Equal Opportunities in Access to Education – A Governance Task?

Lorenz Lassnigg

A study¹  on the effectiveness of the Austrian school administration has shown that the complex bureaucratic federalist governance system leads to efficiency losses.

According to comparative studies based on education economics, the effectiveness of the school system can be enhanced if bureaucracy is reduced and schools are given greater autonomy and responsibility.

However, improving the effectiveness of the school system would not necessarily also improve the situation with respect to equal opportunities, since the problem here is primarily a structural one. Technically, equal opportunities means that pupils’ scholastic careers and performance should be determined as little as possible by the differences in their backgrounds. The influence of social backgrounds on scholastic performance can be either intensified or reduced by the school structure. Dividing up pupils at an early age into two school types, Hauptschule (general secondary school) and AHS (academic secondary school), is a major factor leading to a lack of equal opportunities. A study²  conducted as a result of the Austrian PISA data showed that an important reason for the better average performance of AHS pupils as compared to Hauptschule pupils was simply the circumstance that the social environment at AHS schools consisted mainly of pupils from better-situated brackets, in other words: the social selectivity of these schools.

If we want equal opportunities to become reality, structural reform has to take priority over governance reform: the existing lack of equal opportunities cannot be noticeably bettered merely by improving effectivity through a change in governance. Every type of governance serves only to realise political objectives. In order to realise equal opportunities in the education system, structural reforms are essential. Three aspects are of primary importance:
1. A substantial expansion of pre-school education, since it is here that the foundations are laid for cumulative further learning processes; what is neglected at this stage cannot be recovered.
2. A common school type for all children during the whole period of compulsory schooling; the schools must focus on promoting the abilities of the pupils as individuals rather than on pre-selection at the primary school level in an attempt to form homogeneous groups according to criteria of “performance” that in fact cannot be identified at such an early age.
3. Full-day school, as a living and learning environment that provides freedom for learning as well as ensuring families that their children and adolescents receive the high-quality care they need.

In order to achieve these objectives, suitable forms of governance must also be developed. Structural reforms are not the only precondition for making equal opportunities reality. But they are essential, because in the structures we have now, selectivity will always be given priority over the fostering of individual abilities.

Lorenz Lassnigg is a researcher in the sociology department of the Institute for Advanced Studies  (http://www.ihs.ac.at/), where he is head of the research unit equi (http://www.equi.at/). His main areas of research are: socioscientific education research at the interface of social, political and economic issues, in particular in relation to the coordination of education and employment; evaluation research in the field of labour market policy and organisational theory.

¹ Lassnigg, Lorenz; Felderer, Bernhard; Paterson, Iain; Kuschei, Hermann; Graf, Nikolaus: Ökonomische Bewertung der Struktur und Effizienz des österreichischen Bildungswesens und seiner Verwaltung. Forschungsbericht des IHS im Auftrag des BMUKK. Vienna, 2007: IHS (Download: http://www.equi.at/dateien/ihs_oekbew.pdf)
² Lassnigg, Lorenz; Vogtenhuber, Stefan: Governance-Faktoren, Schülerleistungen und Selektivität der Schulen, in: Schreiner, Claudia; Schwantner, Ursula (eds.), PISA 2006. Österreichischer Expertenbericht zum Naturwisschafts-Schwerpunkt, Leykam, Graz, 2009, pp. 376-386.
(Download: http://www.bifie.at/buch/322/9/5)