2. FROM NATIONAL TO CONTINENTAL SCHOOL MODELS.

by Francesco Spoltore

The Federalist, 1994, Number 1

Up until some decades ago, the two reference models for national school systems were the Anglo-Saxon type, controlled by local authorities and private institutions, and the Napoleonic type, based on the state school and on rigid administration by the national central power. This distinction is no longer so clear-cut. On the one hand, national education systems are increasingly subject to constraints imposed by international competition. On the other hand, in an attempt to try out new educational policies, the countries in the Anglo-Saxon tradition Great Britain and the USA are introducing elements of hierarchical control, while countries in the Napoleonic tradition, like France, are seeking to make use of some local authorities in the area of education. In general the impulse towards the changes taking place in different countries are presented as specific national choices. A rapid round-up of what is happening in the scholastic field in the principal areas of the world is sufficient to realise that in reali

ty these impulses are increasingly the fruit of pressures and constraints created by the new international context.

The revaluation of the centralised organisation of education in the Anglo-Saxon world: the limits of the United States and the British models.

The Americans recently discovered that they had ignored President Jeffersons warning that "if a State hopes to remain ignorant, free and civilised, it hopes for something which never has happened and never will happen". In fact, as the American economist Lester Thurow has pointed out, one of the reasons for the recent difficulties of the USA in international economic competition lies precisely in the weakness of its educational system. This is a system that is still strongly decentralised (currently 16,000 educational districts; there were 110,000 in 1924), each of which enjoys a high level of autonomy in that the school board is elected by those living in the district, or nominated from the local authorities, for a short mandate (1-3 years) and decides on the funds to be used for the school collected by local taxes, on the appointment and payment of those who teach, on the type of subjects to be taught in the high schools (the subjects common to all high schools are very limited in number, and students can

choose from a myriad of optional subjects).3 The American model has been based until now on the formation of a highly qualified elite with a university training, neglecting the diffusion of high quality levels of secondary education. This choice, which is consistent with the Taylor-Ford mode of production, based on an organisation of work in which it was sufficient to have a limited number of qualified cadres and technicians capable of directing a much greater mass of people with basically few or no qualifications, is still reflected in the American social make-up.

The United States in fact leads the world as regards the number of graduates and those with post-graduate specialisation degrees, thanks to an enormous spread of Community colleges, which has grown from 532 offering two-year courses with 110,000 students in 1933-34 to 1,219 with five million students in 1983-84. On the secondary education front, while the school-attendance index for 16- to 17-year-olds is very high, the rate of achievement among young Americans remains at a low average level: they have a poor grounding in mathematics and science compared to those who study in Europe and Japan, and a high percentage of young people with no professional training (45% of the employed people according to a survey conducted between 1986 and 1989). In an age in which competition has become worldwide, such a situation could not be sustained for long. Having ascertained that the member states of the American Federation were investing less and less in their respective scholastic systems, causing the US to drop from s

econd place at world level as a percentage of national income spent on education in 1975, to fifteenth place in 1990, the Bush administration was forced to launch a federal plan, project America 2000, to raise the level of education. This programme still foresees the creation of at least 535 model schools, at least one for each congressional district, to obviate the fact that 30% of the qualified workforce in the US comes from 1.5% of the school districts. President Clintons electoral programme took up this plan again, emphasising among other things how "in the emerging global economy, everything is mobile: capital, factories, even entire industries. The only resource thats really rooted in a nation and the ultimate source of all its wealth is its people. The only way that America can compete and win in the twenty-first century is to have the best-educated, best-trained workforce in the world, linked together by transportation and communication networks second to none." The American administration has identi

fied the excessive independence of the member States of the Union and of the local governments in scholastic matters as the bottleneck of the US educational system. At the federal level therefore, the need to assert common national standards and curricula is insisted upon. But the American federal model does not provide for coordination in the educational sector and therefore the question is left up to a test of strength between the administration of the day in Washington and the other levels. The central government starts off as favourite in this confrontation.

Until present the federal governments contribution to school expenditure was minimal (8.7% in 1986 as against a maximum of 10.7% in 1970), while the member states have no spare resources with which to promote a reform of their school systems.

On the other hand, the private sector, though firmly rooted in the world of the US school, has not shown itself capable of taking on the diffusion of a school model of adequate quality beyond those sectors strictly tied to the exploitation of research. Private investment in the field of education has, for thirty years, represented less than a tenth of public investment at the level of primary and secondary instruction, and half as much as for colleges and universities. In the field of education the United States has adopted an intergovernmental approach. For example, the absence of institutional mechanisms meant that in 1989 the Bush plan could not get under way without an education summit with the governors of the member-states (a summit presided over by the then Governor of Arkansas Clinton). It was because of this summit that the governors signed the Bush programme on National Educational Goals for the year 2000.4 The precedents in this field are not however encouraging. So far in fact, all federal-level

attempts at massive intervention in education have failed. The attempt to increase pre-university scientific education at the end of the 1950s in response to the Soviet space challenge was a resounding failure. Equally disastrous was the failure of the social science programme (National Science Foundation) in the early seventies, which was attacked by Republican and Democrat conservatives in Congress and branded as an offence to traditional American values and an inadmissable interference by the federal government in the states policies. The chief limit in the experience of reforming the American school system thus lies precisely at the institutional level, which means that no mechanism is provided to coordinate education planning between the various levels of government. The federal levels attempt to acquire new powers in the area of schools reflects a centralizing tendency within the American federal model which has already been going on for about a century. Around the redefinition of powers in education a

n important institutional battle is being played out in the US, the result of which however does not appear to be such a foregone conclusion in favour of the power of Washington as at the time of the First World War and of the New Deal, for two reasons. The first is that, with the end of the Cold War, while the federal government does have more financial resources to dedicate to educational policy, it cannot count on a massive mobilization of public opinion on its side and against the lower levels of government by adducing the supreme interests of national security. The second is the entry of the US into the large free trade area (NAFTA). As growing expectations in society for the success of the single American market are encouraged, the same social and productive forces will push for the educational models of the USA, Canada and Mexico to become increasingly integrated, following the example of what has happened, and is happening, in Europe. This prospect makes it more likely that we shall see the beginning

of an integration of education systems throughout North America, rather than a centralizing reform at national level of the Canadian, US and Mexican systems. The redefinition of powers in education is thus destined to become one of the principal topics of political debate on the future of federalism in the US.

The elitist nature of British schools has been revealed as inadequate both with regard to the challenge of the scientific and technological revolution, and from the economic point of view. For example it has led to such an escalation of the costs that families must sustain to guarantee a decent education for their children at the best independent schools, as to induce the central power to occupy itself directly (through national policies) or indirectly (through special terms and study grants) with seeking a more balanced relationship between the central power, local authorities and private schools. The competition between public and private schools, fed by a race for the selection of a privileged elite, which tends to expel the young from school rather than to push them up the levels of education, is still very fierce. Annual publications classifying the performance of the various schools keep debate on these themes alive in the national press. The league tables in the Financial Times annually rank the first

1,000 schools in the country; in order to afford these, many British families take out long-term loans, and entrust themselves to specialized agencies to arrange early financial plans. This system however is beginning to show serious limits, given that for some years now the state schools have begun to score higher than independent schools and that the number of children who benefit from exemptions or reductions even on private school fees has reached a quarter of the total. In the wake of the economic crisis of the 1980s, a first reform was started which, while preserving a decentralized structure (104 Local Education Authorities), sought to improve the educational system by shifting it towards more centralized policies, particularly in post-secondary education. But on the threshold of the 1990s Great Britain still recorded the lowest percentage among industrialized countries of students in upper-secondary schooling, and the extreme freedom of choice between various curricula meant that in 1987 more than h

alf of the students still did not study a second language, more than a third did not study physics, and so on. Exclusively privileging the higher levels of education had not proved efficient with respect to the new, more specialised and flexible, production processes, which required both a sufficiently widespread standard of general education and more levels of professional and vocational training. With the passing of time the deficiencies of this reform became so obvious as to necessitate a further reform at the beginning of the 1990s (the previous one dating from 1988) which, contradicting a centuries-old British tradition, provides for the introduction of national curricula and a new organization of vocational training based on credits and national qualifications (National Vocational Qualification), on the French and German model. It is from this viewpoint that the government is seeking to reduce the influence of the local authorities, promising finance only on the basis of the number of students which in

dividual schools succeed in attracting, and seeking to remove control over schools from local authorities by putting alongside them new councils which are to cooperate directly with industry. Thus, even in Great Britain a redefinition of priorities in training is under way, increasingly oriented towards the exclusion of large numbers of young people from secondary education, and a redistribution of powers with regard to schooling to balance the overweening strength of private schools by giving greater importance to state schools.

The birth of the new continental European Franco-German model.

In Europe the development of the process of integration and the progressive demilitarization of the member-states, which since the end of the Second World War have no longer had effective sovereignty either in the military field or in foreign policy, have accelerated the convergence between school systems which had for decades remained impermeable to one another. The gradual creation of the single market and the coming into force of the Treaty of Maastricht have laid the foundations for delegitimising the principle of power being exclusive to any one level of government in the field of education. From this point of view France and Germany represent the two most important points of reference and convergence. In France, where school organization continues to be centralised, there has been a process underway since the mid-1980s which is attempting to bring together regional and local government in educational policy. The great challenge facing the French system, whose most prestigious qualification is still the

Baccalaureat, is analogous to that of the Anglo-Saxon world: to raise the level of secondary education in quantity and quality. The objective is that the secondary school certificate, or equivalent qualification, should be achieved by 80% of a generation by the year 2000. To attain this objective, France is encouraging more diversified school strategies on the ground, which also give local authorities more of a role in the policies of guidance, training, and diffusion of new technologies. The strong points of this policy, which aims to combat unemployment by advancing general standards of education, are on the one hand the traditional lycée-type educational system, and on the other hand the new (for the French model) vocational training which recent governments intend should re-absorb into the educational system all those young people who do not enter university as well as all those who, while being incorporated into the world of work, need to retrain. In this connection France passed a law in 1991 recogniz

ing workers right to training, obliging companies to invest a small percentage of profits (1%) in training programmes. The quantitative changes in progress are considerable. In 1990 57% of a generation had achieved the secondary school certificate or equivalent qualification, in 1992 over 60% (in 1987 this percentage was 43%, a situation close to that estimated for Italy at the beginning of the 1990s).

In Germany the school system hinges on the Länder, but the power of coordination at the national federal level is comparable more to the French system than to the Anglo-Saxon one. It is worth dwelling a little on the structure of the German school in order to highlight its specific charateristics. Once their primary education is finished (4 or 6 years depending on the Land), young people can choose to follow a course of studies (Gymnasium) which leads to the secondary school certificate (Abitur). This however does not confer the right to enter university automatically, because since 1973 competitive entrance has been introduced in many faculties, so that applications to enrol must be made through a specialised national agency which decides on eligibility for the various universities. If they do not enrol at a Gymnasium, young people can follow classical-type courses (Hauptschule) or technical-vocational schools (Realschule). Up until the end of the 1980s the latter choice involved two-thirds of each new gene

ration of the German Federal Republic (at the end of the eighties 82% of secondary school pupils followed these courses). Thus the core of the German training system followed by the great majority of young people consists of the so-called dual system, which represents a transition from school to work organized by both sides: the school system proper and the working world, represented by companies and public and private employment organizations. This relationship between school system and working world boasts long traditions, and draws on the figure of the master craftsman (Meister). Until some decades ago the dual system channeled students from the moment of their entry into the secondary school system along two parallel courses: one which allowed for university entrance and the other which did not. Following the reforms carried out in 1974, the dual system allows access to the Berufsakademie, which leads to a post-secondary certificate equivalent to a short degree. The crisis in large companies, which had a

n important role in financially supporting this system of training, the progressive orientation of the juvenile population towards the system of studies offering university entrance, and reunification with the German Democratic Republic, whose scholastic system was centralized and not really geared towards professional training, are however posing also in Germany the problem of a reform of the school system (which has in any case seen the number of young people entering the forms of apprenticeship provided for in the dual system in the former West Germany drop from 765,000 in 1984 to 600,000 in 1990).

Italy is in a very backward position as regards the number of university graduates (76 graduates per thousand in 1987, as against 128 in West Germany, 159 in France, 223 in Japan and 241 in the US), as regards the number of students with post-secondary school qualifications (the reform which providing for this is very recent), and finally as regards those with a secondary school certificate (49% of each generation obtains a secondary school diploma or equivalent qualification, against 95% in Japan, 64% in France and 80% in Germany). The prospect of the single European market after 1992 and of the completion of European economic and political unification have obliged Italy to introduce a short degree; they are forcing it to undo the reform of vocational schools with a view to remodelling itself on the German dual model, in order to be able to assimilate the vocational qualifications obtained in Italy with those of other countries in Europe; they are obliging it to tackle the problem of the reform of the whole

upper-secondary school system, in a way which draws heavily on the French lycée system. At the organisational level the crisis of public finances is bringing into discussion the centralized model of the Italian school: the Ministry for State Education is no longer able to handle the financial and bureaucratic administration of the whole system. The centre is tending to free itself from the day-to-day tasks of management and to concentrate, as indeed France, Germany and Great Britain are trying to do, on planning, coordination, support, verification and evaluation.

The impulses towards transformation of the Asian centralized technocratic model.

The Asian model merits a separate discussion, centred fundamentally on the Japanese model and on the Chinese one, which founded the centralized tradition of their school systems on the theorization of the strict interdependence between education, industrial development and security, starting from the second half of the last century in Japan, and at the beginning of this century with Sun Yat-Sen in China. In Japan, attending the schools of major prestige and of greatest quality certainly depends on the effort young people put into studying and passing exams. But this is not enough: this meritocratic system is not synonymous with equal opportunity to study offered to all. In fact one cannot attend an important university if one has not followed a very expensive school career, starting from nursery school. In general it is necessary to have a mother who is a graduate or who has a secondary school certificate, who has left work the percentage of Japanese women who worked between the ages of 30 and 34 was 51% in

1989, against the western average of 62 to 72% who helps the children through the difficult school career and in the inferno of tests and exams (Shiken Jigoku) (even though not all surveys agree on the emphasis given to the nightmare climate reigning in Japanese schools, at least as regards primary education); it is better to be a boy, because the division of work between boys and girls is still so accentuated that in 1989 the girls enrolled at university still only represented 15% of the total. Secondary schools and universities are so stratified that only the schools with the greatest prestige guarantee entrance into the big Japanese corporations with the possibility of a career. This structure does not aim at the expulsion of young people from the school system, indeed the percentage of those gaining a secondary school certificate or equivalent is the highest in the world (95% of every generation), but tends to channel young people into very precise professional and social roles. The success and limitatio

n of this system is represented by the almost total subordination of the school system to the aims of the world of industrial production and to national policies. The predominance of the technocratic model has meant that technical and scientific subjects have largely overtaken the humanities, and has given importance to the work of high-school graduates in industry. The latter are still keeping up with university graduates in terms of salary to the point that, while in the USA between 1979 and 1987 the earnings of high school graduates dropped considerably, in the same period Japanese high school graduates saw their earnings rise by 13%. The extreme centralization of the school system has maintained rituals (such as raising the flag at the beginning of lessons, and pupils in uniform) and standard textbooks throughout the country, and tends to develop a strong group spirit and feelings of national loyalty. On the other hand the system of national certification of studies remains under the strict control of th

e Ministry of Labour, which certifies and encourages high standards of education and/or training for all trades and professions. Thus, even to be a hairdresser, shop assistant or normal worker, one must follow a two-year post-secondary school certificate course, because to the Japanese way of thinking it is always important to give a sense of professional pride to the people who do these jobs, a sense of belonging to a category which carries out an honourable and socially useful profession. In Japan at least 50% of a generation of high school graduates entering the labour market must follow professional training courses. In response to recent signs that people were becoming restive under this system, the state has tried to create less traditional post-graduate schools so that "young people should discard all that traditional schools have taught them, because we ask them to develop and emerge as individuals and not as automata" (Matsushita school).

An analogous system as regards hierarchical school organization and the high value placed on the formation of group spirit and the spirit of sacrifice, also applies in China, Taiwan, and South Korea. It should not be forgotten, moreover, that in all these countries the educational system begins precociously to stimulate to the utmost a childs learning capacities: children are required to know several thousand characters by the end of elementary school.5 This has been shown to be particularly effective in stimulating a greater ability in Asian adolescents, compared to westerners of the same age, to learn mathematical processes and technical-scientific subjects. But the transformation which even Asian societies are moving towards is attacking the hierarchical and technocratic principles on which these education systems are based. And even for Japan and China the time has come for a reorganization of schools, which must take account, for example, of increased educational levels among the female population and o

f a growing openness in these societies to cultural and other exchanges with the rest of the world. All this has come about in a climate of an increasing refusal on the part of the population to accept the subordination of educational objectives to the needs of industrial production.