ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book explains why the spread of neo-liberal ideas has generated so much activity in education, identifying education as a key field for the enactment of neo-liberalism's blend of moral and economic imperatives. It seeks to fill a gap in the literature on education governance by examining the ways in which inspection regimes may be understood as governing education in the three national education systems of Sweden, England and Scotland. The chapter highlights the key role of information in neo-liberal thinking about social organization, and discusses some of the issues that are created by the need to regulate in order to create particular kinds of information, comparative, performance data-driven, and the consequences of those for inspection. It explores work of inspection at different system levels with a focus on transnational policy learning and Europeanisation.
