In Germany, responsibility for early childhood education and care (ECEC) lies with the 16 federal states, which define the structures, financing and regulations concerning ECEC. Due to a subsidiary system, municipalities are not able to offer ECEC as long as private providers offer enough places. These providers employ a large variety of…

The German school system is known for its stratified secondary school system following the four-year elementary school. While access to grammar schools was strictly regulated in German school history, most federal states have now strengthened the will of parents and abolished the tradition of binding elementary school recommendations. New in the…

Social policies can be well-intentioned but ineffective in achieving what is intended. They can be undermined or destroyed by their exaggerated or oversimplified caricatures with a single, narrow focus. Caricatures may result in the opposite of the original intent of more carefully crafted variants. Institutionalization and deinstitutionalization…

In 2019, German folk high schools -- "Volkshochschulen" (vhs) -- celebrated the centenary of their inclusion in the Constitution of the Weimar Republic in 1919, an era when they founded local centres in many parts of the country. Ever since, they have played an important part in the adult learning and education (ALE) sub-sector of the…

Skills-based education can provide a way forward to sustainable development in a developing country. It is a hopeful scenario that more than 60% of the population of Pakistan is less than 30 years of age and almost half of them are under 15 years of age. It is important for the policymakers and planners to learn from the societies where human…

Universities have increasingly been subjected to policy- and industry demands to produce multi- and interdisciplinary knowledge. This paper explores the extent to which different higher education policy instruments are used to promote interdisciplinarity in teaching and research at universities in the German higher education system comparing them…

As the title suggests, the author provides a description of an international effort to develop an understanding of the present depth and priority of arts policies. As arts policy is not limited to education but formulated at all levels of community, including unions, individuals, philanthropic organizations, and government agencies, policy often…

Recently, the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) reported that although countries around the world must ensure that students with disabilities receive free, inclusive, and appropriate education, students with disabilities are less likely to complete primary or secondary school in many countries. Though this…

To obtain a better understanding of country-specific policies, a country-specific literature review was undertaken. The search entailed key-terms focusing on relevance and the three higher education relevance dimensions. The main outcomes of the country-specific literature review are discussed in this chapter. We do so by analysing the typically…

The aim of this study is to empirically investigate the reasons for regional disparities in educational expansion in Germany (i.e., rising rates of general university entrance qualification) on the basis of theoretically relevant influencing factors: changes in school policies, changes in social structure, or general social modernization…

The country case studies are part of the empirical data collected for the "Promoting the Relevance of Higher Education" project. Before presenting the case studies, this introductory chapter describes how the 8 case studies were selected, the case study methodology, and provides an overview of the interviewed organisations and experts.…

Due to recent unrest around the world, the number of refugees has increased dramatically in the last decade. In order to meet the needs of this population, host countries have had to quickly adapt to provide these refugees with basic needs. One such need is to have quality education for refugee children. The aim of this paper is to compare the…

The article highlights the models of inclusive education of Italy, Germany, Sweden, Norway, and Great Britain. Inclusion models can be classified into three basic ones, according to the ratio of the number of primary school-aged children at general and specialized schools, namely: full inclusion, partial inclusion with a predominance of pupils at…

German experience of development and modernization of the field of adult education has been outlined in the paper. Historical development of the field and its recognition as an independent level in education have been considered. The aim of the field has been defined. It has been emphasized that the names of the field in Ukraine and Germany…

A tiny section on the agenda of the National Assembly of the Weimar Republic from February to July, 1919 was entitled "Religious instruction and the public elementary school," part of the preparation for the new Constitution of the German Reich, the so-called Weimar Constitution [Weimarer Reichsverfassung; abbr. WRV], of August 11th,…