Decentralisation and Combating Educational Exclusion

The main question in our study was: which success factors and obstacles can be expected in the Netherlands when implementing a new, decentralised policy relating to educational disadvantage? Part of this research was to look at international experiences of decentralised policies to combat educational disadvantage. Thus three countries were studied in this context and their policies analysed and compared via a literature study and interviews with various experts. In this article we first report on changes in Dutch policy to combat educational disadvantage and then we describe the decentralised educational-disadvantage approach in the three countries chosen: England/Wales, the United States and Australia. Evaluation of the processes and results in these countries leads to predictions of the success of the Dutch policy reforms.