The Politics of Educational Differentiation

• In Event: Social Investment in Education: Implications for Equality and Social Solidarity

Abstract

The massification of secondary education constitutes the key educational project of the first post-war period. The educational structures implemented to accommodate the increasing educational demand in advanced economies, however, have differed widely in terms of their degree of standardisation and stratification, as well as the mechanisms used to allocate the student population to different educational paths and careers. The paper argues that the interaction of electoral logics and the structure of producer groups, namely teachers’ unions and the church, shaped these different outcomes. We develop the argument theoretically, combining insights from the literature on the partisan politics of education and on vested interests in education. The position of right- and left-wing parties and governments towards de-tracking and choice, we argue, is shaped both by their effort to appeal to increasingly education-friendly middle-class voters and by their relationship with producer groups. Where the church aligned with the political left, the right tended to be more supportive of de-tracking and restriction of choice, whereas it strongly opposed such policies in situations where teacher unions formed alliances against the left. The argument is tested on a novel dataset coding post-war educational reforms in 21 countries, extensive data on the structure and strength of teacher and private school organisations, a comprehensive coding of educational manifestoes, as well as a series of case studies focusing on the preferences and coalitions shaping early post-war educational differentiation reforms.

Authors

• Anja S Giudici, University of Oxford

• Jane R. Gingrich, University of Oxford