Much of the discussion pertaining to the development of learning cities has focused on the role of city administrations themselves rather than on national policies in lifelong learning (see for example Osborne and Hernandez 2021 and Osborne, Nestervova and Bhandari 2021).

At first glance this may not seem surprising given the competence that local and regional governments (LRGs) have in relation to education, as summarised in this extract from a recent OECD/UCLG (2019) report.
 

On a world average of 67 countries with available data (2015), education is the primary area of spending of LRGs both as a share of GDP (2.6%) and as a share of the current expenditure (23.6%). For federal countries, such as Australia, Austria, Canada and Germany, it is the states, provinces or regions that are allocated education-related responsibilities. In other countries, such as Finland, the United Kingdom and Brazil, strong decentralization processes have resulted in the transfer of power concerning most schooling matters to local authorities. Similarly, in the USA, school districts are responsible for raising and managing funding at the local level, with variable levels of financial support from federal government. Likewise, the Republic of Korea has delegated much of its budget planning and major administrative decisions to local authorities; this trend has also been followed in Denmark, Lithuania, Sweden and the Slovak Republic. Some other countries count on sub-national administrations to act as bridges between their central and regional-level; this is, for instance, the case in Spain (with its autonomous communities), Japan (with its prefectures) and Argentina (with its provinces). In other countries (such as France), although the National Ministry of Education has overall responsibility for organizing the education system, specific responsibilities and funds are also transferred to LRGs. Accordingly, cities are responsible for early childhood and primary education; intermediate levels of government (départements) are responsible for compulsory secondary education (collèges) and regional governments are responsible for secondary education and vocational education (TVET, lycées et enseignement professionnel).

OECD/UCLG 2019, p. 44-45

We can see that LRGs are accorded significant responsibilities for the implementation of policies in schooling and the delivery of compulsory education in a number of countries, although in most jurisdictions overall steering is national. In other countries within ASEM, such as Bangladesh, the system is organised at national level, or as in India, delegated to the individual states, but there is little role for city administrations.

Full policy paper follows...