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This report deals with the role standard setting plays as a governance mechanism in adult learning, building on previous work on European governance carried out under the ENLIVEN project. But it does so from a specific angle. It focuses on the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIACC) to exemplify how standard setting in adult learning influences the public debate (through national newspapers), which informs policy in selected European countries (Estonia, Denmark, Italy, Slovakia, and the United Kingdom). Standard setting, particularly in European adult learning, is framed in this report as the process involved in the establishment of common rules for states, which implies two concurring phenomena: normative action (or the entitling of some actions as good, desirable, or permissible versus those that are bad, undesirable or impermissible), that is never value-free; and the agreement on common goals to be pursued through normative action. Moreover this reports acknowledges the growing use of social indicators and benchmarks for monitoring progress in EU adult learning. On this ground, this report claims that both the data generated through PIAAC and the ‘implicit’ benchmarking of Level 3 in adults’ literacy, numeracy and problem-solving skills that come with it, contribute to standard setting in adult learning within the EU. But too little is known on how PIAAC’s contribution to standard setting in adult learning influences the public debate through national media, and particularly the highest circulating newspapers, which contribute to knowledge production around the events on which they report, yet from ideological stances. Hence this report presents the methodology applied to, and the results of, a coverage and content media analysis that was performed on a total of 116 news articles. These were published between 2012 and 2019 (July) in the highest circulating newspapers of Estonia, Denmark, Italy, Slovakia, and the United Kingdom. Among all countries involved in the ENLIVEN project, these were selected as each represents a typology of Welfare State Regimes (WSRs), as developed by Roosmaa and Saar (2017). Albeit Bulgaria (also an ENLIVEN country) would have represented one more WSR (Post-socialist, Balkan), it was not considered, as it did not partake in the PIAAC Survey. The results highlight that the national press differently presents and represents the PIAAC Survey, and connects PIAAC data to other subject matters across as much as within countries. Such differences connect to the wider context of reference at the time of publication (i.e., the government on power, the socio-economic situation, and on-going or foreseen education and labour markets reforms) but also to the WSR to which each country belongs. Regardless of such differences, however, some trends and common topics are found in that since 2014 the weight of PIAAC as a subject matter as gradually decreased, while reference to PIAAC data by the press persisted and acquired political, ideological, and ontological functions. Therefrom two policy recommendations can be drawn: 1. Make benchmarking in EU adult learning an explicit process, under the solely responsibility of the Union and it member states; 2. Do not take results from international assessment surveys (like PIAAC) at face value.
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