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RESEARCH PRODUCT

Evaluation in the Transnational ‘Management by Projects' Policies

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There is a supranational tendency in educational governance towards a 'management by projects' policy, which substitutes democratic procedures and norm-based control in FOR? materialisation of educational justice. The organisational level becomes crucial for the management of education and the pressure to conceive education as a managerial activity increases. At the same time, educational expertise in public administration becomes substituted by subcontracted, policy-led research. In the context of transnational governance the civil service is turning into a busnocracy, which is responsible for the quality of education to the global markets instead of to people. The article discusses this transnational policy agenda through one European Union project which aims at developing tools for transnational evaluation of re-integrative programmes targeted at students who have problems in following the mainstream pathways to vocational education. Evaluation as an Example The transnational policy commitments of the European Union (EU) and its member states are indicated in their sociopolitical and educational statements and programmes. Evaluative functions are crucial in the national and transnational projects which they have established and funded. The projects can be considered as laboratories for the emergence of indicator or auditing societies in Europe (e.g. Gleeson & Husbands, 2001), which provide platforms for implementing and testing transnational vocabularies, discourses and managerial practices. This article discusses this transnational policy agenda through the examination of one EU project - 'Re-integration' - which aims to develop tools for transnational evaluation of re-integrative programmes targeted at students with problems in following the standard pathways to vocational education.