Devolved education policymaking in the UK: a four jurisdictions perspective

This short paper addresses the pace, ebb and flow of policy moves in education in the context of the continuing process of political and administrative devolution in the UK. The concept of policy making is explicitly approached as a process. Given the potentially broad policy arena, the focus is necessarily selective and restricted to policy for schools. The paper identifies areas of policy mobility and immobility drawing on the concepts of ‘policy mortality’ ‘drift’, ‘paralysis’ and ‘reversal’ (Gunter and Courtney, 2023; Béland et al., 2016; Gallagher, 2021). This brief review aims to show how policy possibilities in the four closely-linked jurisdictions are influenced by varying degrees of coordinative capacity, ministerial influence, policy styles and advisory systems, and the power and influence of potential veto players. Critical attention is afforded to the enactment of the principle of subsidiarity in relation to education change. Rather than progressive linear advance, the paper notes three alternate moves: continuing tension between central control and local autonomy in education governance in Wales and Scotland, paralysing policy drift from political division in Northern Ireland, and rapid acceleration of market-oriented change in England.