A brief history of comparative education (and how the CES hopes to move us forward)
By Lucy Crehan People have been attempting to learn from education systems ‘elsewhere’ for thousands of years. All the way back in...
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Centre for Education Systems is a partnership to improve education outcomes - by learning from systems around the world.
Why compare education systems?
“Systems evidence will improve the quality of the conversation between teachers, the sector and politicians and we certainly need that".
—Baroness Estelle Morris, Labour Secretary of State for Education, 2001-2
“The opportunity for CES to bolster the knowledge and understanding of the person who is appointed in a government re-shuffle is absolutely enormous”.
—Baroness Nicky Morgan, Conservative Secretary of State for Education, 2014 -16
“CES are considering context, data trends and how local policy instruments interact together, this will discourage magpie like policy borrowing”.
—Professor Becky Francis CBE, leading the Curriculum and assessment review, 2024-25
What we do
The Centre for Education Systems (CES) exists to help solve education's problems, both large and small. By learning from education systems around the world, CES provides governments, advisors and campaigners with evidence on different approaches, so that important goals can be met in a smart and effective manner.
As our insight and comparative analysis builds, we will provide a deep understanding of each policy area; offer alternative approaches to individual policy initiatives; explain how policy instruments interact and develop an overall architecture to help build system coherence and identify intervention priorities. All of this information and insight will be provided in our Resources section, free and easy to use.
Announcing the CES Advisory Board and strategic partnership
We are pleased to announce that Anna Vignoles, Dylan Wiliam and Steve Munby have joined the CES Advisory Board, chaired by Sam Freedman. They provide exceptional experience from the worlds of academia and policy development. The Board meets quarterly to advise on and help administer the new Nuffield grant, to consider key milestones for the current projects and also provides advice on more general CES development and impact. CES has also established a strategic partnership with the Education Policy Institute (EPI), to advise and help administer the Nuffield grant.
CES awarded Nuffield Foundation grant
In June 2024, the Centre for Education Systems was granted a substantial award by the Nuffield Foundation, to lead system reviews on both curriculum and accountability, for lower and upper secondary and across fourteen jurisdictions. Nuffield’s announcement highlights CES’s distinct hub and spoke model with a team of leading academic institutions and partners from Cambridge, Bristol, Central London and Amsterdam universities.
CES is collaborating with partners that have specialist domain experience and relevant methodological expertise, including systematic reviews, realist synthesis and quantitative meta-analysis.
The grant will be administered by the Education Policy Institute - providing important governance for the project.
Timing plan
The Curriculum and Accountability reviews were formally launched at the beginning of September 2024 and for five jurisdictions, interim findings will be available at the end of March 2025 . Full descriptive analysis will be complete in June 2025.
The full reports, including summaries and systematic reviews of academic literature, will be available in October 2025 and extensive synthesis and analysis the following month.
Academic teams
For the two Nuffield reviews, Loic Menzies of CES is the Principal Investigator and Lucy Crehan the international expert. For Curriculum, the team leads and co-investigators are Jane Mann, Tim Oates and Dr. Daniel Morrish from Cambridge University Press & Assessment. For Accountability, team leads and co-investigators are Professor Alison O’Mara-Eves and Dr. Antonia Simon (EPPI); Professor Melanie Ehren (Vrije Amsterdam); Professor Simon Burgess (University of Bristol). Ruth Maisey is the Nuffield Programme Head and Josh Hillman the Director of Education at Nuffield.
Research questions
The Nuffield study research questions (RQs) follow the CES comparative review model and consider: what is the purpose of both accountability and curriculum; what is the structure and level of control; how is policy made and introduced; how is policy evaluated; how does context shape policy and reform; what is the evidence about the effects of the accountability or curriculum system? Following roundtables with over 70 stakeholders (including Ministers, Civil Servants, academics, representatives bodies and experts), these RQs have now been finalised.
Comparative jurisdictions announced
After extensive consideration and input, the ten jurisdictions to be used in the comparative reviews (alongside the UK four nations) have been agreed. The dimensions considered include: population and GDP size compared to the UK four; cultural and political proximity; performance trajectory on international comparisons (improving/static/declining); the extent to which management of education, curriculum and assessment is determined centrally or devolved. Click below for the final list.
CES Partners
(for current and recent work)
CES partners
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