4 - Attitudes on Education Governance in Western Europe

Summary

Many reforms of education governance throughout the postwar decades have been heavily contested politically. Since around the 1980s, governments in several advanced Western countries have reformed their education systems by increasing private provision, school choice, decentralization, and competition; by lowering or increasing the number of educational tracks available in secondary education; and by reorienting the role of vocational education and training in the education system. Yet, to date we possess insufficient knowledge of the extent to which such reforms are actually in line with individual preferences. This chapter studies individual preferences toward education governance for four educational sectors (early childhood education and care, schools, vocational education and training, and higher education) along three dimensions of education governance. On average, our findings reveal a strong support of public opinion for a publicly dominated, comprehensive model of education provision, coupled with a high degree of choice for students and parents. Yet, for most issues, preferences toward education governance are highly contested between individuals of different ideological orientations and partisan constituencies. Conflicting preferences at the individual level reflect the oftentimes high degree of partisan conflict on many reform issues in the governance of education.