Schools with a Difference: Policy Discourses and Education Reform in Britain and Germany

Baldi, Gregory

doi:10.1080/01402382.2012.706408

Cited by 13 publications

(17 citation statements)

References 28 publications

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“…An important ingredient was the postponement of the age at which students get tracked into different educational pathways, often a vocational and an academic track. The central argument behind this change was the belief that postponing tracking age would mitigate the strength of the association between social background and educational outcomes (Antikainen, 2006; Baldi, 2012; Henkens, 2006; Horn, 2007; Peter et al, 2010), and that comprehensivisation would thus foster the social equity of the educational system.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

New empirical evidence on the effect of educational tracking on social inequalities in reading achievement

Lavrijsen

Nicaise

2015

European Educational Research Journal

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One of the major imperatives behind the comprehensivisation of secondary education was the belief that postponing the age at which students are tracked in different educational routes would mitigate the effect of social background on educational outcomes. Comparative investigations of large-scale international student achievement tests in secondary education, such as PISA, have indeed suggested that individual test results depend less on social origin in countries that have postponed tracking age. However, a crucial pitfall in such cross-sectional studies is that many other factors influence the effect of social origin on achievement as well. In order to account for possible unobserved confounder bias, and to acknowledge the fact that part of the social origin effect already exists prior to the introduction of tracking, we apply a difference-in-differences analysis to data from PIRLS (primary education, 2006, N = 33, n = 171.486) and PISA (secondary education, 2012, N = 33, n = 235.378). Our results confirm that the introduction of tracking increases the effect of social origin on reading achievement between primary and secondary education. This lends further support to the argument that postponing the tracking age can foster social equity in educational achievement.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

New empirical evidence on the effect of educational tracking on social inequalities in reading achievement

Lavrijsen

Nicaise

2015

European Educational Research Journal

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“…A few studies do try to tackle the question of why comprehensive school reforms were successfully implemented in some places but not in others. Baldi (2012), in his comparison of postwar education policy discourses in Britain and Germany, points out that German academics were slow in revising their ideas about ability, which he attributes to ideational and structural legacies from the Nazi era. An earlier, similar contribution is Heidenheimer's (1974) work, in which he tries to explain the "different outcomes of school comprehensivization attempts in Sweden and West Germany."…”

Section: The Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

“…In Sweden, no party ever declared itself clearly against comprehensive reform and the Swedish secondary schoolteachers were left on the sidelines politically. Both Baldi (2012) and Heidenheimer (1974) point out important ideological differences. However, they do not provide an explanation for why conservative ideas on schooling remained so powerful for so long in Germany, even among lower-and middle-class groups who could have profited from comprehensive school reforms.…”

Section: The Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Another argument that has been brought forward to explain the German case is that the federalist structure is conducive to the institutional stickiness of the school system (Baldi, 2012;Ertl/Philipps, 2000;Hahn, 1998). Federalism can be considered to produce veto points in the decision-making process because it creates an additional institutional level on which reforms must be negotiated (Huber/Stephens, 2001;Immergut, 1992).…”

Section: The Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

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The Politics of Comprehensive School Reforms

Sass

2022

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Why are school systems structured differently across countries? The Politics of Comprehensive School Reform examines this question through an in-depth analysis of school politics in Germany and Norway during the post-war period of educational expansion. Using a Rokkanian theoretical framework, the book argues that school politics can only be understood in light of the cleavages, or political divides, that shape actors' interests, ideologies, and inclinations for who they want to cooperate with – or not. The book analyzes cross-cutting cleavages connected to religion, geography, language, anticommunism, and gender, and demonstrates how Norwegian social democrats and German Christian democrats built successful coalitions by mobilizing support from different social groups. Extensively researched and expansively applicable, this book contributes to the interdisciplinary literature on the politics of education, and to the field of comparative welfare and education regime research. This book is also available Open Access on Cambridge Core.

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“…As a consequence, the change in ideas can also cause a reassessment of policies and policy goals. In this regard, ideas matter in the process of policy-making insofar as 'policy actors may define -and redefine -their interests and preferences in terms of cognitive and normative factors, thereby linking ideational and institutional change' (Baldi 2012(Baldi , 1003.…”

Section: Ios As Purveyors Of Ideas In Education Policymentioning

confidence: 99%

PISA as an ideational roadmap for policy change: exploring Germany and England in a comparative perspective

Knodel

Martens

Niemann

2013

Globalisation, Societies and Education

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Education policy has undergone transformation in many countries over the last decade. In this article, we focus on the effects of the most significant international initiative in secondary education, which is the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development's (OECD) Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). We analyse two countries that provide variation regarding the degree of change in their respective education policy-making due to this study; while Germany substantially reformed its education system in reaction to its mediocre PISA results, almost no change has been observed in England. As we show, alterations and shifts in ideas of education policy best account for such a change.

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Schools with a Difference: Policy Discourses and Education Reform in Britain and Germany

Cited by 13 publications

References 28 publications

New empirical evidence on the effect of educational tracking on social inequalities in reading achievement

New empirical evidence on the effect of educational tracking on social inequalities in reading achievement

The Politics of Comprehensive School Reforms

PISA as an ideational roadmap for policy change: exploring Germany and England in a comparative perspective

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