Education Governance and Social Integration and Exclusion

The research project Education Governance and Social Integration and Exclusion has been<br />
conducted with the financial support of the European Commission, Directorate-General<br />
Research, the Targeted Socio-Economic Programme<br />
<br />
A major tendency in late modern education in Europe is a transformation in governance from<br />
governance by rules and directives to governance by goals and results, often in combination with<br />
deregulation and decentralisation of decision-making. The implications of such a transformation is<br />
discussed in the Report in relation to different contexts of educational traditions and ideas of Bildung<br />
as well as in relation to societal consequences in terms of social inclusion and exclusion.<br />
The EGSIE project explored the implications of these transitions in education governance during the<br />
1990s. We worked with nine national cases &ndash; Australia, Finland, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Portugal,<br />
Spain, Sweden, and the UK (England and Scotland). The studies were organized around three sets of<br />
theoretical questions: (1) What are the narratives or sagas of changes in education governance? (2)<br />
How are the subjects in education constructed? (3) What are the relations between governance and<br />
social inclusion and exclusion?<br />
<br />
The research reviews and conceptual analyses resulted in two distinctive problematics dealing with<br />
relations between education governance and social inclusion. The first is an equity problematic, where<br />
access and participation as well as social integration is focused over different categories such as<br />
gender, socio-economic status, ethnicity, or minority, such as travellers. The second is a knowledge<br />
problematic where we focus on the construction of categories that are used to identify inclusion and<br />
exclusion. Our main focus turned out to be the knowledge problematic. The studies were organized<br />
around national cases and local contexts as expressions &ndash; and not sources &ndash; of changes in education<br />
governance. The research was built on studies on different levels; text analyses of policy documents,<br />
interviews with system actors such as politicians and administrators as well as school actors (teachers<br />
and headteachers), a survey of students in different national and local contexts. These studies were<br />
combined with analyses of international and national statistics.<br />
The results can be summarized in two distinct sets of outcomes. The first set deals with the<br />
problematics of equity. A basic notion is here that (a) patterns of social exclusion and segregation<br />
increases during the current period, and (b) educational systems are expanding and including more<br />
adolescents for longer periods of their life. This is combined with (c) organisational decentralization<br />
and an increased steering through management procedures, assessment, and resource regulations. The<br />
first two outcomes mean that increased access to education is combined with increased exclusion by<br />
means of education. Within this set we also note the lack of difference in perspectives among system<br />
actors and school actors.<br />
<br />
The second set of outcomes deals with the knowledge problematics and the systems of reason, which<br />
enables a consideration of (c), the new steering mechanism in relation to social exclusion. Our studies<br />
resulted in different, but similar categories, conceptions, and patterns of reasoning. These were<br />
presented in texts, and interviews as well as in statistics. Similar narratives on the necessity to<br />
transform education governance were presented. In sum these narratives reveal a fatalism among<br />
actors as there appears to be no alternative to current changes. Further, we raised questions about the<br />
ways in which external, social and cultural distinctions of deviance travel with institutional practices<br />
through which reforms are formulated at all levels of the system. The changes in narratives governing<br />
reforms are combined with new demands on teachers as well as students. There was a silence about<br />
those who did not fit in this new way of governance<br />
<br />
A major conclusion in terms of education policy making is the need to problematize current stories of<br />
educational progress. There is a need for more reflexive and intellectual understanding of changes in<br />
education governance and the systems of reason that are used for educational changes as well as for<br />
social inclusion and exclusion of youth.