There is not much research done in this field, reason why this research was granted via a EU tender. The study of EuroPEP covers 8 countries: England, Belgium, France, Greece, Portugal, Czech Republic, Romania, Sweden. It is based on compulsory schooling, but also on pre-school institutions where these are not directly concerned by the compulsory period of schooling.

Priority education policies are used in the fight against educational inequalities. They have various names according to national contexts and periods of time (compensation policies, priority education zones, positive discrimination, etc.), but what is common to them is that they are based on a deviation from the principle of formal equality in education.

The summary highlights the obvious lack of evaluations of these policies, and brings to light 3 phases, ages of what is called priority education policies:

First Age: compensatory policies. Developed as a side mechanism of changing education form elitist schooling towards mass schooling and the institution of a comprehensive school with equal access.

Second Age (present): fight against exclusion through the transformation of educational practices themselves. "Arguments in favour of this are made more and more in terms of equity, in the sense of aiming at, or guaranteeing, for all a minimum range of competences and knowledge to enable non-exclusion. This is where the rhetoric, much in vogue today, of core competencies and basic knowledge was heard, ...especially for 'groups at risk'".

The third Age (starting): inclusive education with a special meaning. There are almost more target groups as can be specific directed, in that way every child can be seen as with special needs and talents. This age/direction is also stimulated by the fact that (to) much children are threatened to be locked in the segregation mechanisms of special education. This asks for open schools for everybody, but asks for a big change in school culture and learning practices.
"The problem with which this third model is confronted is part of this movement, the installation of common cores of competencies acting at most as a barrier against the outburst of the very idea of a common school.
What is now being witnessed, in fact, is a convergence towards a school that is more and more split up by a multitude of programmes and measures targeted on the basis of the many forms of categorizations of school publics". With the problem that it is less easier to make clear priority policies for specific groups if everything is changing into tailor made education.