Education and school‐to‐work transitions in post‐communist Poland∗

Abstract

Unemployment in Poland rose throughout 1990, 1991, 1992 and 1993 but the proportion of school‐leavers among the unemployed peaked in 1990. Unlike in most western market economies, the best‐ educated young people in Poland did not prove the least vulnerable to unemployment. This paper uses evidence from studies of young people in Gdansk, Katowice and Suwalki to argue that one reason why young people from professional and vocational secondary schools have not borne a heavier share of Poland's unemployment since 1990 has been the flexibility and responsiveness of these schools to Poland's new labour market conditions. Since the reforms many of these schools have contracted drastically. Some have closed. But others have thrived The latter have often benefited from favourable local labour market conditions, but their success has usually been at least equally due to their own resourcefulness in introducing new courses which teach skills that are in demand, and securing various kinds of sponsorship from employers. Three reasons are offered to explain the responsiveness of education in Poland to the changing labour market conditions: general support for ‘the reforms’, the schools’ experience of making informal deals with employers under communism, and the post‐communist authorities’ willingness to force unsuccessful schools to close and to see teachers made redundant.

     

反思与批判:新自由主义思潮影响下的西方教育重建

新自由主义思潮在西方国家逐渐流行,对学校教育改革产生了重要影响.在新自由主义思潮的推动下,西方社会寻求走“第三条道路”,不断借助于政府和市场的双重力量推动教育重建,对教育理念、教育制度、学校运作模式、教育评价方式等进行全方位的改革,打破了现代教育制度的固有模式和体制.然而教育变革却使得西方“个人主义”更加泛滥,学校教育远离公平,是资本主义意识形态的全球扩张.反思和批判新自由主义教育思潮为我国的教育改革提供了有益的思考.     

高等教育大众化背景下的教学质量保障问题

高等教育的超常规增长导致高校教育教学资源紧缺,引发部分高校办学指导思想上的偏差。我国高等教育大众化由于缺乏市场机制的驱动,缺乏通过外延式发展来适应规模增长,从而引发高校教学质量问题。保障高等教育大众化背景下的教育教学质量,必须建立以市场机制为核心的教育教学质量保障机制,建立分类型、分层次的高校教育教学评价制度。     

论教育全球化

教育全球化是指世界范围内的理念、发展进程和机构影响当地教育的政策与实践。在教育全球化过程中,国际组织、跨国教育公司以及新信息交流技术发挥重要的推动作用。目前,人力资本理论和消费主义是主导全球的教育理念。这导致了教育的首要目标是促进经济发展;教育思想的讨论大都指向了人力资本开发、为提高工作技能而进行终身学习以及经济发展;全球教育商业、营利性教育机构、全球教育测评项目、影子教育产业得以迅猛发展。作者认为,不应把对经济增长和收入增长的贡献度作为学校的评估标准,而应将学校对社会发展的贡献程度作为评估学校的标准,重点考察学校对人类幸福和永恒生活作出哪些贡献。

Abstract：

Globalization of education refers to the worldwide discussions,processes,and institutions affecting local educational practices and policies.There are international organizations that directly and indirectly influence national school systems.There are multinational education corporations and schools.Government and professionals engage in global discussions about school policies.Today,the dominant educational ideology is human capital economics and consumerism.Human capital economics defines the primary goal of education to be economic growth.Educational discourses around the world often refer to human capital,lifelong learning for improving job skills,and economic development.Consequently,there is a burgeoning global market for global education business,for-profit education,global testing services,as well as shadow education.The author proposes that school policies should be evaluated on their contribution to the social conditions that provide the conditions for human happiness and longevity rather than being judged by their contribution to economic growth and income.     

’Equal Opportunities’ and Local Management of Schools — what happens now?

The introduction of the 1988 Education Reform Act in Britain marks the beginning of the most substantial changes to the system of State education since the 1944 Education Act. Many have argued that the rationale for these changes rests on the introduction of the principles of ‘market forces’ and represents an attempt to create an internal and external educational market. Already some research has begun to examine the ideology behind some of the measures introduced by the Act such as the National Curriculum and the likely effects of the testing and assessment which accompanies it on issues of ‘race’, gender and class. However, as yet, little work has focused on another measure introduced by the Act which threatens ‘equal opportunities’, that is local management of schools (LMS). It is my argument that central to all these measures is an ideology that sees education as performing a certain function, State schools as certain types of institutions and teachers and pupils as certain types of people. Indeed, just as it is often argued that the National Curriculum rests on an assumption of a specific type of educational knowledge and a certain type of educational practice, so it is my contention that local management assumes a specific model of pupil, school, governor, teacher and parent. Both the ideology behind the 1988 Education Reform Act and the measures flowing from it seek to create a market in education. It is this tenet in the recent reforms which theatens the continuance of ‘equal opportunities’. The creation of this educational market aims to replace the notions of quality of opportunity which in one form or another have represented the British post‐war educational consensus with the rhetoric of choice, standards and differentiation which have been the hallmark of British domestic social policy since 1979.     

发达国家职业教育立法的指导思想研究

发达国家的职业教育立法的指导思想与本国的政治经济背景、法律传统和职业学校的性质密切相关.19世纪实用主义与功利主义思潮,主导着发达国家职业教育立法的全过程;依循于法学世界观与法治社会价值观,各国都强调通过教育立法来实现依法治教;许多工业化国家通过加强职业教育立法来实现科技立国的理想;各国坚持把"以人为本"作为职业教育立法的指导思想,使职业教育成为人一生的发展事业.     

Privatization and Commercialization of Public Education: Consequences for Citizenship and Citizenship Education

My purpose is to examine and evaluate the implementation of market ideology and practices in education through the prism of both modern democratic theory and the discourse of rights. I examine the essence and defining characteristics of public schooling in modern democratic theory, explore the democratic purposes of education, and the unique mission of public schools. I also analyze the vision of public schooling that surfaces from the discourse of human rights and children’s rights, examining relevant UN declarations and conventions. I then proceed to discuss some major manifestations of markets in education, question their congruence with the democratic vision of public schooling, and examine their consequences for both citizenship and citizenship education. My conclusion is that markets in education, and the formulation of education policies and practices through decision-making processes dominated by business and parents, are not necessarily fashioned in the best interest of a democratic society.     

From national policy-making to global edu-business: Swedish edu-preneurs on the move

This study explores the movements of some Swedish former education policy-makers that are currently active as commercial edu-business actors with the ambition to expand in the Global Education Industry (GEI). The aim is to map and analyze how a selection of Swedish edu-preneurs affiliated with a particular Swedish school chain enter the GEI and thereby market both their commercialized services and the policy ideas about so-called free schools, in its Swedish version. The study shows how these edu-preneurs move from the domestic to global arenas and how their business and policy advocacy activities are framed and represented. Mobilization and public exposure of previous and present policy advocacy networks are important assets for these edu-preneurs as they navigate the GEI. The study illustrates how these actors make use of particular forms of knowledge, from department ministerial work and party politics, which blends with work in public relations and various edu-businesses, pointing to the interrelatedness of politics, policy, business, power, and ideology. The paper concludes by raising issues in need of further exploration and debate, pertaining to our understanding of education policy-making and, ultimately, democracy.     

The crisis of Polish higher education

Higher education has a major contribution to make to the socio-economic and cultural life of contemporary Poland. The importance of promoting a continuous development in the tertiary educational sector is widely acknowledged throughout the world. In many countries, the number of students is still increasing, to reach or even to exceed a third of the relevant cohort. Yet in Poland the crisis of higher education which has been observed for some years has led to a rapid decline in student numbers. It is the purpose of the present article to look at underlying causes, including demographic, economic and other factors. Attention will be paid to the whole sector of higher education, but also to specific schools and faculties, and to the participation of women in particular. The impact of state educational policy will be considered, as will the changes in the interests and aspirations of the young generation. The focus is on quantitative changes in tertiary education, but some general conclusions will be drawn from them and an attempt will be made to assess their socio-economic and cultural implications.     

Education policy in Poland: The impact of PISA (and other international studies)

The impact of the PISA study on Polish education policy has been significant, but probably different from any other country. Poland has not experienced the so‐called ‘PISA shock’, but its education system has been benefiting considerably from PISA. For experts and policy makers, it has been a useful and reliable instrument that has made it possible to measure the effects of consecutive reforms of the school education system. Moreover, PISA and other international studies have influenced the perception of education policy in Poland. The latter has shifted from an ideology‐driven, centralised policy to an evidence‐informed policy, developed with the involvement of multiple stakeholders, although this has mostly affected the thinking of experts and policy makers rather than the general public. The new government (in power from 2015), following public opinion polls, has reversed most of the previous education reforms, eliminating lower secondary schools introduced in 1999.     

加拿大公共基础教育管理市场化改革面临的新挑战

加拿大自20世纪90年代以来,利用市场调节机制对公共基础教育管理进行了一系列的深度变革.免费、平等、全民的公立中小学教育,严格的公共基础教育监察管理机制,强大的公共基础教育经费支持,改革后的加拿大公共基础教育呈现出了繁荣的景象.然而,自由市场机制这柄双刃剑在帮助变革取得成功的同时,也令加拿大公共基础教育管理不得不迎接新一轮的挑战.     

试论全球化视角下高等教育的社会批判功能

本文基于全球化的视角,探析经济全球化背景下高等教育的社会批判功能所面临的冲击.新自由主义的理论基础使全球化内蕴市场意识形态,对经济领域和非经济领域都产生话语霸权.处于这一境域,高等教育的知识基础、知识分子素质和社会独立性不可避免地受到市场意识形态的渗透和影响,导致其社会批判功能受到削弱,对国家和社会产生深远危害.     

教育中介组织的合理建构与职能运作探析

我国建立市场经济体制引发的政府与学校以及学校与社会关系的调整,必然要求建构各类教育中介组织以衔接政府转变教育职能后所形成的空白地带.合理建构并有效发挥教育中介组织在教育发展和教育管理中的作用,实乃我国教育健康发展与有效管理的重要一环.     

Problematising vocational education and training in schools: using student narratives to interrupt neoliberal ideology

ABSTRACT

In Australia, like many western countries, there has been a convergence of education policy around a set of utilitarian and economistic approaches to vocational education and training in schools. Such approaches are based on the assumption that there is a direct relationship between national economic growth, productivity and human capital development resulting in the persuasive political argument that schools should be more closely aligned to the needs of the economy to better prepare ‘job ready’ workers. These common sense views resonate strongly in school communities where the problem of youth unemployment is most acute and students are deemed to be ‘at risk’, ‘disadvantaged’ or ‘disengaged’. This article starts from a different place by rejecting the fatalism and determinism of neoliberal ideology based on the assumption that students must simply ‘adapt’ to a precarious labour market. Whilst schools have a responsibility to prepare students for the world of work there is also a moral and political obligation to educate them extraordinarily well as democratic citizens. In conclusion, we draw on the experiences of young people themselves to identify a range of pedagogical conditions that need to be created and more widely sustained to support their career aspirations and life chances.     

How parental and school responses to choice policies reconfigure a rural education market in Victoria,Australia

Market principles now dominate the education and social policies of many Anglophone countries, including Australia, but articulate differentially within specific contexts. Existing historical legacies, local economic and social conditions, and geographical settings interact with federal and state funding and transport policies to shape the nature of regional education markets and the choices families make in a rural school market in Australia. Through two school case studies, this article explores the effects of policy shifts on parental choice and student movement within a regional Victorian community. Informed by policy sociology, the article views the policy as a dynamic, often ad hoc process with contradictory effects. It indicates how an ensemble of federal and state funding and conveyancing policies enable some schools to develop marketing practices that reconstruct the local education market to their advantage through the introduction of transport and flexi-boarding policies. It demonstrates that education markets are not confined to urban settings and that while choice is not a new phenomenon in this rural area, federal and state funding and transport policies have reconfigured local markets and intensified the market work undertaken by schools and parents with, in this instance, unequal effects on the provision of schooling in a rural region.     

Combining Market and Bureaucratic Control in Education: An answer to market and bureaucratic failure?

This article focuses on institutional arrangements in education across Western countries. It essentially deals with the recent trend towards extended school choice presumably aimed at creating a competitive environment for schools and teachers. For many years the functioning of educational systems, in particular the way schools were institutionally co-ordinated, was not perceived as fundamental to economic analysis. But more and more economists now believe that the institutional setting in which schools are embedded-their governance structure-is decisive regarding both efficiency and equity. In this respect, it is worth noting that most Western countries rely essentially on bureaucratic control to co-ordinate their educational sector. Yet some of them, such as Belgium, The Netherlands, England and Wales, New Zealand and Sweden incorporate market-oriented mechanisms at the heart of their institutional arrangements. The main focus of this article is to analyse the origins, as well as the economic relevance, of this-in some cases relatively recent-tendency to mix bureaucratic and market approaches to education.     

Policy,practice, and reconversion in Spanish educational reform: teaching and teacher education in physical education

Abstract

Since the late 1980s, reform of the Spanish education system has been justified by reformists as a response to the social and economic changes that have occurred in Spanish society since the democratic transition in the 1970s. Consolidation of democracy, development of technology and economic convergence with the advanced nations of Europe have been seen as the major challenges for educational reform. Restructuring and legitimation processes derived from the requirements of the new reform have been conceptualized as a policy of reconversion, the main purpose of which is to maintain, or achieve, a strong competitive position in the international market. In this paper, conceptualizing educational reform as a reconversion process will allow us to link aspects of the new curriculum (content, pedagogy and assessment), school organization, teaching and teacher education in physical education with wider economic, social and cultural influences and explore the tensions and conflicts between policy and practice in PE in schools. The paper will argue that there is a widening gap between the interests of progressive educationalists and the direction of market‐driven education reform.     

‘Tomorrow's Schools’ in New Zealand: from social democracy to market managerialism

This paper uses one national case to illustrate how diverse ideological agendas of central state agencies contest the discursive space within which major education policy reforms are developed. In Aotearoa New Zealand in 1988, ‘self‐managed’ schools were promoted ostensibly to allow parents more say in their children’s education and local school administration. The Tomorrow’s Schools reform policy texts included an existing social democratic partnership rhetoric, positioning principals as professional leaders working collaboratively with elected parent boards of trustees. However, the new ideology of ‘parental choice’ of school within a local schooling marketplace, underpinned by a chief executive or market managerial model of principalship, was later operationalised through mechanisms of ‘steerage’ from the centre. To explain this shift, we examine selected policy text pre‐cursors to the reforms and identify how contrasting forms of ‘principal’ and ‘teacher’ identity emerged within social democratic, neo‐liberal and market managerial ideologies. We further show that while radical (Treasury) market liberal arguments for labour market deregulation and consumer choice failed to gain widespread support, the State Services Commission preferred market managerialist strategies for promoting public accountability of schools (based on aggregate student achievement outcome data and centrally determined national educational priorities) were successfully embedded during the 1990s.     

课程——高职院校"教学产品"论

高职院校最根本的产品应是教学产品,即课程。高职课程的产品属性包括课程生成与课程服务,后者是比前者更为重要的教学产品。高职课程具有商品和非商品的双重属性,课程规划、开发、实施者必须树立市场意识,提高高职教育的市场响应度。建立课程的教学产品概念,有助于解决当下高职教育发展中的一些关键性问题。     

The legal status of home education in post-communist countries of Central Europe

As new laws on education were gradually adopted in post-communist states after 1989, the countries also dealt with the problem of how to include home education in their own legislation. This article investigates the development of legislation on home education in five states of post-communist Central Europe: the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Poland and Hungary. This analysis of the legal environment for home education confirms on the one hand that these countries’ approach is similar in many aspects. Generally, laws tend to regulate home education rather strictly, all home-educated children must be enrolled at some school, and these schools are mandated by the state to serve as supervisory bodies for home-educated children. This legal arrangement puts the parents of home-schooled children in a very subordinate position in relation to the school. Despite these restrictions, however, the states have gradually opened up the option for home education to quite a broad pool of potentially interested people. On the other hand, the findings show that there are also significant differences between individual countries. These differences provide a good illustration of the fact that, despite historical, economic and cultural similarities, political institutions and state bureaucracies in individual states act autonomously, which leads to different policy outcomes.