The roots of teacher training in Finland extend to the 1860s. The evolution of teacher training was closely connected to the history of elementary education and changes in educational policy and the Finnish society. Recently, the Finnish educational system and its teacher education programs have fared extremely well in international comparisons.…

This article reviews the impact of discourses on "New Public Management" (NPM) on compulsory schooling in Switzerland during the last two decades and traces its implementation in the Canton of Bern. The analysis suggests that while NPM reformers initially promoted increased school autonomy, the introduction of market elements and school…

This paper considers the rationale for introducing the raising of the participation age (RPA) in learning in England from 2013 and assesses how, if fully implemented, it could contribute to improving the outcomes for young people who do not participate in any form of post-16 education, employment or training, and are currently defined as not in…

The historiographical tradition which developed within the history of education from the 1970s regarded religious organisations as distractions from the "real" task of developing state-funded universal compulsory education. Despite more positive evaluations of voluntary agencies within the history of social policy, since the 1980s, the…

This report examines the recommended minimum instruction time in full-time compulsory general education in 2016/17 in 42 European education systems. It includes national diagrams illustrating the data by country and by subject. The comparative overview examines the policy changes that have taken place over the last year regarding the recommended…

Introduction: Everyday health information literacy refers to the competencies needed to find relevant information, evaluate its reliability, and use it to make decisions concerning health in everyday life. More evidence is needed of the determinants of health information literacy to better understand how it is acquired and through which mechanisms…

This paper presents an attempt to overcome the contemporary obsession with "learning" and proposes that current practices in higher education are aligned too closely with the educational theories and practices developed within pre-university compulsory education. The author takes the position that higher education is substantially different from…

A straightforward way to prevent students from leaving education without a higher secondary diploma is increasing the compulsory education age. The idea is that, by staying longer in school, more students eventually obtain a higher secondary diploma. This paper examines the impact of a one-year increase in compulsory school-age on dropping out of…

Denmark has entered global competition by expanding collaboration with European countries, which is profoundly impacting the public sector and school governance. Relations between the state and institutions are transforming from traditional democratic, public-sector models of governance into new forms characterized as corporate and market-driven…

Increased interest in research in the field of international education, typical for the most of the world, is largely due to trends of interdependence and mutual influence of nation-states in a period of rapid development of the processes of globalization and integration, including in public life and in education. The current stage of the…

It is impossible to achieve the normalization of Basque schools when they are subjected to five sets of regulations on the use of the Basque language in different parts of Euskal Herria. Instead of an education system that differentiates between various language models, what is needed is a school system that recognises the right of all Basque…

The encounter between the pre-colonial education system in India, dominated by poor teachers and students, and the British education system, which defended and perpetuated the "English class system", created a complex and problematic relationship. This article explores this problematic relationship between poverty and education in the…

The conventional approach to youth transitions has focused on particular transitional points taking place after the completion of compulsory education. This paper focuses on the ways in which institutional regulations, individual agency, and emotions are related in bringing about such significant transitions that take place outside the traditional…

We study the effect of a compulsory education reform in Sweden on adult health and mortality. The reform was implemented by municipalities between 1949 and 1962 as a social experiment and implied an extension of compulsory schooling from 7 or 8 years depending on municipality to 9 years nationally. We use detailed individual data on education,…

Promotion by governments of the provision of pathways for learners and the principle of seamlessness in post-compulsory education over the past decade may be perceived as both positive and problematic. Seamlessness can provide considerable choice and yet can readily lead to uncertainty and indecision. A number of studies have drawn attention to…