Press release
New Project TRANSFER Aims to Bridge Gaps between Research, Policy and Practice for More Inclusive Education
International research team will test new approaches to evaluating education policies across eight European countries and explore how research evidence can better support decision-making.
Fribourg, Switzerland, 6 October 2026 – Educational inequalities remain a persistent challenge across Europe, with disadvantaged learners continuing to face significant barriers to educational success. At the same time, education policies are not always systematically evaluated, and research in the field remains fragmented and insufficiently connected to policymaking and everyday practice.
The new Horizon Europe project TRANSFER sets out to address these challenges by strengthening policy evaluation and knowledge exchange between research, policy and practice through an integrated approach, while placing equity and inclusion at the centre of its work. Coordinated by the University of Fribourg, TRANSFER brings together a multidisciplinary consortium of 13 partners from eight European countries and has received approximately €3.5 million in funding from the European Union’s Horizon Europe programme for the next three years.
Towards a New Framework for Policy Evaluation
TRANSFER will develop and test a participatory, mixed-method framework with evaluation throughout the policy cycle at its centre. Rather than focusing primarily on outcomes after implementation, researchers will examine how education policies are developed, put into practice and experienced, as well as their intended and unintended effects.
“Our ambition is to move beyond fragmented approaches and build a more coherent, equity-oriented evidence ecosystem in education. We want to better understand how policies work in different contexts and for different groups and, ultimately, how more systemic evaluation can help us identify effective ways to reduce inequalities and foster inclusion” says Andreas Hadjar, Professor of Sociology, Social Policy and Social Research at the University of Fribourg and coordinator of the TRANSFER consortium.
This framework will be applied across Finland, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Lithuania, Norway, Spain and Switzerland, where researchers will evaluate education policies and programmes in each country. A common methodology, adapted to national contexts, will allow the project to generate both country-specific findings and comparative insights across different European education systems. Particular attention will be given to how policy effects vary across groups and contexts, including inequalities related to socioeconomic background, migration, gender and disability.
Strengthening Co-Creative Knowledge Transfer
Alongside policy evaluation, TRANSFER will investigate how evidence translates across research, policy and practice and identify the factors that help or hinder its uptake in decision-making and educational practice. “Knowledge transfer is not a one-way process from research to policy and practice. TRANSFER understands it as a continuous, multidirectional cycle, in which evidence and experience circulate between researchers, policymakers, practitioners and learners. Strengthening these feedback loops can make evidence more relevant and usable for policy and practice, while insights from policy and practice can, in turn, inform research” explains Hadjar.
The insights and perspectives gathered through this process will help shape practical approaches and resources, including methodological guidelines, policy briefs and recommendations, an interactive evidence platform and an AI-supported foresight simulator. Developed with their intended users, these resources are designed to respond to real needs and remain useful beyond the project.
Together, these efforts aim to establish more lasting ways of evaluating education policies, sharing evidence and learning across research, policy and practice. By strengthening evaluation cultures and the systematic use of evidence from the Social Sciences and Humanities, TRANSFER ultimately seeks to support more equitable and inclusive education systems across Europe.
Project Key Facts
- Title
TRANSFER: Evaluation and Research-Policy-Practice Transfer to Promote Equity and Inclusion
- Start
1 September 2026
- Duration
36 months
- Budget
€ 3,5 Mil.
- Coordinator
University of Fribourg, Switzerland
- Social Media
TRANSFER Partners
- Switzerland
- University of Fribourg
- Germany
- DIPF – Leibniz Institute for Research and Information in Education
- VDI/VDE Innovation + Technik GmbH (VDI/VDE-IT)
- EURICE – European Research and Project GmbH
- Spain
- Complutense University of Madrid
- Hungary
- ELTE Centre for Social Sciences
- Regional Centre for Information and Scientific Development
- Corvinus University of Budapest (associated partner)
- Finland
- University of Helsinki
- Ireland
- ESRI – The Economic and Social Research Institute
- Norway
- University of Bergen
- Western Norway University of Applied Sciences
- Lithuania
- PPMI – Public Policy And Management Institute
Contact
Project Management
EURICE – European Research and Project GmbH
Dr. Annika Enning
Mail
Project Coordination
University of Fribourg
Prof. Andreas Hadjar
Mail