Background

Education systems have become one of the most debated subjects of political intervention. At the end of the 19th century, national or federal education systems were institutionalised, and in the 20th century they received even more attention. Sharp increases in awareness followed by political debates, and finally more or less efficient political reforms often occurred in the aftermath of perceived ‘educational catastrophes’. Politicians and scientists mainly confess to the failure of education systems when fears involving the economic potential of society increase. There are two famous examples that have indirectly (the first) and directly (the second) affected educational policies: the ‘Sputnik shock’, after the Soviet Union launched the first successful satellite in 1957, with the Western industrialised countries’ fear of being outperformed by the Eastern bloc, and the ‘PISA shock’, after the first testing series in the framework of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) PISA programme (Programme for International Student Assessment) and the discovery that even many highly industrialised countries have strong deficits with regard to the cognitive potential of 15-year-old students who were performing below average in a global comparison of competencies. Both situations were accompanied by increased (economic) fear that the education systems of the countries were not able to provide the cognitive potential or human capital needed to maintain or increase economic prosperity (see Hadjar and Becker, 2009 with regard to the educational expansion). A minor – but from our sociological perspective even more important – argument that is also voiced with regard to perceived education deficits is that ‘more education’ would also help to abolish educational inequalities, or systematic variations in elements of educational attainment structured by ascriptive factors such as class, gender or ethnicity, and increase the potential of citizens to actively participate in democratic society. Dahrendorf (1965) sees education as a civil right and speaks of it as a ‘step into a modern world of enlightened rationality’ (Dahrendorf, 1968: 24). What followed was a tremendous increase in the public awareness of education systems, leading to manifold political attempts to improve the institutional settings of education systems and curricula to produce skills resources.

In reforming their education systems, different countries and even sub-regions followed very different paths.