Comparison of secondary education systems

Hi everyone!

I know this board is mainly about higher education by distance learning, but I was interested in hearing your perspectives on secondary education systems in different parts of the world especially where differences in curriculum are concerned.

Namely, I have read several comments in various threads on this board regarding the issues of 4-year undergraduate degrees (standard in US and Canada from what I understand) and 3-year undergraduate degrees becoming standard in EU and other European countries the last few years (Bologna process etc). Some members have commented that those should be regarded as equal due to the fact that much of the "general education" courses that students in e.g. US take during their first year in college are done during secondary education in Europe.

This seems interesting and a tempting explanation, especially when combined with what I have read from some other forum members regarding the state of public secondary education in the US.

However, every now and then I bump into pieces of information that do not conform well with this theory. For example, I have read in several places, including on this board I believe, that high-school students in some schools in the US take certain courses that they are later able to transfer as undergraduate coursework.

Since we have members on this board that are familiar with US, British, German and some other educational systems, I believe some of you could help me out with this.

Has anyone to your knowledge done a comparative study of curricula? I know I could Google it myself, and I intend to, but since some of you board members are specialized in educational matters I would also like your recommendations for further reading and your personal perspectives.

If the administrators do not think that this topic merits a place here, I apologize and submit myself to their fair judgment.

 

Rep;lying in haste and brevity whilst traveling.

NOOSR, the Australian National Office for Overseas Skill Recognition has published a lot on this matter, including a series of 80+ monographs on the educational systems of that many countries, and how it compares to the Australian. (I had the privilege of writing 13 of those monographs). One of their main purposes is to help Australian decision-makers decide whether, for instance, a Polish architecture degree or a Venezuelan psychologist credential is equivalent to comparable Australian credentials. I haven't checked to see how much of this is on-line or still available.

 

Here's an online free book, from the NOOSR data, which summarizes many of the country systems:

http://tinyurl.com/ComparativeSystems

 

Anecdotally, I went to college with several foreign educated high school students and found that A levels were on par with advanced US high school standards. That is to say that those who took AP classes in high school were a fair comparison to A levels in the British system.
In general, I think the US system favors a broad approach to education as opposed to a focused set of employable skills. Th emphasis is on learning how to think and approaching problems in innovative ways. That is why you will see history majors working on Wall Street and literature majors going to medical school and engineers going to law school. Learning how to think is a very translatable skill which US colleges and universities believe prepare individuals for any future endeavors.

my 2 cents

 

A lot of the general education requirements are actually comparable in level to Junior and Senior courses at United States high schools (my experience shows). I actually graduated high school with 24 credits via a co-op program and AP exams taken after having taken the required courses. I would have left with about 40 if 1) I had known that some classes were available to Juniors, 2) My AP French teacher actually prepared us for the test 3) the two AP English exams I took didn't duplicate credit (Why did no one tell me this untill 7 years after I took them?!).

Anyway, I didn't think that the college-level courses (including a college-level physics class that was designed to mock the co-op class, but didn't end with actual credit- bummer because I got 100s on all of the exams in the second semester) I took were any more difficult than the non-college courses I took in high school.

 

I would like to thank you for the comments and especially Dr Bear for the information on published studies. I am a bit busy now but I will try to go through the book as soon as I get some free time.

This comment I find interesting:

While I personally haven't had the opportunity to experience US secondary education, few of my friends and colleagues have for a year or two (exchange programs and such) and the impression I got was that ex-Yugoslav secondary education (at least "comprehensive" type of school, if not trade / profession oriented ones) is much more focused on (lots of) theory, and the US system on giving a student opportunity to pursue more their particular interests and practical application / understanding. This would be something along the lines of "learning how to think and approach problems" in your post, which I believe is somewhat lacking over here where pummeling students with terms, names of dead people and dates of events that happended hundreds of years ago is often the norm.

I guess some of the subjects are standard all over the world (math, language, foreign language, biology, chemistry, physics, geography, history and such) - though what is actually covered would be interesting to read. But I was interested in some subjects that are usually done here in "comprehensive" high-schools such as, say, sociology, psychology, logic, philosophy, music theory and history, art history, world literature, civil society/homeland security etc. Although, those might be remnants of the former Eastern bloc approach to education, so they may not apply to the whole of Europe. At one point in time they even had Marxism as a subject in secondary education.