1,721,090 research outputs found
The French republican school under pressure: falling standards, and rising inequalities
No full textIn the historical development of the relationship between education
and society, primary education in France has played a central role. The French
educational system is one of the most stable public institutions, given its
constitutional significance and relevance for the embodiment of the republican
virtues. Its organisational structure has remained almost unchanged since the Loi
Goblet, enacted on 30 October 1886. The principles of universalism, uniformity
and equality of opportunity have marked over time that policy developments in
France aimed at fighting inherited disadvantage and lifting children above the
poverty line through state-based education. The scholarly focus on the institutional
and administrative dimension of the French system of education has helped
illuminate some of the difficulties associated with the implementation of change,
including the disappointing experience with the introduction of positive discrimination
in the 1980s. However, to date, the empirical evidence of the effects of
educational reforms that were implemented remains unfortunately secondary to the
conventional wisdom of the ‘politics of non-reform’ and institutional inertia.
Governmental initiatives have concentrated on tackling educational underachievements
in basic literacy and numeracy in primary schools. The empirical
findings in this article point not only to the general deterioration of educational
achievements, but also to a persisting gap between pupils from different social
background. The article will document how educational inequalities driven by
different social economic groups have increased, despite government efforts and
new policy initiatives in the 1980s and 1990s
The Role of Religiosity in Education Policy in France and Israel
No full textWhat are the policy implications of different state policies toward religion?
The paper is an investigation about the relationship between the state and religion in
shaping contemporary compulsory schooling in France and Israel. Why do
Orthodox Jewish students in Israel learn the Torah way of life, often at the expense
of other subjects and employment opportunities, whilst religious Catholic students
in France cannot study the Bible in schools or Muslim students cannot learn the
Prophet’s way of life? Why is religiosity actively promoted in one educational
system and banned from education policy in another? Our argument is that state
policies toward religion and religious schools are the result of historical processes
and conditions, associated with political and legal developments. France and Israel
share the central role that religion played in the early processes of state building; yet,
contemporary state policies toward religion and education are most different. In
France, we found that assertive secularism (laicité) finds its battling grounds in
public schools, whilst in Israel prescriptive religiosity permeates every aspect of
public life and schooling policies
Public Accountability and Health Care Governance : Public Management Reforms Between Austerity and Democracy
No full textThis book deals with the critical empirical void created by the speed at which healthcare restructuring has taken place in Europe. Chapters explore the political uncertainty and budgetary pressures which have led governments increasingly to turn to New Public Management (NPM)-style reforms to attempt to balance the financial viability of public health structures, with democratic imperatives to maintain socially just outcomes. The authors of this volume consider how governments have therefore shifted identities from principal care providers to contractual monitors, setting targets increasingly directed toward third-party managers in quasi-markets and the private sector. Drawing upon extensive data from Germany, Norway, the Netherlands, and Israel, the contributions explore the often unexpected policy outputs and outcomes engendered by such reforms
Universities in Europe and the Public Engagement Agenda: A Revolution Ahead or Too Much of a Good Thing?
No full textThe article contributes to the debate on the future of European universities by investigating a relatively new policy agenda - the public engagement agenda - that aims at reconciling market-driven strategies and performance based funding with universities' civic and societal engagements. The article intends to shed light on the relationship between the increased marketization of higher education and the universities' civic engagement missions. Universities are key actors for knowledge transfer, and national economic growth, as well as for promoting social change and participation. Based on a discussion of the main policy pressures on higher education and the reforms that have been introduced on research funding and evaluation, the second part of the essay addresses a variety of issues related to the introduction of the public engagement agenda in the UK and Italy, with a view to tackling the quality / quantity trade-off
Managerial and Political Accountability: the Widening Gap in the Organisation of Welfare
No full textThis article revisits the assumption that the welfare delivery state does not fit into the vertical or hierarchical model of political accountability in light of its recent organizational arrangements. Although a distinction in any analytical framework between managerial and political accountability bears some fruit, the replacement of the latter with the former is contestable and misleading. In contrast to the claims that managerial accountability is a technical and neutral exercise in the application of politics-free criteria, and, as such, it more readily fits the complexity of the 21st-century welfare state, this article suggests that the new organizational arrangements of state schools and hospitals indicate that traditional forms of accountability to elected officials have not withered. The process of developing new welfare state organizational arrangements cannot be divorced from fundamental institutional questions about each democracy. By empirically investigating the effects of the introduction of managerialism on democratic accountability in Britain and Germany, the article aims to further our understanding of the link between the managerial and political dimensions of accountability in the welfare delivery state
Legislative Delegation to the Executive in the Second Italian Republic
No full textConsidering the increasing quantitative usage and expanding qualitative scope of instruments of delegated legislations as the predominant means of enacting welfare reforms, this article investigates the consolidation throughout the Second Italian Republic of a new interpretation of executive prerogatives in the exercise of legislative functions. This is not only a problem in relation to the constitutional balance defining the relationship between the executive and legislature, but also an issue for executive policy leadership and capacity to steer the legislative process. It is argued that since the 1990s the usage of legislative decrees has become a sui generis and the predominant means of decision-making, adopted in particular for welfare reforms. In particular, delegated legislation to the executive has changed the impact that interest groups, such as trade unions, have on the policy process. Two case studies are presented by way of illustration, namely the health care reforms of the early 1990s and the education reform in 2003
Raising educational standards: national testing of pupils in the UK, 1988-2009
No full textRaising the basic standards of competence achieved by school children has
become a primary objective of governments across Europe. A high performing
educational system is taken to be fundamental in achieving European economic
competitiveness. Children leaving primary schools with difficulty in reading,
writing and arithmetic or a meagre understanding of science are unlikely to
achieve the qualifications at secondary school required to secure jobs that will
raise them above a poverty line. On one hand, in England, the government has
pioneered a radical school reform programme over the last 20 years, including
national testing of school children at regular intervals. On the other, high stakes
testing was pursued only partially and briefly in Scotland and Wales and then
largely abandoned after devolution. National testing in the UK has been
associated with increasingly marked divergent outcomes in the UK. This article
focuses on the following central question: how far the divergent reform policies in
England, Scotland and Wales reflect differences in social policy objectives and
how far a very different understanding in the means of achieving them? Empirical
findings point to the widening gap in educational attainments across the UK
countries and highlight the critical situation in Scotland where test results have
stagnated in the last 10 years
Moral values and responsible administration : live organs transplant system in the US and Germany
No full textThis article explores the unexpected ways in which recently introduced accountability mechanisms shape hospital administrators’ and physicians’ actions in Germany and in the United States. Though the reforms were designed to provide governments with more control over hospitals by increasing doctors’ and managers’ direct answerability to clients, this research finds that they fail to achieve these objectives by overlooking and clashing with existing behavioral settings within the medical sector. This analysis employs a newly synthesized theoretical framework at the nexus of ethics and accountability, as well as a comparative empirical exploration of the organ transplant systems in Germany and the U.S
- …
