Country reports: Education systems in Europe

Abstract

In the first chapters we selected the concepts we will use for the comparative analysis of education systems in Europe. Now the current situation in each country will be presented. This cross-country analysis concerns those schools involved in the provision of full-time compulsory education, which, in general, are primary and lower secondary schools. At present, nine or ten years of compulsory schooling is the standard in most European countries. We will carry out a descriptive analysis of the institutional context of the education systems in Europe. However, it seems appropriate to start with painting the picture of the part of the school system under study in each country. Therefore, each country report starts with a short profile in which general background information is presented. This description of some of the key characteristics of the full-time compulsory education system includes information on: the age that children start and end compulsory education, the time children spent in school in these countries, the class size and the content of the countries' curriculum and finally the use of examinations and testing in the country's education systems. The information of this general description is mostly based on the summary sheets on education systems in Europe (see: Eurydice, 2001). Next to this more general introduction of the education systems, the institutional contexts have been analysed from the viewpoint of three concepts (see Chapter 2), namely (1) the education funding policy, (2) the governance of schools and (3) the freedom of school choice within each country. A set of almost 15 European countries take part in the analyses. These have been selected because of their participation in the Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) in 1995. In some cases the TIMSS data set includes sub samples of countries, for example the United Kingdom is divided into England and Scotland, and Belgium is separated into a French and Flemish education system. The country descriptions start with a general introduction to the country and its educational system, followed by an analysis of the institutional contexts from the viewpoint of the three above mentioned concepts. Key data on the European education systems have been found through reports of the European Commission (1996, 1997, 2000, 2001), European Communities (2000), OECD-data and reports (OECD, 1997, 2000, 2001) and databases like Eurydice (2000) and Eurybase (2001). The set includes the following European countries and these are described in the following order: Spain, Scotland, Sweden, Portugal, the Netherlands, Ireland, Germany, France, England, Denmark, Belgium (French), Belgium (Flemish) and Austria. Each country report is finalised with a summary in which an overview is presented of our six indicators.