Students’ Progression in the Education System
Participation
The traditional meaning of the internal effectiveness of education is based on the simple fact that the more time somebody spends in formal education (the higher level of qualifications she or he obtains), the better. Of course, this simple method is corrected by two factors: (1) what kind of further participation the actual level of completed education makes possible, and (2) the relevance of the labor market to actual educational attainment. For example, completed secondary education that entitles graduates to apply for admission to higher education or a secondary vocational qualification that allows graduates to seek better-paid jobs with lower risks of unemployment are considered to be more valuable than others. Due to the increasing average length of participation in formal schooling, especially because of the expansion of general secondary and higher education, the “threshold of success” is perpetually rising. (For example, the actual
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related indicator of the European Union is the proportion of students with completed upper secondary education.) It inevitably leads to the devaluation of the attainment of middle-aged and older generations that the supply of adult education attempts to compensate.
The most important aspects of participation in formal education are the following:
• The length of participation in formal education. The most typical indicators are the average years spent in education, the expected average years that five-year-old students are expected to spend in education, the highest level of education completed, etc.
• Progression in formal education. The typical indicators are the enrollment rates at different levels and types of education.
• The different forms of failure and the use of correction routes. The most widely-used indicators are year repetition rates, dropout rates during the period of mandatory schooling or at different levels or school types, and enrollment in so-called “second chance” programs or in adult education programs for those with low educational attainment.
Progression in primary and secondary education is partly determined by the struc-ture of the schools, by the actual number of seats that different schools offer, and—in theory—the success of the individual students. It is important to note that a large num-ber of problems that are often attributed to fragmented schools structures (e.g., unfair selection) are generated by other deficiencies, such as the selection pressure generated by the low inclusive capacity of schools. The analysis of PISA surveys proves that the most fragmented school structures with early selection are not necessarily those with the largest school performance differences. In an education system there are always certain selection points. But the question remains: how fair is the selection at these points (i.e., how much is the meritocratic ideal prevailing) and how smooth are the transitions from one level to another?
When we talk about school structures, we refer to three distinct matters: school types, programs types, and pedagogical phases. The typical characteristic of centralized systems is that these aspects are almost interchangeable. In general, in education—dis-regarding the special-function institutions, such as those for art education, national minorities, and/or special needs children—there is no program diversity, and curricular regulation is simply adjusted to school types according to distinct levels of education. In these systems the program type mainly refers only to the profile of vocational schools.
However, if choice and program diversity are introduced, and if curricular regulation of general education is unified into a single core curriculum for twelve grades (within which setting pedagogical phases do not necessarily concur with school types), then
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among school types, programs, and pedagogical phases makes standardization difficult yet makes the whole system flexible.
Another factor that has a major impact on student progression pathways is the aspi-rations of those who are making the decisions: the parents and students. As the results of an empirical research in Hungary suggest, the aspirations of the parents are deeply connected to their educational attainment (educational status); therefore, the decisions they make may reinforce the selective character of the system. Ensuring the dynamic balance between the supply and demand of educational services implies a different logic of planning than the traditional one based only on the number of children and the presumptions of central decision-makers about the “needs of the society and economy.”
Box 5.2
The Aspirations of Parents in Hungary
• The aspirations of parents play a decisive role in enrollment decisions.
• At the beginning of the learning career of their children, more than half of parents cannot formulate their goals. However, as time passes, these goals become more and more articulate, partly because the feedback from the schools shapes the aspirations of the parents.
• Only a small fraction of the parents want their children to finish school and to start earning money as soon as possible.
• The determining underlying consideration of parents is to avoid that their child’s status will be lower than that of the parents. For this, they are ready to make any sacrifices and to pay any price.
• As a result, for parents with the highest educational status, any other options than those offering the highest qualifications are unacceptable.
• Parents with lower educational status may consider more options. In the case of educational opportunities, offering upward mobility for the child is a rational investment—the return calculation is dominant.
—Lannert 2003
This book focuses on the governance of pre-higher education. Nevertheless, there is a relatively new phenomenon occurring at later stages that deserves attention because of its potential implications: the “transition from learning to work.” Earlier, the exit from the education system and the entrance to the labor market was a specific moment of someone’s personal career. Recently, it became a—sometimes decade-long—period of
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life for young adults. The individual pathways became extremely diverse, within which the “learning then working” logic was very often reversed. Many young adults interrupt learning with a period of work, and often learning and work are done in parallel. “Double dipping,” that is, going for two different qualifications at the same level and at the same time or staying much longer in higher education is becoming increasingly typical. Also, experiencing unemployment under the age of 30 is already a mass phenomenon.
As the following section illustrates, there are other indicators than the ones related to participation. However, the governance of education in most South Eastern European countries still relies on participation data that generates a certain set of consequences:
• For a long period of time only participation-related data about educational attainment was available; the strong correlation between educational and impact-related indicators created a climate within which opening channels for social mobility—that increases the well-being of individuals—appeared to be the main purpose of educational services. It still goes without saying that in spite of much more sophisticated analysis, the availability of information on learning outcomes is just possible.
• Expectations formulated in terms of a desired impact usually are set directly for teachers and schools. For example, schools should ideally contribute to the integration of Roma into mainstream society. Beyond the fact that education is definitely not the only public service that should be charged with this task, it is problematic because such expectation cannot be interpreted and translated into daily pedagogical practice. The only thing that it may lead to is strengthening self-protection mechanisms, as responsibility drifts to parents.
• On the basis of participation indicators, educational-outcome-related goals are weak; apart from keeping students in education as long as possible, they can be determined mainly in negative terms: lower dropout, lower repetition, etc. As a result, processes that are overly regulated make the relationship between educa-tional goals and expected economic and social impact far too remote to be useful.
• Parallel to the increasing complexity of education systems (due to the increas-ing diversity of student progression patterns), as well as that of economies (due to the increasing diversity of professions), the system of qualifications that is supposed to inform employers about the value of educational attainment of individuals is unable to fulfill its function. On the one hand, it makes labor selection more expensive; on the other hand, it enforces the reconsideration of qualification systems on a new basis.
The tendency that participation-related indicators are gradually devalued is not independent from the fact that most European countries have achieved a very high level
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stronger ability to explain successes and failures of educational services. However, in spite of their generous participation rates, most South Eastern European countries have serious student participation problems that deserve a lot of attention. For example, pre-primary enrollment in Serbia is among the lowest in Europe (it is less than 40 percent5), and the proportion of those Roma students who are not completing primary education is estimated to be between 62 and 87 percent.
Lifelong Learning
Contemporary changes in the patterns of participation in education resulted in a new overarching approach: the lifelong learning paradigm. This approach became a prevail-ing international educational policy paradigm in the mid-1990s, not only because it responded well to changes, but also because of its potential to contribute to the emancipation of education from labor policies and because it opened new spaces for the further expansion of the education sector. Lifelong learning has four major char-acteristics (Radó 2004):
• A systemic and holistic approach to learning. Learning occurs in various settings at various times, and formal education has no monopoly on providing learning opportunities. Therefore, we should not frame learning opportunities in terms of standardized types and levels of formal education. Rather, the point of de-parture should be the question: at different stages of the human lifecycle, what kind of options can the learner consider and what kind of learning pathways can be built up by the choices that learners make. As a result, the traditional supply-driven isolation of general, vocational, higher, and adult education can no longer be sustained. Also, the formal settings of learning should be connected with other (informal) learning opportunities; that is, formal education should not compete with any other forms of learning (e.g., media, internet, hobbies, etc.) and they should be considered as complementary learning opportunities.
• Reconsideration of the relationship between supply and demand, strong focus on learning. Learning should not be based exclusively on the agenda of the educa-tion service providers, and the latter should adjust to the needs of the learner.
Therefore, instead of operating teacher and teaching-centered education sys-tems, learner and learning-centered educational services should be built. This shift of emphasis from the supplier to the client (a trivial requirement in most services, with the exception of education and health) has major consequences for governance: it weakens the legitimate basis for standardizing processes. The other consequence is the requirement that any educational services provided for learners should be quality-assured. In addition to these, if our assumption
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is that the primary decision-maker is the learner (to a certain age, his or her parents), then he or she should be provided with the necessary information.
• Tailor-made approach: emphasis on autonomous and motivated learning. A service that has a strong drive to adjust to demand is also interested in generating de-mand. In theory, no other services are as lucky as education: generating demand for further learning, that is, strengthening the motivation to learn is a legitimate goal in education. What is already a practice in private language schools, that is, the measurement of the results of prior learning and adjusting the programs, is not necessarily a daily practice in formal learning settings. But, formal schooling, being a giant machinery of mass education, can be tailor-made only through separate, individualized teaching according to some educationalists. However, through the enrichment of learning opportunities and teaching methods, even formal schooling can be made much more responsive to individual needs, learn-ing styles, and interests of learners at any level of education.
• Reconsideration of goals: connecting internal and external effectiveness. As mentioned earlier, the external references to the design of concrete educational targets are increasingly important. Focusing on the learning needs of the learners puts even greater emphasis on the labor market and social relevance of education. If the invested time and effort of the learner does not yield any returns, autonomous, motivated, and active learning remains an illusory expectation. As far as primary and secondary education is concerned, learning to learn must be a goal of special weight.
In South Eastern Europe, lifelong learning is often misconstrued as simply meaning participation in adult education. It is a serious mistake; as the previous characteristics of the lifelong-learning approach indicate, they all have serious implications for all levels of education from preschool education till “third generation” learning (i.e., learning during retirement).