The individual and societal effects of the European education systems. How does structure influence the tasks of education?

Abstract

Across European countries, the expansion of education has increased during the 20th century the opportunities of young people’s access to and within schooling, but it has not reduced socioeconomic and cultural inequality both in term of labour market’s entry and participation to the democratic public life. This paper proposes an analysis of the ways in which education systems are institutionalised in Europe and the effects of this institutionalisation on educational inequality, young people’ labor market entry and the promotion of their active citizenship: three hot topics in the EU agenda framing the implementation of the European knowledge societies. Educational inequality becomes particularly evident at the transition point from lower to upper secondary education as this passage confronts young people with new (adult) expectations, status and practices and contributes to their positioning in a segmented labor market and an unequal society. Therefore, our special focus is set on the kinds of transitions foreseen in the education systems of the eight countries participating to an EU-funded research project on the Governance of Educational Trajectories in Europe (GOETE). The aim is to highlight how different the tasks of education are interpreted through the systemic structure of the different national education systems.

Keywords

• school systems
• educational inequality
• school to work transitions
• active citizenship