Educational Systems in Europe Research Paper

1. Similarities

The school systems in most European countries have a rather similar historical background. Primary school has a relatively short history. It was established along with mandatory school attendance over a few decades in the nineteenth century, in most cases by legislation in national parliaments. What is now referred to as secondary school has its roots in the Middle Ages with its monastery and cathedral school. These took care of an elite and were preparatory for university studies. The German Gymnasium, the British grammar school, and the French lycee were typical of this type of school. Well into the twentieth century, preparation for entry into the secondary schools was taken care of privately.

The parallel between the first grades of secondary school and the last ones in primary school were brought into serious question after 1945. Behind this was the demand for greater equality of opportunity, but also the social and economic changes in a society where formal education increasingly became crucial for individual career and social status.

In the late 1930s steps began to be taken in reforming British education. The Labour governments in the 1940s to 1960 were strongly in favor of a comprehensive school system which would replace the tri- partite system of 1944. Part of the breaking up of the old structure in France was the presidential decree of 1959 which introduced a cycle d’orientation (middle school) of two years after five years in ecole primaire. In Germany a similar, two-year Orientierungsstufe comes after four years in Grundschule. The rationale behind such an arrangement has been to get ample opportunity and time to find out which students are able to proceed in the academic and vocational programs respectively.

Reform movements after 1945 in several countries aimed at making secondary school available and comprehensive for all young people. The 1959 French decree by President de Gaulle made the transfer from primary to secondary more flexible by the cycle d’orientation. The same occured in many places in the Federal Republic of Germany where the more radical reformers were demanding a Gesamtschule (comprehensive school) which would cover the entire period of mandatory schooling. The German system, however, was more institutionalized and rigid than the French, and parallel to the new system in Germany, transfer could occur from the fourth grade in the primary school to the first grade in the nine-year Gymnasium. In France an intermediary type of school at the lower secondary level was introduced, called college d’enseignement secondaire, which broadened the opportunities for the majority of students. In Italy, for a long time after 1945, the scuola media, the lower secondary school, played an important role in the debate about school reform. The debate primarily referred to northern Italy; the southern part of the country was lagging behind in this respect.

It is not possible here to describe each national system of education in Europe. Therefore, this research paper is limited to the systems in France, Germany, the UK, and Russia, all of which have influenced the other countries by serving as models. Each of these systems is represented by an outline of their structure. Common to all of them is the division into three main stages: primary, secondary, and higher education. They also all have in common a mandatory primary stage, whereas for a long time the secondary institutions educated a social and intellectual elite in separate, adademically oriented schools, such as Gymnasium in Germany, lycees in France, and grammar schools in the UK, all preparing for higher education.

2. Differences

The various national systems differ in several respects (see OECD 1998, European Commission 1995, 1991, Husen et al. 1992, Eurydice European Unit 1991). Some countries have a ‘comprehensive’ school that caters for all children of primary school age and covers the first 8–10 years in primary school which then runs parallel to the secondary for the next few years. The Nordic countries today have a comprehensive system which gradually has been gaining ground in France, the UK, and some of the Lander (states) in Germany. In these countries there are also private schools more-or-less independent of the state. Most of the countries in Eastern Europe introduced postwar comprehensive systems modeled after the one in the USSR.

Transfer from primary to secondary school occurs, as mentioned above, in various countries and at different age levels. In Germany transfer has in most Lander taken place at the age of 10 after four years of primary school. In the UK it takes place at the age of 11. In the Netherlands, most children start school at the age of four but it becomes mandatory at five, and primary school lasts until the age of 12. In Italy, mandatory school is from 6 to 14; children have to take an examination called licenza elemenare after which they can proceed to the next stage, scuola media, which is also comprehensive.

Secondary school is thus organized very differently in the various countries. What in Sweden is referred to as gymnasium consists in Germany of grades 11–13 (in some Lander grades 11 and 12). It is an academically oriented school running parallel to schools with vocational programs.

3. School Structures In Four Countries

3.1 Germany

In the late 1940s Western Germany became a federation of states which had full sovereignty in matters of education. After four years in the Grundschule, transfer to a two-year Forderstufe can take place. This stage can be part of a Gymnasium (nine-year), Realschule (six-year) or a Hauptschule.

A striking feature of the German Gymnasium has traditionally been the multitude of subjects in the final grades. The purpose is to give a broad general education which can be a heavy task for the students. In this respect the German system differs radically from the British with its specialization on three or four subjects during the final two grades of secondary school.

The number of students reaching Abitur (examinations necessary for university entrance) was for a long time rather low, for instance less than 10 percent of the age group in the 1960s, but during the last few decades it has increased to 25–30 percent.

In the DDR (East Germany) before unification there was a 10-year polytechnically oriented school where during the last few grades students could work and learn in business enterprises. The Gesamtschule, the basic and/or comprehesive school was the model taken over from the USSR. It was also introduced in the Federal Republic (West Germany) in some states, such as Hesse, in the 1960s.

3.2 France

The school system in France had for a long time two kinds of parallelism. There were public schools running parallel with religious (Catholic) schools. Furthermore, there were municipal schools parallel with lycees run by the state. The structure at the beginning of the twenty-first century is as follows. After ecole maternelle, the preschool which traditionally covers a larger portion of the age groups than in most other European countries, comes the five-year ecole primaire. Then follows secondary school, college or lycee of which the first two grades, along with the corresponding grades in the ecole primaire, make up a cycle d’orientation (middle or transition school), after which a decision is taken as to whether or not the student is capable of transferring to an academically oriented lycee or will have to finish schooling in a college d’enseignement general, which is the final stage of madatory schooling. In 1959 the latter was increased to nine years but in 1975 a classe terminal was added. Thus the 10-year school covers the age range 6 to 16.

Grade repeating (redoublement) has traditionally been a dominant feature of the French system. As late as 1980 about one third of the students in ecole primaire consisted of grade repeaters. This means that in the upper grades students on the average are one year older than ‘normal’ for the grade.

3.3 The United Kingdom

During World War II, in 1944, the British parliament passed an Education Act which provided access to secondary school for all young people in the age range 11 to 16. After five years in primary school they could transfer to secondary school with mandatory attendance up to the age of 15. Since schooling began at five, transfer to secondary school took place at 11. Then students had to go through a selection procedure, the ‘11 plus’ examination, which more or less decided the allocation of students to three types of secondary school: grammar schools, technical schools, or secondary modern schools, which all had five-year programs. About one fourth qualified for grammar school, the rest were roughly equally distributed among the other two types. Schools reformers, particularly in the Labour party, were proponents for a unitary school, a comprehensive school for all students. Comprehensivization occurred in the UK after the early 1960s and the 11 plus examination was abolished in most of the UK. But the students are as a rule differentiated according to ability within the schools.

At the end of the nineteenth century the great majority of schools in the UK were divided into two stages: primary from 5 to 11 years of age and secondary from 11 to 16 (or for those taking a preparatory program for university entrance, to 18). The distinction now in some parts of the UK is between three stages of schooling: first school from 5 to 7 or 8, middle school from 8 to 12 (or 9 to 13), and upper school from 12 or 13 to 16 or 18. Some 5 percent of children of primary school go to private schools. At the secondary stage the percentage is 8–10.

After five years in secondary school the student can take General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) external examinations. Those who intend to go on to higher education can, after two more years of specialization in three or four subjects, take the examinations for the General Certificate of Education advanced level (A-levels).

The school reform of 1988 means that for the first time a national curriculum has been introduced, along with national assessments of student competence at several stages.

3.4 Russia

The disintegration of the USSR meant that several of the republics in the Union tended to move away from the model which was dominant, namely the Russian one. The literacy of the population within an essentially agrarian economy had until the 1930s been a central task, which meant that adult education played a dominant role in the educational system. When universal schooling for children was legislated the big cities were given priority. Thus Moscow and Leningrad early provided 9–10 year schooling for the majority of children, whereas in rural areas for a long time five-year primary school was common. A comprehensive eight-year basic or primary school has traditionally been common in Russia, at least in the urban regions. A secondary two-to-four-year school with various vocational programs followed. Higher education has also had a clear-cut vocational bias which reflects the ‘polytechnical’ orientation that has characterized the communist educational philosophy, a kind of symbiosis between theory and practice. Whereas schooling in many districts was easily available for all, selection to higher education has been rather tough. For a long time adult education played a prominent role in Soviet education with evening courses, distance teaching, etc.

The system was, and still seems to be, strongly centralized. Curricula were conceived and issued from Moscow. The Academy of Pedagogical Sciences thereby played an important role in preparing a common curriculum. The reforms that followed upon the disintegration of the USSR implied in certain respects a decentralization.

4. Private School Systems

In most European countries there has traditionally been a private sector both at the primary and secondary level. This sector is in the UK referred to as ‘independent’ and is financed by fees and private funds, but in some instances students from less affluent backgrounds can be excused fees. In the 1990s between 6 and 9 percent of the age groups at primary school level went to independent (‘preparatory’) schools and 12–15 percent at the secondary level. Many of these schools in the UK are boarding schools; the secondary schools are referred to as ‘public schools’, the most famous of which are Eton, Rugby, and Harrow. Elite universities, such as Oxford and Cambridge, for a long time recruited roughly half of their students from the independent schools.

In France a ‘cultural struggle’ went on for more than a century between the state and the Catholic Church about what basically had to do with religious instruction. The Catholic schools, which in around 1900 recruited about 20 percent of the age group at the primary stage, had until then no public financial support, but gained one in 1905. Recurrent attempts have been made, as late as in the mid-1980s, to incorporate the Catholic schools into the state system, but the attempts have failed. In other Catholic countries, not least in Spain, the church has a firm hand on the school system and the curriculum, whereas in the Protestant countries the state usually rules the system. In the Netherlands there are, in practice, three systems; one Catholic, one Protestant, and one secular, each with its own central administration. The curriculum is, however, on the whole common. In Belgium there are one Flemish, one French-oriented, and one German-oriented system, each with its own Minister of Education.

Denmark has a long tradition of independent schools, which goes back to the reformer Grundtvig. The pedagogical cornerstones are student self-reliance and free approaches to learning.

In 1988 a school reform in Great Britain was passed which reduced the influence of the local education authorities (LEAs) and made the Ministry of Education more powerful. Thus, a majority of parents in a local school could decide to ‘opt out’ from the LEA and had the right to get financial support directly from the Department of Education in London.

There have in recent years been tendencies in several countries to make the boundaries between public and private schools more fluent with regard to the role of both central and local authorities.

5. Higher Education

Three national systems of higher education have been influential outside the boundaries of the respective countries: Germany, France, and the UK. The German system has influenced particularly the countries in northern and central Europe, the French has been a model in some East European countries, whereas the British has been emulated in former colonies.

The idea of the university, which Wilhelm von Humboldt launched at the beginning of the nineteenth century and implementend in Berlin, had a strong influence both on the European continent and in northern Europe. The basic idea was the unity of teaching and research which, among other things, was realized by introducing departments at the undergraduate level and special institutes for research at the graduate level. For instance, the model established by Wilhelm Wundt in 1879 by setting up an institute at the university in Leipzig had an important impact on the development of experimental psychology on both sides of the Atlantic. Great distinction was made at the time between basic and applied research and between theory and practice. In German philosophy of education at higher level the word Bildung was of central importance. The study of classical languages and history was regarded as contributing a good deal to general education, although in Germany natural sciences were also appreciated. The faculties of natural sciences, as well as those of medicine, played a more important role at German universities than at UK ones. Teaching was provided mainly by professors, the ‘chair holders,’ one in each discipline.

French higher education on the whole got its present structure during the era of Napoleon, with the establishment of the grandes ecoles, elite institutions for training various professions, such as civil engineers, senior civil servants in the ministries, and teachers in the upper grades in the lycees. The teaching put high intellectual demands on stringency and analysis. The professors were expected to be in contact with what happened in their respective disciplines but not to devote too much of their time to research, which was conducted mainly outside the universities in Centres Nationeaux de Recherche Scientifique which were placed directly under the Ministry of Education. As an outcome of the student revolution of 1968 the university system and its administration was thoroughly reformed by the lois d’orientation. For instance, the

University of Paris, which until then had been entirely concentrated at the Sorbonne, was divided into a dozen new units. The new law created almost one thousand unites d’enseignement et recherche, some-thing in between faculties and departments for various disciplines. More influence was given to the students with regard to instruction and the governance of the bigger units. The French system, not least the university system, is traditionally rather centralized and therefore rather rigid and difficult to reform.

The UK had, until 1992, 47 universities, which had the right to grant examination certificates including the doctoral degree. Parallel to the universities in this dual system were about 40 polytechnics with two-or three-year, vocationally oriented programs. The poly- technics have constantly struggled for university status, among other things by acquiring research resources. In 1992 they were incorporated into the university system, which meant that the UK now had 88 institutions which could call themselves universities. This also means that there are great differences in quality and status. Elite institutions like Oxford and Cambridge, which are very selective and account for only three percent of the total number of university students, are often regarded as ‘typical’ of the UK system.

In 1988 a reform of the system made regular evaluations a condition for funding. British universities have traditionally enjoyed a high degree of autonomy vis-a-vis the central government. Thus, until 1988, the University Grants Commission, which consisted entirely of representatives of the universities, received a lump sum from the Government which was then distributed by the Commission among the universities. From 1988 there have been Higher Education Funding Councils for England, Wales, and Scotland, one for the universities and one for what were then polytechnics and college. In these bodies the majority of the members still have experience from the academic world. But there are more bodies ordering services in terms of training and research than distributors of available funds. Formal purchasing contracts are negotiated which makes funding dependent on the number of students in the respective disciplines, and on the ‘productivity’ demonstrated.

For a long time the elite universities in Britain could take credit for bringing about 90 percent of those who entered studies to an academic degree. This is taken after three or four years of study, which is shorter than in most countries on the continent where the basic degree can take five to eight years of study. Since UK university students begin their study earlier than on the continent, the basic degree is usually taken at the age of 21 or 22. The specialization of university studies is facilitated by the fact that the two final years in secondary school studying for A levels is specialized to three or four subjects.

Bibliography:

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