Educational Policies and Inequalities in Europe PDF
Preview Educational Policies and Inequalities in Europe
Educational Policies and Inequalities in Europe This page intentionally left blank Educational Policies and Inequalities in Europe Editedby Marc Demeuse UniversityofMons,Belgium Daniel Frandji EcoleNormaleSupérieuredeLyon,FrenchInstituteofEducation,Triangle,France David Greger CharlesUniversityinPrague,CzechRepublic and Jean-Yves Rochex Paris8University,France Selectionandeditorialmatter©MarcDemeuse,DanielFrandji,DavidGreger andJean-YvesRochex2012 Individualchapters©theirrespectiveauthors2012 Foreword©SallyPower2012 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2012 978-0-230-30203-7 OriginallypublishedinFrenchin2008byINRPunderthetitle:LesPolitiques D’ÉducationPrioritaireenEurope,Conceptions,MiseenOeuvre,Débats Allrightsreserved.Noreproduction,copyortransmissionofthis publicationmaybemadewithoutwrittenpermission. Noportionofthispublicationmaybereproduced,copiedortransmitted savewithwrittenpermissionorinaccordancewiththeprovisionsofthe Copyright,DesignsandPatentsAct1988,orunderthetermsofanylicence permittinglimitedcopyingissuedbytheCopyrightLicensingAgency, SaffronHouse,6–10KirbyStreet,LondonEC1N8TS. Anypersonwhodoesanyunauthorizedactinrelationtothispublication maybeliabletocriminalprosecutionandcivilclaimsfordamages. Theauthorshaveassertedtheirrightstobeidentifiedastheauthorsofthis workinaccordancewiththeCopyright,DesignsandPatentsAct1988. Firstpublished2012by PALGRAVEMACMILLAN PalgraveMacmillanintheUKisanimprintofMacmillanPublishersLimited, registeredinEngland,companynumber785998,ofHoundmills,Basingstoke, HampshireRG216XS. PalgraveMacmillanintheUSisadivisionofStMartin’sPressLLC, 175FifthAvenue,NewYork,NY10010. PalgraveMacmillanistheglobalacademicimprintoftheabovecompanies andhascompaniesandrepresentativesthroughouttheworld. Palgrave®andMacmillan®areregisteredtrademarksintheUnitedStates, theUnitedKingdom,Europeandothercountries. ISBN 978-1-349-33747-7 ISBN 978-0-230-35865-2 (eBook) DOI 10.1057/9780230358652 Thisbookisprintedonpapersuitableforrecyclingandmadefromfully managedandsustainedforestsources.Logging,pulpingandmanufacturing processesareexpectedtoconformtotheenvironmentalregulationsofthe countryoforigin. AcataloguerecordforthisbookisavailablefromtheBritishLibrary. AcatalogrecordforthisbookisavailablefromtheLibraryofCongress. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 Contents ListofFiguresandTables vii Foreword viii Acknowledgements xi NotesonContributors xii 1 Introduction:TowardsaComparisonofPriorityEducation PoliciesinEurope 1 DanielFrandji England 2 PolicyInterventionstoReduceEducationalInequalities–The CaseofEngland,1997–2010 23 LiaAntoniou,AlanDysonandCarloRaffo Belgium 3 PriorityEducationPoliciesinBelgium:TwoModesof RegulationoftheEffectsofaMarketLogic 55 NathanaëlFriant,MarcDemeuse,AngelineAubert-Lotarski andIdesbaldNicaise France 4 Twenty-FiveYearsofPriorityEducationPolicyinFrance: DubiousSpecificityandDisappointingResults 93 Jean-YvesRochex Greece 5 Greece:OnMechanismsandSuccessiveProgrammesbetween SupportandInnovation 127 GellaVarnava-Skoura,DimitrisVergidisandChryssaKassimi v vi Contents Portugal 6 FromtheInventionoftheDemocraticCitytothe ManagementofExclusionandUrbanViolenceinPortugal 157 JoséAlbertoCorreia,InêsCruz,Jean-YvesRochexandLucilia Salgado CzechRepublic 7 PriorityEducationPoliciesintheCzechRepublic:Redesigning EquityPoliciesinthePost-CommunistTransformation 191 DavidGreger,MarkétaLevínskáandIrenaSmetáˇcková Romania 8 Romania:ASysteminEvolution,SearchingforItsConceptual References 223 CalinRus Sweden 9 Sweden:PriorityEducationPoliciesinTimesof DecentralisationandIndividualisation 259 GuadalupeFranciaandLázaroMorenoHerrera 10 GeneralConclusion:PriorityEducationPoliciesinEurope, fromOne‘Age’andOneCountrytoAnother 288 Jean-YvesRochex Index 320 Figures and Tables Figures 3.1 Performancesinmathematicsby15-year-olds,reflectedinthe 2003PISAsurvey:Variancesbetweenandwithinschools 57 3.2 Publicfundingperpupil(¤/year)inFlemishprimary education,schoolyear2007–2008,byshareofEEOtarget group 75 3.3 Publicfundingperpupil(¤/year)inFlemishsecondary education,schoolyear2007–2008,byshareofEEOtarget group 75 Tables 8.1 SchoolparticipationofRomanichildreninRomania 233 9.1 Successratesofstudentsincompulsoryschoolingtests 272 vii Foreword This book represents a timely and important contribution to ongoing attempts to understand and intervene in the reproduction of social and educationalinequalities. Aroundtheworld,nationsareplacingeducationattheheartoftheirsocial andeconomicpolicy.Education,itisclaimed,iscrucialforthedevelopment of active citizenship, social cohesion and international economic compet- itiveness. Rather than the wealth of nations being based on ‘old’ forms of capital, it is argued that we now live in a ‘knowledge economy’ in which the development of human capital through ongoing education is the pri- ority. The importance placed on education is evident from the increasing levelsofinvestment.Educationnowembracesmorelearnersatmorestages in their lives. Many governments now have extensive programmes of pre- school education and almost all countries are expanding provision at the higher levels and exhorting citizens to engage in lifelong learning. With- out such investment, it is argued, nations will ‘fall behind’ in the global marketplace. However,whileeducationsystemsmayberequiredtogearthemselvesup for the new global knowledge economy, their ability to meet its challenges is blighted by widespread and enduring educational inequalities. These inequalities are generally associated with other inequalities, particularly those of socio-economic status and ethnicity, and are evident throughout all areas of education systems. Not only do these inequalities persist, but they can even increase as children progress through school. At higher lev- els, they are evident in variable participation rates, transitions to work and involvementinlifelonglearning. Governments are not blind to these problems. Since the 1960s, many countrieshaveputinplaceprogrammesdesignedtoaddresstheseinequal- ities,particularlythoseassociatedwithsocio-economicdeprivation.Asthis bookreveals,theseprogrammesvarywidelyinfocus,scaleandnature.How- ever,theyhavegenerallysharedacommonfate–theyhavehad,atbest,only limitedimpact. Thepersistenceofeducationinequalitiesinthefaceoftheseinterventions confrontseducationresearchers,policymakersandpractitionerswithsome difficult dilemmas. One response is to concede defeat – to accept that edu- cational inequalities are a ‘fact of life’ and that it is a waste of time and money to try to eliminate them. Another response is to keep on trying to intervene, to hope that next time the right policies will be found and educationalinequalitieswillbeeliminated. viii Foreword ix Clearlyneitherresponseisadequate.Thefirstwilldenymillionsofyoung people – those most in need – the opportunities which their more affluent peersenjoy.Thesecondisthenaiveassertionofhopeoverexperience.Such naivety will not help the intended beneficiaries and will ultimately lead to thefirstresponseinanyevent. The third response, and the one to which this book can make an impor- tantcontribution,istotrytounraveljustwhystrategiesdesignedtoreduce inequalitiesineducationdonotappeartowork.Cross-nationalcomparison clearly has a central role to play in this unravelling. In order to under- stand why some policies succeed and others fail, it is necessary to look at education provision in terms of systems – and the best way of under- standing the characteristics of any one system is through comparison with others. Cross-national comparison has been facilitated hugely by the increasing availability of data sets, such as that of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), which have enabled comparative analysis of the scale and locus of educational inequalities. However, useful as these data sets are in illuminating patterns, they are not particularly helpful in revealing the processes underlying the patterns. What is needed is a cross- national comparison that is also based on an appreciation of the specificity ofnationalsystems–aspecificitythatstatisticalanalysesinevitablyhaveto gloss over. It is increased understanding of this dimension that this book offers. One of the repeated themes running through the chapters in the book is the context specificity of concepts, data, provision and the nature of learning itself. This context specificity should, however, not be seen as ‘interference’ but as a source of illumination. As this book reveals, the differences between education systems reflect not only contrasting amountsofresourceinvestmentandlabourmarketopportunities–although these factors are important – but also, more significantly, that the dif- ferences arise from the sedimentation of different values, priorities and cultures. In order to understand system- (and within-system-) level vari- ables in educational processes and outcomes, we need to explore the various meanings, values and significance that various communities attach toeducation. In providing detailed accounts of different countries’ attempts to solve their enduring inequalities, this book enriches our understanding of the limits and possibilities of educational reform. The illumination of different strategies and their contexts can actually undermine pessimistic assertions of the inevitability of educational failure for some social groups. Certainly, unlesswegraspthecomplexityofthesocio-culturaldimensionsofeducation andthespecificitiesofthecontextinwhichpoliciesareinserted,reformswill beweakandineffectual.
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