The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) recently had its 30th anniversary. Emerging from the United Nations General Assembly in 1989, it has since become the most ratified international human rights treaty ever. Most European countries ratified it and are thus obliged to ensure the implementation of children's rights in practice.…

'Education for all' and widening access to education with the aim of creating more social equality are longterm goals of the European education policy. Although there was an education expansion in the last decades in most of European countries, educational attainment and achievement still reflect social inequalities: students with less advantaged…

Since the early 1990s, the Open Society Foundations have supported early childhood development, recognizing it as a prerequisite for sustainable political and social change--with a focus not only on young children, but on parents, caregivers, and the wider community. This report commemorates the Open Society Early Childhood Program, which, from…

In this article, I focus on the increasing interest taken by European political and educational policy makers in inter-worldview education. My article has two parts. The first part consists of a document analysis of pivotal European publications on this and related issues. In the second and more critical part of this article, I make explicit my…

Purpose: There is a tendency to assess educational systems in terms of their efficiency in gaining high scores on cognitive skills. Schools perform, however, also a socializing function. The whole policy debate tends to ignore the impact of educational systems on attitudes or democratic values. This contribution focuses on the impact of the…