Strategies for achieving equity and inclusion in education, training and learning in democratic Europe

STRIDE will provide a new, comprehensive and comparative knowledge-base on effective education reforms, policy initiatives and interventions aimed at reducing inequalities in education, training and learning outcomes in Europe. STRIDE will do this through analyses of education reforms in national and regional systems, existing large-scale educational assessment data and existing longitudinal data on the causal link between educational and other social policies and inequalities in educational achievements. In examining the learning progress of students over time, STRIDE will closely examine to the range of intersectional variables such as socio-economic background, gender, (dis)abilities, migration status, home language, early childhood education and care (ECEC) attendance, which may affect learning outcomes in different ways in different contexts. The project will combine diverse methods, data and disciplines (comparative education, political science, education science, sociology) in innovative ways: mapping at national and regional levels on (1) education reforms in the past 25 years by policy analysis, (2) longitudinal trends of inequalities in educational achievement by quasi-experiment analysis of existing large-scale educational assessment data, and (3) effect of education reforms and interventions by analysis existing longitudinal data and registry data following student cohorts over time combined with a qualitative inquiry into policymakers' perspective. Through the involvement of national and European stakeholders, STRIDE will develop methodology and assessment tools for policy learning offering policymakers a toolbox of enhanced knowledge of what shapes educational outcomes over time and demonstrating the usefulness of longitudinal data in policy-making to reduce educational inequalities in the short, medium and long term.