curriculum in the Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles (FWB, Belgium) and in Albania. The global neoliberal context in which these reforms take place, marked in particular by their successive participations in the PISA surveys and by the OECD and UNESCO intergovernmental recommendations for change, raises the question of the impact of these suggestions in the reform process. To answer this question, we conducted a thematic content analysis of the parliamentary minutes preceding the vote on the draft decree on volumes 1st and 2nd of the core curriculum in the context of the Pact for Excellence in Education in FWB and Law 69 of 2012 in Albania, using the Nvivo software. We used an a priori analysis grid created on basis of the work provided by Mons, (2004a,2007b). The results show that both countries are making changes in line with the recommendations by, redesigning a longer common core in response to the challenges of the 21st century on the one hand, and opting for a decentralised form of governance aimed at increasing actors’ responsibilities, on the other. Through these structural changes, both countries are aligning themselves with the global agenda of objectives while however retaining their own decision-making space. The latter results in divergent policies that redraw the contours of their education systems accordingly to their specific features. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]