ABSTRACT
‘Education, education, education’ has been Tony Blair’s mantra during his time as British Prime Minister (Wolf 2002). As the different contributions in this volume show, he was by far not the only leading politician determined to reform the education system for more effective spending, more equal access, for improving outcomes or for other reasons. In recent years, education has moved centre-stage in politics, being conceived as means for individual and collective development, employability and the transition to the knowledge society. In particular the latter has been a vision that triggered educational reform across the world, unifying industrialized as well as developing countries in striving to improve educational outcomes (Jakobi 2007).
