Education is one of keystones that guarantees well-being of a country, therefore the understanding about the educationsystem status might be crucial. It motivates to measure the state of the ...education system, to understand its determinants and tomonitor changes over time that would allow the implementation of evidence-based education policy. Measurement and assessment ofthe state of the education system is a complex task, as the analysis of individual indicators of the educational system is insufficient tomonitor and evaluate education as a multidimensional phenomenon. To achieve a comprehensive and generalized assessment of theeducation system, we have chosen to calculate the composite indicators, namely, indicators of resources and outcomes. Using thelatter indicators we evaluate state of resources and output of the educational system, understand the factors, determining the state, andcompare it over time and in the context of other countries. Indices were calculated for the Baltic countries and three “old” EUmember states: UK representing the Anglo-Saxon liberal model, Germany for the Continental corporatist model and Finland as anexample of the Scandinavian model. For the analysis we used 2002-2014 annual publicly available data from EUROSTAT, OECD,and IEA databases. We have employed a simple weighted additive method with equal weights and principal components analysis forthe construction of indices. We have found that the differences between composite indicators, constructed by the simple weightedadditive method with equal and principal components analysis weights, are limited. The increase in the number of sub-indicators byalmost two-thirds does not affect dynamics of the output indices over time. We have established that inertia of the education systemis different for the countries: the impact of the output on the results is observed with 2–4 year lag for the Baltic States, as there is notime lag or there is a one year lag for Germany and the United Kingdom. Finland's results are different as compared with the othercountries examined. The dynamics of the Baltic indices is similar and possibly constitutes a separate group.
The education systems can be analysed by using the distinction along different types of welfare regimes. Esping-Andersen (1990) described the Scandinavian universalistic, Continental corporatist, and ...Anglo-Saxon liberal models. The purpose of the paper is a comparative analysis of the development of educational systems in the Baltic states. We used the PISA 2012 survey data and compared the Baltic countries with three “old” EU member states: UK representing the Anglo-Saxon liberal model, Germany for the Continental corporatist model and Finland as an example of the Scandinavian model. PISA 2003, 2006 and 2009 data were used for a retrospective analysis of countries’ performance. We considered four aspects of the organization of the national school systems: human and material resources in schools, leadership and the level of school autonomy, assessment, school selectivity and ability grouping. We found that three Baltic states do not represent a single Central and Eastern European model.
We focus on two types of centralised national examinations (the 10th grade tests and Matura examination) that are being carried out in Lithuania for two decades. The aim of the paper is to analyse ...assessments of mathematics for the entire Lithuanian secondary school population that have no sampling errors while considering the factors of location, school ownership and gender as important indicators when judging about educational effectiveness in terms of quality and equity. We analyse the results of the 10th grade tests for the 2011–2015 period and the results of the same cohorts participating in the Matura examination. We observe that the distribution of the assessments of both exams is asymmetric with a positive skew. The median often is below the middle of the grade scale indicating poor performance or mismatch between knowledge and examination tasks. There are limited differences in assessments with respect to gender and school location, although we detect a tendency to have better mathematics achievement in private schools. The conclusions drawn from national assessment data is somewhat different from international data thus one cannot neglect national information for the development of educational policy. The variables analysed in the analysis has limited predictive power for achievements in mathematics and further analysis is called-for.
The transformation of post-socialist education is perhaps one of the most interesting developments in the history of comparative education. The collapse of the socialist system led to a series of ...crises: - Ideological crisis – the collapse of the socialist idea of education, partially replaced by the ideology of neoliberalism. - Social crisis – dismantling of the socialist welfare system and attempts to replace it by different Western models of social welfare. - Economic crisis – transition from planned to market economy which led to deterioration of educational infrastructure. - Cultural crisis – socialist culture was replaced by different modifications of promoting national and/or regional cultures. - Structural crisis – countries with practically identical educational structures chose different ways of restructuring education. After the failure of the previous system Western researchers assumed that the common model of transition will be very straightforward – post-socialist countries should catch up with the more “modern” Western educational models. However, the transition did not follow the prescribed path and post-socialist countries have chosen different trajectories of educational development.
It is a data-oriented approach to evaluate the performance of a set of decision-making units in the process of transforming resources (inputs) into desired results (outputs). The input indicators are ...the education expenditure and student/teacher ratio; the output indicators are the standard deviations of scores and percentage of resilient students. The standard deviation of the scores can explain how skills and knowledge are distributed throughout the student population, and the percentage of resilient students indicates to what extent the socioeconomic background precludes or does not preclude student success.
Transformation of post-socialist educational systems is perhaps one of the most interesting and at the same time underestimated in its importance, developments in the history of comparative ...education. After the three decades of post-socialist development one can note significant differences between the countries which once had identical or very similar educational systems. Perhaps the most interesting topic for comparativists to explore is the question: why instead of convergence do we observe the increasing divergence of education in the post-socialist area? One of the possible answers is that post-socialist countries perceived the new ideology, namely, the ideology of neoliberalism, in their own specific way, which was determined by their historical, cultural and religious heritage. The concepts of effectiveness and efficiency in education can be considered as one of the typical cases of re-contextualization. The paper provides several examples showing that these concepts are still interpreted in different ways in the East and in the West.
Taking the example of post-1989 teacher education reform in Lithuania, and comparing that with teacher education reform in South Africa, a country that also underwent a total societal reconstruction ...at the same time as Lithuania, this paper defends the thesis that the configuration of education at grass roots level, is the outcome of a dialectical play of forces at various geographical levels, including the global, the regional or supra-national, the national and the sub-national or local.
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