Reform Explorer
Introduction
STRIDE has identified 431 educational reforms across 29 European countries, providing a unique evidence base on how different nations have addressed challenges regarding educational equality and equity, such as inclusion, access, quality, governance, and funding.
You can explore these reform data in two ways:
- Explore the Reform Map
- Ask the Toolbox AI Assistant
Below you find instructions on how to perform the two ways.
The STRIDE Reform Map allows you to browse and search for reforms across countries, educational levels, and time periods. It is designed to help policymakers, researchers, and other stakeholders identify relevant reform experiences and compare approaches across contexts.
Click here to go straight to the Reform MAP and start exploring.
If you would like a little inspiration on how to get started with exploring the Reform MAP view the user-example below:
Getting started: A policymaker use case
A policymaker in Poland seeks to inform a new reform aimed at reducing educational inequality by reviewing reform objectives, implementation strategies, outcomes, etc., to investigate lessons learned and identify promising practices.
One approach in this work could be using the Reform MAP to investigate how neighbouring countries, such as Hungary, have addressed similar challenges related to equity, inclusion, school funding, or support for disadvantaged students.
Step 1: Searching for relevant reforms in Hungary
The policymaker accesses the Reform MAP, selects Hungary, explores the reforms recorded in the database, and applies available filters, such as year, educational level, evaluation outcome, and other reform characteristics relevant to the policymaker, to examine how the national education-policy landscape has evolved over time in Hungary.
By adjusting these filters, the policymaker can identify patterns in reform activity and focus on areas of interest, such as primary or secondary education, or reforms that received a positive evaluation.
The policymaker may also, for example, use the positive evaluation filter to identify reforms that merit closer examination as potentially promising or transferable practices.
Step 2: Accessing and reviewing detailed reform information
The country-level visualisations in the MAP show that reform activity in Hungary is distributed across several years, from 2000 to 2019, and across different educational levels. 2003 shows the highest level of reform activity, with six reforms recorded. The reforms cover several policy areas rather than being concentrated in a single category, while the evaluation information indicates variation in reported outcomes. Most of the recorded reforms have national coverage, with regional initiatives appearing less frequently.
For further investigation, the policymaker clicks on the Hungary information icon (i) and opens the information panel to review the reforms in . The panel presents information for each reform, including the title, year, educational level, aim, key actions and evaluation.
The user can scroll through the available reforms, search for specific terms or target groups using the search functionality. This allows the policymaker to move from a broad overview of reform activity to a more detailed examination of the content and focus of individual reforms. More specifically, through this search, the policymaker can identify a set of Hungarian reforms addressing the selected policy issue and examine which measures have been positively evaluated. For example, if the policymaker is interested in reforms addressing Roma children, such a search finds that eight policy reforms targeted Roma students, two of which were positively evaluated.
The user can then press the PDF button in the search window of the Download option in the main menu to export the reform list for Hungary. The exported information can then be used for further analysis, comparison, internal briefing or reporting outside the STRIDE platform.
Step 3: Comparing Hungary with the European reform landscape
After reviewing the reform landscape in Hungary, the policymaker may wish to place the national findings in a broader European context. This helps to understand whether the timing, intensity and focus of reforms in Hungary reflect wider European patterns and can also point to countries that may offer useful examples for further comparison.
At the European level, the MAP provides aggregated visualisations showing reform activity by country, year, educational level, reform type and geographical coverage. The policymaker can use these charts to compare Hungary with other countries and explore broader patterns in education reform across Europe.
The European summary shows that reform activity varies considerably across countries. Belgium records the highest number of reforms in the database, followed by Malta and Luxembourg. Hungary appears around the middle of the distribution, with fewer recorded reforms than countries such as Belgium, Malta and Luxembourg, but more than countries such as Austria, Bulgaria, Ireland, Italy, Norway, England and the Netherlands. The EU-wide yearly summary also shows that reform activity has fluctuated substantially over time. 2022 has the highest number of recorded reforms in the period shown, while 2014 and 2015 also stand out as years of relatively high reform activity. By contrast, the late 1990s and early 2000s show considerably lower numbers of recorded reforms. Finally, the more detailed European visualisations show that reforms are distributed across several educational levels, with substantial activity at ISCED 1, ISCED 2 and ISCED 3. In terms of reform type, curriculum reforms and laws or regulations concerning access represent prominent categories, while special education reforms and teacher recruitment or requirement reforms are also present. The coverage chart further shows that the large majority of reforms in the database are implemented at the national level, with regional reforms representing a much smaller share.
For policymakers, these comparisons provide broader context for interpreting the Hungarian reform landscape. They can assess whether periods of stronger reform activity in Hungary coincide with wider European reform waves, whether similar types of reform are common elsewhere, and which countries may offer relevant cases for closer investigation. The policymaker can then return to the map and explore specific reforms in those countries in greater detail.
Two Ways to Explore 431 Educational Reforms
Choose the approach that matches your immediate workflow:
The Reform Map
- 1 Filter & Search: Select country, year, evaluation and ISCED level.
- 2 Examine Details: Review specific aims, actions, evaluations and export PDF.
- 3 Compare Across Europe: Benchmark against wider 29-country reform trends.
AI Assistant
- ⚡ Ask Directly: Query the complete database in plain language below.
- 🔍 Cross-Search: Retrieve specific target groups (e.g. Roma pupils) or policy tools.
- 📊 Instant Summaries: Get structured comparisons, bullets or tables on demand.
2. Ask the Toolbox AI Assistant
You can also interact with the Toolbox AI Assistant, which has been developed using the complete STRIDE data, including the reform database that has informed the Reform MAP. Instead of searching manually in the MAP, you can ask AI questions such as:
- What reforms related to disadvantaged students have been implemented in Hungary since 2010?
- What reforms have specifically addressed educational inequalities for Roma children?
The AI Assistant will help you identify relevant reforms, compare experiences across countries, and discover evidence that can support policy development and decision-making.