Education Policies and Systems across Modern History: A Global Dataset

• In Event: Historical Development of Education Systems: Motivations and Consequences

Abstract

In this paper, we present a new, global dataset on education policies and systems across modern history (EPSM). This dataset includes four clusters of variables pertaining to the a) existence and nature of compulsory education, b) ideological guidance and content of education, c) autonomy or political control of education institutions, and d) training of teachers. EPSM covers 164 countries globally (with populations exceeding one hundred thousand inhabitants), and the time series extends from as far back as 1789 to the present. Hence, the dataset incorporates the period during which most modern education systems were born. EPSM opens up for studying several key questions concerning political control and the politicized nature of education systems. In addition to describing the measures, we detail how this extensive data collection effort was conducted and discuss reliability and validity issues. This includes convergent validity tests for some of our measures against comparable ones from existing datasets. Thereafter, we use the new data to present descriptive historical trends in compulsory primary and secondary education, civics and ideology education, state funding and operation of education institutions, and laws regulating the training of teachers. Finally, we illustrate how our data can be used to address key questions about education and politics, replicating and thereafter extending recent analyses on the (complex) relationship between education and democratization. For example, we replicate the recent finding that democratization did not significantly increase the likelihood of a country to enact compulsory education, but we also use our new measures to show that there are clear regime differences, for example, in terms of whether or not the entire population is covered by compulsory education or whether particular groups are excluded. We also show systematic differences features between democracies and autocracies in other education system, for instance in the ideological contents of their civics courses.

Authors

• Carl Henrik Knutsen, Department of Political Science, University of Oslo

• Adrian del Rio, Center for East and International Studies

• Philipp Lutscher, University of Oslo