Conference Agenda

Luxembourg is hyper-diverse in terms of the socio-economic, cultural, and linguistic backgrounds of its inhabitants. While this diversity is an asset, it is also a source of inequality in its education system, given the very demanding language requirements of its trilingual nature (Eurydice, 2022; MENJE, 2023). The country is becoming even more multicultural due to the increase in immigration and cross-border workers (Eurydice, 2022). This societal change poses further challenges to the Luxembourgish education system, as the trilingual public education system no longer reflects the multicultural and plurilingual nature of the country (Eurydice, 2022; MENJE, 2023).

After decades without major structural changes, comprehensive school reforms were introduced in 2009 to reduce educational inequalities, which were followed by further reforms since 2013, under the slogan “Different schools suited to different pupils” (MENJE, 2020) to diversify the educational landscape in response to an increasingly heterogeneous student body with more than 60% of students speaking a language other than Luxembourgish at home (Eurydice, 2022). These reform initiatives led to the creation of the Accredited European Schools (AES), or European Public Schools (EPS). Originally created for the children of staff working for the EU institutions, the first European School to offer multilingual education was established in Luxembourg in 1953. In the following years, schools implementing the European Curriculum mushroomed in other European countries, and since 2005, the curriculum has been made available to the national schools in the Member States (Office of the Secretary-General of the European Schools, 2023). Years after its first implementation, the European Curriculum has returned to Luxembourg as an additional public-school offer, thanks to the recent reform initiatives aimed at combating educational inequalities. Like the “original” model, the EPS, which are open to local children, free of charge, offer greater flexibility in the choice of medium of instruction by using the European Curriculum with its pedagogical principles and approaches to student learning (Eurydice, 2022; MENJE, n.d.; Office of the Secretary-General of the European Schools, n.d.).

Global models of education are being transformed and adapted to the national and local contexts in what Robertson (1994) calls the “glocalization of social problems”. In the case of the establishment of the EPS in Luxembourg, the global model of education, the European Curriculum, is transformed in such a way that the schools refer to the language backgrounds of the students and help them to possess the linguistic requirements of the country by offering three language sections (i.e., English, German, and French-speaking sections), second and third language courses, and mandatory Luxembourgish courses as the language of integration.

The European school system is considered to be exportable and replicable (Leaton Gray et al., 2018). However, the establishment of the EPS was a major structural change in Luxembourg’s decades-old, persistent education system, and national traditions remained strong among some groups. Therefore, this parallel school system raised many social, political, and educational questions. This study aims to understand the genesis and outcomes of the implementation of an additional curriculum in Luxembourgish public education system with the following questions:

• What were the reasons for the establishment of EPS in Luxembourg?
• What are the opinions of different stakeholders on the reasons for implementing the European Curriculum and its contribution? What are the problems identified by them?
• What patterns of legitimation accompany the establishment of EPS?

Legitimization patterns and the role of the EPS are explored by using social constructivism (Hacking, 1999). The "case of Luxembourg" is used as an example to discuss educational transformations in response to current challenges and demands, as it observes the effects of changes in population structure, in line with trends observed in other European countries.

There is a global movement of education reform in many countries informed by a neo-liberal agenda (Verger, Fontdevila, and Zancajo 2017). The large changes in education during the past decades are to a large extent linked with a growing connectedness between the state, education and the economy (Lundahl, 2021). The acceleration of the global economy, as well as technological developments and the strengthening of transnational agencies like the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), and the European Union have transformed nation-states into what Ball (2009) has named competition states. Krejsler (2019) has a similar label, the ‘fear of falling behind’ regime which has significant performative effects in producing a state of crisis awareness which motivates and drives education reforms.

This has also led to a shift towards a market-based educational reform agenda characterized by an emphasis on in-school factors, specifically, teacher quality and accountability, to a large extent leaving out of school factors affecting achievements out of the equation (Nolan, 2018). A discourse of continuous improvement follows this neoliberal agenda, and both national and international accountability systems put pressure on teachers and schools, individually and collectively (Watson & Michael, 2016). Schools are steered from a distance by performance measurements, surveillance and monitoring (Lingard, Seller & Lewis, 2017) which puts local school actors under a constant gaze (Holloway & Brass, 2018) and an endless pressure to perform.

In this paper I will examine the dynamic interactions of knowledge and power in the relationship between local school actors and the national agency for education in the context of a Swedish national school improvement programme called Co-operation for the Best School Possible (CBS). Foucault’s theories on power are utilized to understand how power relations and interactions between the national and local level in the Swedish education system can be understood in light of the global governance trends painted above. Power according to Foucault ‘is exercised rather than possessed’ (Foucault, 1995, p. 26) and it works in capillary manners. A framework including sovereign, disciplinary and pastoral power as well as the concept of governmentality will allow for a careful study of visible traces of subtle and intricate ways of steering in a complex multi-layered education system such as Sweden’s.

This article analyses different forms of power visible in a state-initiated school improvement programme using a Foucauldian framework. One important contribution a critical analysis can make is to question the common sensical, but furthermore Foucault gives us words to make the exercises of power recognisable. When we can recognise and assign words to the power being exercised, we also enhance our options for participating in relations of power. Thus, the aim is to is to explore the power relations between the Swedish National Agency of Education (SNAE) and the local school actors and how power operates and is exercised in a large-scale state-initiated school improvement programme. Through documents and citations from stakeholders in one municipality, these different modes of power are exemplified and highlighted in this article. By using Foucault, the formation and mode of subjection as well as techniques used to achieve them are at the foreground of the analysis (Foucault, 1982).