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Welcome to the Blog of the 2015/2016 course in Trends in Comparative Education Policy!

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Equity and Quality in education: a spotlight on Korea

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Chiara Maria Achermann and Jacques Rosenberg   Korea’s focus on — and success in — education Korea’s education policy has proven to be a benchmark for many countries. Taking a closer look at what Korea does in practice can be useful for understanding what works and what doesn’t in education. According to the OECD, “almost one in five 15 year-old-students across OECD countries does not reach a minimum level of skills to function in today’s society, and there are large performance differences between students of different socio-economic backgrounds” (OECD, 2015, 44). We can agree that a child’s success depends on equity in and quality of education. But what does this mean? Basically, equity and quality means fairness and inclusion. Fairness means that no personal or social circumstances should stand in the way of a child’s potential, curiosity, and path to future success. Inclusion implies that every child should attain at least a minimum skills level (OECD, 2015, 43). ...
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A Proposed Education Reform Program for France

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Abraham Collier (contributors: Elisa Soyer, Lukas Meeth, Trish Suresh) The education system in France is one of the oldest and most admired in the world, with strong performance on PISA and other international standardized tests. However, those same PISA scores indicate a central weakness in France’s primary and secondary systems: inequality based on social background. Smart students from less wealthy families simply don’t have the same opportunities that they do in an average OECD country, and students from rural families are less likely to graduate from upper secondary than their urban counterparts. Potential Drivers of Inequality To understand possible drivers of this inequality, a team of master level students from the Paris School of International Affairs recently undertook an examination of the French system relative to other OECD peers. Their research yielded the following areas of divergence: 1.      Resource allocation between schools an...
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Private schools in public education systems

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Alina Wandelt SDG4 calls for free, equitable and quality education for all boys and girls by 2030.  So what about the rise of private schooling across the developing world? A growing number of students is enrolled in educational institutions that are not administered by local, state or national governments. In 2014, around 13,5 %  of all primary education students attended a private school. This means an upsurge of almost 60 % , compared to 1980 when only 8,5 % of all students were taught privately. In secondary education, the numbers are even higher: almost 25 %  have chosen private over public in 2014, compared to 19 % in 2000. Assessing these numbers against the SDGs, which ambitiously call for the realization of free, equitable and quality education for all boys and girls by 2030, the rise of private schools’ warrants discussion: Is private schooling consistent with the human right for education? Can education be equitable if it’s not free? ...
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