The politics of international league tables: PISA in Japan’s achievement crisis debate

Using the political-economic analysis of globalisation and education as well as a culturalist approach to education policy borrowing, the paper analyses the role of local actors, specifically, national newspapers and the Ministry of Education, in mediating the potentially homogenising curricular policy pressure of globalisation exerted through the PISA league tables. Using the recent Japanese education policy debate as a case study, the author demonstrates how the Japanese media interpreted the PISA 2003 findings in a way that resonated with the specific cultural, political, and economic context of the time and how the Ministry used the findings to legitimise otherwise highly contentious policy measures. Questioning the conventional interpretation that the PISA 2003 shock caused the Ministry to redirect its controversial 'yutori' (low pressure) curricular policy, the paper reconstitutes the Ministry as an active agent that capitalised on an external reference (PISA) to re-establish its political legitimacy in a time of increasing neo-liberal state-restructuring.