There have been dramatic changes in education policy throughout the world in the final quarter of the 20th Century. This important volume presents an invaluable collection of previously published and specially commissioned articles which capture these major changes in educational policy.Driven by demands for efficiency and performance, traditional liberal views of education as promoting and providing the ideals of an educated elite and empowered autonomous individuals have been supplanted. Increasingly there have been moves from localized and national policies towards international policies, and a closer integration of schools into the world. Education policy and associated management styles have overtly incorporated current market-led economic theories and in major western nations where education has been seen as a traditional welfare right, policy has moved to a commodification of education and to various forms of privatisation.

Topics include Education Policy: Definition, Analysis, Criticism and Research; Economics: Markets and Development; Education Policy and the State; Race, Development and Culture; and Social Justice, Literacy and New Technologies.

Education Policy will be an indispensable reference source for students, researchers and practitioners.