Introduction

Comparative research on education developed tremendously in the past decade. We have come to learn a great deal about cross-national differences in the effect of education on labour market outcomes (Shavit and Müller, 1998; Breen and Buchmann, 2002; Müller and Gangl, 2003; Bol and van de Werfhorst, 2013), in levels of student achievement (Hanushek and Woessmann, 2005; Jenkins et al, 2008) and in effects of social origin on educational achievement (Brunello and Checchi, 2007; van de Werfhorst and Mijs, 2010). In understanding this cross-national variation, researchers have proposed three different institutional characteristics that drive these outcomes: the placement of students in different educational tracks, the extent and the specificity of the vocational skills provided by a system, and the extent to which an educational system is standardised (Allmendinger, 1989; Shavit and Müller, 1998; Kerckhoff, 2006; Levels et al, 2014).

This chapter studies associations between these three characteristics of educational systems and four central ‘functions’ of education. Functions, in this understanding, should be seen as the outcomes on the basis of which we can judge whether educational systems function well. Typically, comparative research has examined educational inequality, skill optimisation and allocation to the labour market as central functions of education. Given the aims of educational systems to improve equal opportunities, to optimise the attained skill level and to provide skills relevant for work, these are three important domains with impacts on institutions that should be identified. In addition to these three functions, which have been examined before, we study the impact of educational institutions on a fourth central function of education: to socialise youngsters into society at large, by creating active citizens who actively participate in society.

Three institutional dimensions of educational systems

Comparative stratification research has proposed three dimensions into which educational systems can be classified cross-nationally: the extent of tracking students with different levels of scholastic ability, the extent to which systems provide vocationally specific skills, and the level of nationwide standardisation of regulations, funding and examinations (Allmendinger, 1989; Kerckhoff, 1995; Shavit and Müller, 1998; Horn, 2009). We follow this literature and classify educational systems in these dimensions (albeit sometimes with two indicators for one dimension).