The Permanence of a Distinctiveness

Models of Education

The Democratic Model: Includes countries like Great Britain, France, and Italy, where there have been policies to raise compulsory education in the school system. These countries have also attempted to comprehensively reform curricula by providing more choices in areas of study. The aim is to ensure equal opportunities for vocational education and training, regardless of social origin.

The Scandinavian Model: This model focuses on a high level of "comprehensivization" of curricula and the integration of social and educational policies. It has generally shown positive results in reducing social and economic disparities.

SEM: A "Common Destiny" in Educational Performances?

• The level of achievement among the youth with a secondary degree of instruction
• The percentage of young people leaving the education and training system early
• The rate of adult population (between 24 and 61 years) who own an upper secondary school leaving certificate
• The percentage of public

1. Education expense in reference to GPL; the rate of adult population participating to education and training activities (the rate of participation to lifelong learning systems).

Level of Attainment of Secondary School

	1995	2000	2005
EU (27)	76.6	77.4
Greece	73.8	79.2	84.1
Spain	59	66	61.8
Portugal	45.1	43.2	49
Italia	58.9	69.4	73.6

Source: Eurostat

Early school leavers

	1995	2000	2005
EU (27)	17.6	15.6
Greece	22.4	18.2	13.3
Spain	33.8	29.1	30.8
Portugal	41.4	42.6	38.6
Italia	32.8	25.3	21.9

Source: Eurostat

Population with at least upper secondary school

	1995	2000	2005
EU (27)	64.4	69.3
Greece	42.6	51.6	60
Spain	29.5	38.6	48.5
Portugal	21.9	19.4	26.5
Italia	36.3	45.2	50.4

Source: Eurostat

Lifelong learning

Tab. 4 - Adult population 25-64 in lifelong

Il tuo compito è formattare il testo fornito utilizzando tag html. ATTENZIONE: non modificare il testo in altro modo, NON aggiungere commenti, NON utilizzare tag h1; Il testo formattato con i tag html è il seguente:

learning1995 2000 2005EU (27) : 7.1 9,7Greece 0,9 1 1,9Spain 4,3 4.1 10.5Italia 3,8 4.8 5,8Portugal 3,3 3,4 4,1Source: Eurostat Public Spending
Tab. 5 - Public spending (% GPD) 1995 2000 2003EU (27) : : 5.17Greece 2.87 3.71 3.94Spain 4,66 4,28 4,28Italia 4,85 4,47 4,74Portugal 5.37 5.42 5.61Source: Eurostat OECD_PISA (2003)
Tab. 6 - ScoresPaesi/Scala Literacy Matematics ScienceBelgium 507 529 509Germany 491 503 502Holland 513 538 524France 496 511 511Austria 491 506 491Switzerland 499 527 513Denmark 492 514 475Finland 543 544 548Sweden 514 509 506Norway 500 495 484Greece 472 445 481Italia 476 466 486Portugal 478 466 468Spain 481 485 487
To summarizeIn sum, in the countries of the Southern-European model, there are some affinities in terms of the indicators of school systemfunctioning:the presence of a still large number of young people who leave school possessing relatively low leaving certificates;the reduced rate of young completing the upper secondary school; the common

condition of the countries of the Southern-European model in OECD-PISA, whose groups of students reach an average of scores decidedly inferior to the average score of other countries participating to the exercise of assessment (conventionally fixed at 500). This concerns all three competencies the low level of competence in adult population, as displayed by the indicator related to the bigger diffusion of those completing at most the compulsory school, which in turn affect the rather modest rate of participation to lifelong learning programs. The dynamics of alignment to EU policies The persistent centralism (Greece) The de-concentration through school autonomy (Portugal and Italy) The decentralization (Spain) Persistent centralism (Greece) It represents a case of persistent bureaucratic centralism (Zambeta, 2003; Gouvias, 2007). The Greek school system is characterized by: the strong inequalities between the urban and the rural areas; the tendency to reproduce the social.

classes; the difficulty in producing efficient organization replies to the religious and ethnic minorities; the high rate of early school leavers; traditionalism in pedagogical practices (Zambeta, 2003).

The reform of 1997 marked an important step in the restructuring of the Greek school system. This reform was accompanied, through the communitarian funding in the period 2000-2006 (OPEIVT), by a considerable impulse of financial resources (10 million euro) towards the schools and the universities of the country, multiplying both the private and the public provision, and translating into a channel of vocational education and training.

Deconcentration: Portugal

In the last 15 years, the most meaningful changes in Portugal have concerned: the extension of compulsory instruction; the increase in the rates of participation to the various levels of the school system; and the program of education reforms in the '90ies (Alves and Canario, 2002). The democratization of access to the various

Levels of instruction have meant an increase in the demand of education and training. Particularly relevant was the intervention to produce changes in the education governance, which lead the attention on the schools, and its organization arrangements, in the hypothesis that, by working on the level of the service delivering, they could affect the negative performances of the system in a meaningful way.

An important problem concerns what activates the process of deconcentration; in this case, it rather seems an attribution in a top-down perspective rather than 'an achievement' wanted by the schools in an effective way.

Deconcentration: Italy

In the second half of the 90ies the Italian education system lived a phase of intense transformation: the attribution of autonomy to the school establishments, the administrative deconcentration, and the re-shaping of the education curriculum.

School autonomy and the re-shaping of the school curricula are accompanied by a reconfiguration of

The governance system of education, which redefines the competences of State, Regions and schools (Benadusi, Landri, 2002).

However, two reforms regarding the organization of the school system have not been implemented.

Decentralization: Spain

In Spain, the decentralization follows the territorial articulation of the country, that is, organizes itself around the local communities, which represent the constitutive elements of the state.

Here, the decentralization develops in a bottom up way, since it has been sustained by the different political and cultural components of the diverse communities.

In 1990, however, a new act on education (LOGSE), supported by the socialist party (PSOE), started the democratization of the system in a decisive manner, through the accentuation of the relevance of compulsory education and the extension of the period of compulsion (up to 16 years) (Pereyra, 2003).

The complex pattern of governance, however, does not seem sufficient to contrast the social inequalities.

The presence of a dual system within the compulsory school, which sees a considerable development of private instruction (now covering more than 30% of students up to the high average of 50% in Catalonia and in the Provinces Basque), further reinforces the phenomena of school segregation, while producing vicious circles of 'impoverishment' of the quality of the public service.

Discussion

The commonalities

• Discourses of change, local translations
• The permanence of a distinctiveness

The commonalities (1)

The countries of the Southern-European model of welfare comes late to mass schooling. The institutionalization of mass schooling develops late, compared to other European countries. In this sense, these countries experience an expansion in the demand of education, and, consequently, of schooling at the different levels of education; their deep structure of the school systems seems to reveal an institutional inertia, that is a 'fatigue' in the modification of a

way of organization which is mainly aimed at the reproduction of the elites or social classes with weak links to the job market, that is, with curricula slightly oriented to the vocational education and training

The commonalities (2)

In those countries, in their organizational and institutional practices,

• it has been long operated a elitarian mode of functioning, which seems to have oriented the school through strong mechanisms of social closure (the formation of their managerial elites, the reproduction of social classes, the re-production of the national-identitarian character of the countries).

The improvement of performances on the macro indicators in the last ten years, seem to show an adaptability in quantity and not in quality, that is to say that the improvements regard more the attainment of higher level of formal qualification, as it is expressed for example by the increased number of school leaving certificate of the upper secondary schools, and less by those indicators

That concern the so called higher skills as well as the equity of the results.

Global Discourses of Change, Local translations

The pressures for trasformation seem to be mainly hexogenous. The dominant institutional rhetorics (knowledge societies, globalization) produce a convergence in such a way that the change is perceived as 'inevitable'. In our cases, naturally, a determining role is exercised by the politics of the European Union.

In the restructuring of school systems, however, the countries follow different local translations: centralization, deconcentration, decentralization.

The permanence of a distinctiveness

Macro-social narrative: a large amount of literature face with this issue in terms of a difference of these countries in terms of the regime of social protection and welfare state (Liebfred 1992; Ferrera, 1996; Katrougalos and Lazaridis 2003), and extends the debate by including the family models and the care regimes (Jurado Guerrero and Naldini 1997, Saraceno, 2000).

t of their shared capitalist development model. This would imply that the differences observed in the education systems of these countries are not due to inherent cultural or historical factors, but rather a result of their economic structure. In conclusion, the analysis of the education systems in South-European countries reveals both similarities and differences. While there are commonalities in terms of indicators of performance and organizational characteristics, there are also significant variations that can be attributed to cultural, historical, and economic factors. Understanding these dynamics is crucial for policymakers and researchers in order to develop effective strategies for improving education outcomes in these countries.