Education has a large untapped potential to contribute to human capital, well-being, and wealth in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). It had been at the heart of the region’s history and civilizations for centuries. The region invested heavily in education for decades but has not been...

Far-reaching transformations in Swiss education were pushed in the last decade by two prominent international initiatives, namely the 1999 Bologna process and the OECD's PISA study starting in 2000. To what extent and in which way were these soft governance initiatives able to trigger Swiss...

In this paper we examine the Chinese domestic discourse centering on Shanghai's participation in the PISA study and interpretations of the 2009 results. The main focus is to examine why local education authority took part in the PISA project and how actors from the education authority use PISA...

Countries that have sustained rapid growth over decades have typically had a strong public commitment to expanding education as well as to improving learning outcomes. South Asian countries have made considerable progress in expanding access to primary and secondary schooling, with countries...

Up until the outbreak of conflict in 2011, Syrian young people were among the most educated in the Middle East region, with Syria having achieved near universal primary education enrolment and a high rate of completed secondary education. Due to the years of conflict, many Syrian are currently...