DEVELOPMENT

1.3
Education
Anu Toots, Triin Lauri
Today, expectations have increased considerably for the
contribution that education can make to the development
of society. We often hear people speak about education
as a cure for absolutely all our worries. In this century,
the subject of education has appeared on the agendas of
several international organisations that previously did
not deal with education (OECD, EU, WB, and WTO).
To date, education as a factor of cultural integration has
been considered to be part of the domestic sphere, but the
ascendancy of international organisations in educational
governance 1 alludes to the globalisation of education and
education policy.
Generally, we can talk about two tasks that are
assigned to the modern governance of education. Firstly,
the economic role, according to which good education
is the key to a country’s economic competitiveness and
sustainability. This point of view explains why, along
with the UN, international organisations that are focused
on the economy, such as the Organisation for Economic
Co-operation and Development (OECD), the World Bank
(WB) and the World Economic Forum (WEF) have
started to show interest in the measuring and (ranking)
education.
Education’s second, cultural and political task is
to increase social cohesion. This perspective has also
become markedly more multifaceted than the initial
approach of the UN, which focused on human rights.
Education is, of course, part of an individual’s capital and
this approach is amply stressed on the neoliberal worldview,
but in addition to this, education is an efficient
tool for promoting the understanding and a meeting of
minds between people. According to several studies, educated
people are more tolerant, are greater supporters of
democracy (Mc Mahon 2004), behave more constructively
in regard to their health (Grossmann 2000), are happier
(Putnam, Helliwell 1999) and cope better on the labour
market. The economic and social functions of education
are intertwined, because modern economies and democracies
presuppose the existence of socially sensitive
people with open mindsets, who are able to quickly adapt
to new working collectives and cultures, and to intelligently
and actively participate in public life. The attempt
to reconcile the rational and social functions of education
are characteristic primarily of the European Union, the
educational objectives of which (ET2020) are aimed at
smart economic growth, and do so through education’s
social indicators (e.g. by reducing the percentage of early
leaving and children with meagre basic skills).
Along with knowledge-based and global economies,
population ageing also an important impact on educational
development, and has caused widespread tensions
related to the financing of education. The ageing of populations
has introduced the philosophy of lifelong learning
into education, according to which a person must
learn from the cradle to the grave. This, in turn, has
been accompanied by the measurement of educational
enrolment in the context of every sphere of life. Thus,
the European Union and the World Economic Forum
measure the rate of adult educational enrolment, and in
2011, the OECD conducted the first comparative PIAAC
survey, known as the “adult PISA”, in order to measure
the adults’ knowledge and skills related to coping in the
workplace. 2 The EU and OECD measure the rate of educational
enrolment among pre-schoolers (3- to 5-yearolds);
and the IEA is planning a survey to measure the
knowledge and skills of children in the same age group.
The emphasis of the importance of early childhood education
in EU and OECD materials is motivated by the
conviction that, at this stage of education, the efficiency
of outcome and equity of the investments complement
each other. The further in time that the investments in
education are postponed, the greater the risk that the
aspiration for equity will come at the expense of efficiency.
(Cunha et al. 2005).
Along with early childhood education and lifelong
learning, an important change is the expansion of higher
education. Once the privilege of the few, today higher
education is an opportunity for the majority, and the
European Union has set a goal of having a society in
which 40% of the population has a higher education. The
latter has, in turn, caused tensions related to the financing
of education and accelerated the debate about the nature
of higher education (is it a public or private commodity)
and the cross-border providers of education (export of
educational services).
1.3.1
International measures of education
Education is measured by many international composite
indices and rankings. This confirms the importance
of educational indicators in the measurement of a society’s
developmental levels and trends. Generally, we
can speak about composite indices, one sub-index of
which is some measure of education or the indicators
that come directly from indices/rankings that measure
1 “Governance” is a term that has recently gained popularity in academic literature and the notions of its use and meanings are quite blurred.
Here governance alludes to a new type of governing, in which the state has a steering role rather than an implementative role, and in which
partners from the private and non-profit sector are involved from the local to the global level.
2 Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies, in Estonia known under the name “Tean ja oskan”.
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Estonian Human Development Report 2012/2013