National Educational Law and Policy

Educational law and policy have, for a long time, occupied a pivotal role in the history of education. Notwithstanding this, resources of this kind have only been available since quite recently.

Such resources as are available derive not so much from historical research as from archives constructed by various organisations and institutions.

Most significantly, the majority of national ministries of education publish current laws, syllabi and other details on the running of schools, together with details of the most recent research that they have funded.

The main limitation of these resources is that the indicators contained is that they usually offer a comprehensive overview geared towards a specific end instead of specific details suitable for specialised analysis.

Data are usually analysed on a national or, at best, on a regional or provincial level. In other words, the information offered has been assembled for very specific purposes, which do not necessarily coincide with those of historians.

One exception to this rule is to be found in Thomas, the Library of Congress, which provides a textual and multi-criteria search facility. It provides a corpus of all laws and regulations in the USA from 1973 onwards, including those pertaining to education and the school system²⁰.

A very similar set of limitations can be observed in the online resources provided by international organisations involved in financing and monitoring literacy and education worldwide.

Organisations such as UNESCO and UNICEF are specifically aimed at promoting the education of disadvantaged populations, and the databases and information which they provide online are specifically focused on their own activities in developing countries.

Similar resources are available on the website of the Bureau International d’éducation di Ginevra (BIE), which has now been incorporated into UNESCO, together with which it publishes the World Data on Education every year²¹.

The Eurydice network, an initative set up by the European commission in 1980, which handles information with regard to educational systems in Europe, is worthy of particular mention.

Eurydice publishes and updates Eurybase, the Information Database on Education Systems in Europe²².

Information on each country is provided, at the very least, in both the country’s language and English. Key information of legislation, teachers, pupils and funding is provided, together with a brief historica excursus.

The Organizzazione per la Cooperazione e lo Sviluppo Economico (OCSE) provides information of specifically economic kind, publishing details of research carried out in all the school systems of the member states²³.

Detailed information is provided on students, teachers, school buildings and the job market. Once again, the key limitation of the data on offer is that it has already been processed for a specific process, namely the comparison of situations in different nations.

PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) examines the levels of students in compulsory education²⁴.

Results of the surveys conducted in 2000, 2003 and 2006 are available online.

Simple and advanced-level search engines are available for data from the fifty plus countries involved in the programme. It is possible to select a single indicator and analyse a cross section of results, or to study results country by country.

Notwithstanding this, the search mechanism is limited to a fixed list of criteria and the data cannot be freely accessed and processed. Search results are processed by the server, which sends results in excel format via email.

²⁰http://thomas.loc.gov/.

²¹http://nt5.scbbs.com/cgi-bin/om_isapi.dll?clientID=1439778712&infobase=iwde.nfo&record={1FF03}&softpage= PL_frame.
²²http://www.eurydice.org/portal/page/portal/Eurydice/DB_Eurybase_Home.
²³http://www.oecd.org/topicstatsportal/0,2647,en_2825_495609_1_1_1_1_1,00.html.
²⁴http://pisaweb.acer.edu.au/oecd_2003/oecd_pisa_data_s2.php.

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