compulsory education

What you need to know about the right to education

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights affirms that education is a fundamental human right for everyone and this right was further detailed in the Convention against Discrimination in Education. What exactly does that mean?

Why is education a fundamental human right?

The right to education is a human right and indispensable for the exercise of other human rights.

• Quality education aims to ensure the development of a fully-rounded human being.
• It is one of the most powerful tools in lifting socially excluded children and adults out of poverty and into society. UNESCO data shows that if all adults completed secondary education, globally the number of poor people could be reduced by more than half.
• It narrows the gender gap for girls and women. A UN study showed that each year of schooling reduces the probability of infant mortality by 5 to 10 per cent.
• For this human right to work there must be equality of opportunity, universal access, and enforceable and monitored quality standards.

What does the right to education entail?

• Primary education that is free, compulsory and universal
• Secondary education, including technical and vocational, that is generally available, accessible to all and progressively free
• Higher education, accessible to all on the basis of individual capacity and progressively free
• Fundamental education for individuals who have not completed education
• Professional training opportunities
• Equal quality of education through minimum standards
• Quality teaching and supplies for teachers
• Adequate fellowship system and material condition for teaching staff
• Freedom of choice

What is the current situation?

• About 258 million children and youth are out of school, according to UIS data for the school year ending in 2018. The total includes 59 million children of primary school age, 62 million of lower secondary school age and 138 million of upper secondary age.

155 countries legally guarantee 9 years or more of compulsory education

• Only 99 countries legally guarantee at least 12 years of free education
• 8.2% of primary school age children does not go to primary school  Only six in ten young people will be finishing secondary school in 2030 The youth literacy rate (15-24) is of 91.73%, meaning 102 million youth lack basic literacy skills.

  How is the right to education ensured?

The right to education is established by two means - normative international instruments and political commitments by governments. A solid international framework of conventions and treaties exist to protect the right to education and States that sign up to them agree to respect, protect and fulfil this right.

How does UNESCO work to ensure the right to education?

UNESCO develops, monitors and promotes education norms and standards to guarantee the right to education at country level and advance the aims of the Education 2030 Agenda. It works to ensure States' legal obligations are reflected in national legal frameworks and translated into concrete policies.

• Monitoring the implementation of the right to education at country level
• Supporting States to establish solid national frameworks creating the legal foundation and conditions for sustainable quality education for all
• Advocating on the right to education principles and legal obligations through research and studies on key issues
• Maintaining global online tools on the right to education
• Enhancing capacities, reporting mechanisms and awareness on key challenges
• Developing partnerships and networks around key issues

  How is the right to education monitored and enforced by UNESCO?

• UNESCO's Constitution requires Member States to regularly report on measures to implement standard-setting instruments at country level through regular consultations.
• Through collaboration with UN human rights bodies, UNESCO addresses recommendations to countries to improve the situation of the right to education at national level.
• Through the dedicated online Observatory , UNESCO takes stock of the implementation of the right to education in 195 States.
• Through its interactive Atlas , UNESCO monitors the implementation right to education of girls and women in countries
• Based on its monitoring work, UNESCO provides technical assistance and policy advice to Member States that seek to review, develop, improve and reform their legal and policy frameworks.

What happens if States do not fulfil obligations?

• International human rights instruments have established a solid normative framework for the right to education. This is not an empty declaration of intent as its provisions are legally binding. All countries in the world have ratified at least one treaty covering certain aspects of the right to education. This means that all States are held to account, through legal mechanisms.
• Enforcement of the right to education: At international level, human rights' mechanisms are competent to receive individual complaints and have settled right to education breaches this way.
• Justiciability of the right to education: Where their right to education has been violated, citizens must be able to have legal recourse before the law courts or administrative tribunals.

  What are the major challenges to ensure the right to education?

• Providing free and compulsory education to all
• 155 countries legally guarantee 9 years or more of compulsory education.
• Only 99 countries legally guarantee at least 12 years of free education.
• Eliminating inequalities and disparities in education

While only 4% of the poorest youth complete upper secondary school in low-income countries, 36% of the richest do. In lower-middle-income countries, the gap is even wider: while only 14% of the poorest youth complete upper secondary school, 72% of the richest do.

• Migration and displacement

According to a 2019 UNHCR report, of the 7.1 million refugee children of school age, 3.7 million - more than half - do not go to school. 

• Privatization and its impact on the right to education

States need to strike a balance between educational freedom and ensuring everyone receives a quality education.

• Financing of education

The Education 2030 Agenda requires States to allocate at least 4-6 per cent of GDP and/or at least 15-20 per cent of public expenditure to education.

• Quality imperatives and valuing the teaching profession

Two-thirds of the estimated 617 million children and adolescents who cannot read a simple sentence or manage a basic mathematics calculation are in the classroom.

• Say no to discrimination in education! - #RightToEducation campaign

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11.1 An Overview of Education in the United States

Learning objectives.

• Explain why compulsory education arose during the nineteenth century.
• Summarize social class, gender, and racial and ethnic differences in educational attainment.
• Describe the impact that education has on income.
• Explain how the US education system ranks internationally.

Education is the social institution through which a society teaches its members the skills, knowledge, norms, and values they need to learn to become good, productive members of their society. As this definition makes clear, education is an important part of socialization. Education is both formal and informal . Formal education is often referred to as schooling , and as this term implies, it occurs in schools under teachers, principals, and other specially trained professionals. Informal education may occur almost anywhere, but for young children it has traditionally occurred primarily in the home, with their parents as their instructors. Day care has become an increasingly popular venue in industrial societies for young children’s instruction, and education from the early years of life is thus more formal than it used to be.

Education in early America was only rarely formal. During the colonial period, the Puritans in what is now Massachusetts required parents to teach their children to read and also required larger towns to have an elementary school, where children learned reading, writing, and religion. In general, though, schooling was not required in the colonies, and only about 10 percent of colonial children, usually just the wealthiest, went to school, although others became apprentices (Urban & Wagoner, 2008).

To help unify the nation after the Revolutionary War, textbooks were written to standardize spelling and pronunciation and to instill patriotism and religious beliefs in students. At the same time, these textbooks included negative stereotypes of Native Americans and certain immigrant groups. The children going to school continued primarily to be those from wealthy families. By the mid-1800s, a call for free, compulsory education had begun, and compulsory education became widespread by the end of the century. This was an important development, as children from all social classes could now receive a free, formal education. Compulsory education was intended to further national unity and to teach immigrants “American” values. It also arose because of industrialization, as an industrial economy demanded reading, writing, and math skills much more than an agricultural economy had.

Free, compulsory education, of course, applied only to primary and secondary schools. Until the mid-1900s, very few people went to college, and those who did typically came from fairly wealthy families. After World War II, however, college enrollments soared, and today more people are attending college than ever before, even though college attendance is still related to social class, as we shall discuss shortly.

An important theme emerges from this brief history: Until very recently in the record of history, formal schooling was restricted to wealthy males. This means that boys who were not white and rich were excluded from formal schooling, as were virtually all girls, whose education was supposed to take place informally at home. Today, as we will see, race, ethnicity, social class, and, to some extent, gender continue to affect both educational achievement and the amount of learning occurring in schools.

In colonial America, only about 10 percent of children went to school, and these children tended to come from wealthy families. After the Revolutionary War, new textbooks helped standardize spelling and pronunciation and promote patriotism and religious beliefs, but these textbooks also included negative stereotypes of Native Americans.

Wikimedia Commons – public domian.

Education in the United States Today

Education in the United States is a massive social institution involving millions of people and billions of dollars. More than 75 million people, almost one-fourth of the US population, attend school at all levels. This number includes 40 million in grades pre-K through eighth grade, 16 million in high school, and 20 million in college (including graduate and professional school). They attend some 132,000 elementary and secondary schools and about 4,200 two-year and four-year colleges and universities and are taught by about 4.8 million teachers and professors (US Census Bureau, 2012).

Correlates of Educational Attainment

About 65 percent of US high school graduates enroll in college the following fall. This is a very high figure by international standards, as college in many other industrial nations is reserved for the very small percentage of the population who pass rigorous entrance exams. They are the best of the brightest in their nations, whereas higher education in the United States is open to all who graduate high school. Even though that is true, our chances of achieving a college degree are greatly determined at birth, as social class and race and ethnicity substantially affect who goes to college. They affect whether students drop out of high school, in which case they do not go on to college; they affect the chances of getting good grades in school and good scores on college entrance exams; they affect whether a family can afford to send its children to college; and they affect the chances of staying in college and obtaining a degree versus dropping out. For all these reasons, educational attainment —how far one gets in school—depends heavily on family income and race/ethnicity (Tavernise, 2012). Family income, in fact, makes a much larger difference in educational attainment than it did during the 1960s.

Family Income and Race/Ethnicity

Government data readily show the effects of family income and race/ethnicity on educational attainment. Let’s first look at how race and ethnicity affect the likelihood of dropping out of high school. Figure 11.1 “Race, Ethnicity, and High School Dropout Rate, Persons Ages 16–24, 2009 (Percentage Not Enrolled in School and without a High School Degree)” shows the percentage of people ages 16–24 who are not enrolled in school and who have not received a high school degree. The dropout rate is highest for Latinos and Native Americans and lowest for Asians and whites.

Figure 11.1 Race, Ethnicity, and High School Dropout Rate, Persons Ages 16–24, 2009 (Percentage Not Enrolled in School and without a High School Degree)

Source: Aud, S., Hussar, W., Kena, G., Bianco, K., Frohlich, L., Kemp, J., et al. (2011). The condition of education 2011 . Washington, DC: National Center for Education Statistics.

Now let’s look at how family income affects the likelihood of attending college, a second benchmark of educational attainment. Figure 11.2 “Family Income and Percentage of High School Graduates Who Attend College Immediately after Graduation, 2009” shows the relationship between family income and the percentage of high school graduates who enroll in college immediately following graduation: Students from families in the highest income bracket are more likely than those in the lowest bracket to attend college. This “income gap” in college entry has become larger in recent decades (Bailey & Dynarski, 2011).

Figure 11.2 Family Income and Percentage of High School Graduates Who Attend College Immediately after Graduation, 2009

Finally, let’s examine how race and ethnicity affect the likelihood of obtaining a college degree, a third benchmark of educational attainment. Figure 11.3 “Race, Ethnicity, and Percentage of Persons Ages 25 or Older with a Four-Year College Degree, 2010” shows the relationship between race/ethnicity and the percentage of persons 25 or older who have a bachelor’s or master’s degree. This relationship is quite strong, with African Americans and Latinos least likely to have a degree, and whites and especially Asians/Pacific Islanders most likely to have a degree.

Figure 11.3 Race, Ethnicity, and Percentage of Persons Ages 25 or Older with a Four-Year College Degree, 2010

Explaining the Racial/Ethnic Gap in Educational Attainment

Why do African Americans and Latinos have lower educational attainment? Four factors are commonly cited: (a) the underfunded and otherwise inadequate schools that children in both groups often attend; (b) the higher poverty of their families and lower education of their parents that often leave children ill prepared for school even before they enter kindergarten; (c) racial discrimination; and (d) the fact that African American and Latino families are especially likely to live in very poor neighborhoods (Ballantine & Hammack, 2012; Yeung & Pfeiffer, 2009).

The last two factors, racial discrimination and residence in high-poverty neighborhoods, need additional explanation. At least three forms of racial discrimination impair educational attainment (Mickelson, 2003). The first form involves tracking. As we discuss later, students tracked into vocational or general curricula tend to learn less and have lower educational attainment than those tracked into a faster-learning, academic curriculum. Because students of color are more likely to be tracked “down” rather than “up,” their school performance and educational attainment suffer.

The second form of racial discrimination involves school discipline. As we also discuss later, students of color are more likely than white students to be suspended, expelled, or otherwise disciplined for similar types of misbehavior. Because such discipline again reduces school performance and educational attainment, this form of discrimination helps explain the lower attainment of African American and Latino students.

The third form involves teachers’ expectations of students. As our later discussion of the symbolic interactionist perspective on education examines further, teachers’ expectations of students affect how much students learn. Research finds that teachers have lower expectations for their African American and Latino students, and that these expectations help to lower how much these students learn.

Turning to residence in high-poverty neighborhoods, it may be apparent that poor neighborhoods have lower educational attainment because they have inadequate schools, but poor neighborhoods matter for reasons beyond their schools’ quality (Kirk & Sampson, 2011; Wodtke, Harding, & Elwert, 2011). First, because many adults in these neighborhoods are high school dropouts and/or unemployed, children in these neighborhoods lack adult role models for educational attainment. Second, poor neighborhoods tend to be racially and ethnically segregated. Latino children in these neighborhoods are less likely to speak English well because they lack native English-speaking friends, and African American children are more likely to speak “black English” than conventional English; both language problems impede school success.

Third, poor neighborhoods have higher rates of violence and other deviant behaviors than wealthier neighborhoods. Children in these neighborhoods thus are more likely to experience high levels of stress, to engage in these behaviors themselves (which reduces their attention and commitment to their schooling), and to be victims of violence (which increases their stress and can impair their neurological development). Crime in these neighborhoods also tends to reduce teacher commitment and parental involvement in their children’s schooling. Finally, poor neighborhoods are more likely to have environmental problems such as air pollution and toxic levels of lead paint; these problems lead to asthma and other health problems among children (as well as adults), which impairs the children’s ability to learn and do well in school.

For all these reasons, then, children in poor neighborhoods are at much greater risk for lower educational attainment. As a recent study of this risk concluded, “Sustained exposure to disadvantaged neighborhoods…throughout the entire childhood life course has a devastating impact on the chances of graduating from high school” (Wodtke et al., 2011, p. 731). If these neighborhoods are not improved, the study continued, “concentrated neighborhood poverty will likely continue to hamper the development of future generations of children” (Wodtke et al., 2011, p. 733).

Gender also affects educational attainment. If we do not take age into account, slightly more men than women have a college degree: 30.3 percent of men and 29.6 percent of women. This difference reflects the fact that women were less likely than men in earlier generations to go to college. But today there is a gender difference in the other direction: Women now earn more than 57 percent of all bachelor’s degrees, up from just 35 percent in 1960 (see Figure 11.4 “Percentage of All Bachelor’s Degrees Received by Women, 1960–2009” ). This difference reflects the fact that females are more likely than males to graduate high school, to attend college after high school graduation, and to obtain a degree after starting college (Bailey & Dynarski, 2011).

Figure 11.4 Percentage of All Bachelor’s Degrees Received by Women, 1960–2009

Source: Data from US Census Bureau. (2012). Statistical abstract of the United States: 2012 . Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office. Retrieved from http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab .

Impact of Education on Income

On the average, college graduates have much higher annual earnings than high school graduates. How much does this consequence affect why you decided to go to college?

Merrimack College – Commencement 2012 – CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

Have you ever applied for a job that required a high school degree? Are you going to college in part because you realize you will need a college degree for a higher-paying job? As these questions imply, the United States is a credential society (Collins, 1979). This means at least two things. First, a high school or college degree (or beyond) indicates that a person has acquired the needed knowledge and skills for various jobs. Second, a degree at some level is a requirement for most jobs. As you know full well, a college degree today is a virtual requirement for a decent-paying job. The ante has been upped considerably over the years: In earlier generations, a high school degree, if even that, was all that was needed, if only because so few people graduated from high school to begin with. With so many people graduating from high school today, a high school degree is not worth as much. Then too, today’s society increasingly requires skills and knowledge that only a college education brings.

A credential society also means that people with more formal education achieve higher incomes. Annual earnings are indeed much higher for people with more education (see Figure 11.5 “Educational Attainment and Median Annual Earnings, Ages 25–34, 2009” ). As earlier chapters indicated, gender and race/ethnicity affect the payoff we get from our education, but education itself still makes a huge difference for our incomes.

Figure 11.5 Educational Attainment and Median Annual Earnings, Ages 25–34, 2009

Impact of Education on Mortality

Beyond income, education also affects at what age people tend to die. Simply put, people with higher levels of education tend to die later in life, and those with lower levels tend to die earlier (Miech, Pampel, Kim, & Rogers, 2011). The reasons for this disparity are complex, but two reasons stand out. First, more highly educated people are less likely to smoke and engage in other unhealthy activities, and they are more likely to exercise and to engage in other healthy activities and also to eat healthy diets. Second, they have better access to high-quality health care.

How the US Education System Compares Internationally

The United States has many of the top colleges and universities and secondary schools in the world, and many of the top professors and teachers. In these respects, the US education system is “the best of systems.” But in other respects, it is “the worst of systems.” When we compare educational attainment in the United States to that in the world’s other democracies, the United States lags behind its international peers.

Differences in the educational systems of the world’s democracies make exact comparisons difficult, but one basic measure of educational attainment is the percentage of a nation’s population that has graduated high school. A widely cited comparison involves the industrial nations that are members of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Of the twenty-eight nations for which OECD has high school graduation data, the United States ranks only twenty-first, with a graduation rate of 76 percent (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, 2011). In contrast, several nations, including Finland, Ireland, Norway, Portugal, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom have graduation rates of at least 90 percent. If we limit the comparison to the OECD nations that compose the world’s wealthy democracies (see Chapter 2 “Poverty” ) to which the United States is most appropriately compared, the United States ranks only thirteenth out of sixteen such nations.

OECD also collects and publishes data on proficiency in mathematics, reading, and science among 15-year-olds in its member nations (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, 2010). In reading and science, the United States ranks only at the average for all OECD nations, while the US score for mathematics ranks below the OECD average. Compared to their counterparts in other industrial nations, then, American 15-year-olds are only average or below average for these three important areas of study. Taking into account high school graduation rates and these proficiency rankings, the United States is far from the world leader in the quality of education. The Note 11.8 “Lessons from Other Societies” box examines what the United States might learn from the sterling example of Finland’s education system.

Lessons from Other Societies

Successful Schooling in Finland

Finland is widely regarded as having perhaps the top elementary and secondary education system in the world. Its model of education offers several important lessons for US education. As a recent analysis of Finland’s schools put it, “The country’s achievements in education have other nations doing their homework.”

To understand the lessons to be learned from Finland, we should go back several decades to the 1970s, when Finland’s education system was below par, with its students scoring below the international average in mathematics and science. Moreover, urban schools in Finland outranked rural schools, and wealthy students performed much better than low-income students. Today, Finnish students rank at the top in international testing, and low-income students do almost as well as wealthy students.

Finland’s education system ranks so highly today because it took several measures to improve its education system. First, and perhaps most important, Finland raised teachers’ salaries, required all teachers to have a three-year master’s degree, and paid all costs, including a living stipend, for the graduate education needed to achieve this degree. These changes helped to greatly increase the number of teachers, especially the number of highly qualified teachers, and Finland now has more teachers for every 1,000 residents than does the United States. Unlike the United States, teaching is considered a highly prestigious profession in Finland, and the application process to become a teacher is very competitive. The college graduates who apply for one of Finland’s eight graduate programs in teaching typically rank in the top 10 percent of their class, and only 5–15 percent of their applications are accepted. A leading Finnish educator observed, “It’s more difficult getting into teacher education than law or medicine.” In contrast, US students who become teachers tend to have lower SAT scores than those who enter other professions, they only need a four-year degree, and their average salaries are lower than other professionals with a similar level of education.

Second, Finland revamped its curriculum to emphasize critical thinking skills, reduced the importance of scores on standardized tests and then eliminated standardized testing altogether, and eliminated academic tracking before tenth grade. Unlike the United States, Finland no longer ranks students, teachers, or schools according to scores on standardized tests because these tests are no longer given.

Third, Finland built many more schools to enable the average school to have fewer students. Today the typical school has fewer than three hundred students, and class sizes are smaller than those found in the United States.

Fourth, Finland increased funding of its schools so that its schools are now well maintained and well equipped. Whereas many US schools are decrepit, Finnish schools are decidedly in good repair.

Finally, Finland provided free medical and dental care for children and their families and expanded other types of social services, including three years of paid maternity leave and subsidized day care, as the country realized that children’s health and home environment play critical roles in their educational achievement.

These and other changes helped propel Finland’s education system to a leading position among the world’s industrial nations. As the United States ponders how best to improve its own education system, it may have much to learn from Finland’s approach to how children should learn.

Sources: Abrams, 2011; Anderson, 2011; Eggers & Calegari, 2011; Hancock, 2011; Ravitch, 2012; Sahlberg, 2011

Key Takeaways

• Until very recently in the record of history, formal schooling was restricted to wealthy males.
• Students from low-income backgrounds tend to have lower educational attainment than students from wealthier backgrounds.
• African Americans and Latinos tend to have lower educational attainment than non-Latino whites and Asians.
• Gender influences educational attainment in a complex fashion; older women have lower educational attainment than older men, but younger women have greater educational attainment than younger men.
• The United States ranks behind many other industrial nations in the quality of the education its citizens receive.

For Your Review

• Do you think the government should take steps to try to reduce racial and ethnic differences in education, or do you think it should take a hands-off approach? Explain your answer.
• Should the government require that children receive a formal education, as it now does, or should it be up to parents to decide whether their children should receive a formal education? Explain your answer.

Abrams, S. E. (2011, January 28). The children must play: What the United States could learn from Finland about education reform. The New Republic. Retrieved from http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/82329/education-reform-Finland-US .

Anderson, J. (2011, December 13). From Finland, an intriguing school-reform model. New York Times , p. A33.

Bailey, M. J., & Dynarski, S. (2011). Gains and gaps: Changing inequality in US college entry and completion . Ann Arbor, MI: Population Studies Center.

Ballantine, J. H., & Hammack, F. M. (2012). The sociology of education: A systematic analysis (7th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Collins, R. (1979). The credential society: An historical sociology of education and stratification . New York, NY: Academic Press.

Eggers, D., & Calegari, N. C. (2011, May 1). The high cost of low teacher salaries. New York Times , p. WK12.

Hancock, L. (2011, September). Why are Finland’s schools successful? Smithsonian . Retrieved from http://www.smithsonianmag.com/people-places/Why-Are-Finlands-Schools-Successful.html?c=y&story=fullstory .

Kirk, D. S., & Sampson, R. J. (2011). Crime and the production of safe schools. In G. J. Duncan & R. J. Murnane (Eds.), Whither opportunity?: Rising inequality, schools, and children’s life chances (pp. 397–418). New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation.

Mickelson, R. A. (2003). When are racial disparities in education the result of racial discrimination? A social science perspective. Teachers College Record, 105, pp. 1052–1086.

Miech, R., Pampel, F., Kim, J., & Rogers, R. G. (2011). Education and mortality: The role of widening and narrowing disparities. American Sociological Review, 76 , 913–934.

Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. (2011). How many students finish secondary education? Retrieved November 10, 2011, from http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/62/3/48630687.pdf .

Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. (2010). PISA 2009 results: What students know and can do—Student performance in reading, mathematics and science (Vol. 1). Paris, France: Author.

Ravitch, D. (2012, March 8). Schools we can envy. The New York Review of Books . Retrieved from http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2012/mar/08/schools-we-can-envy/ .

Sahlberg, P. (2011). Finnish lessons: What can the world learn from educational change in Finland? New York, NY: Teachers College Press.

Tavernise, S. (2012, February 10). Education gap grows between rich and poor, studies say. New York Times , p. A1.

Urban, W. J., & Wagoner, J. L., Jr. (2008). American education: A history (4th ed.). New York, NY: Routledge.

US Census Bureau. (2012). Statistical abstract of the United States: 2012 . Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office. Retrieved from http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab .

Wodtke, G. T., Harding, D. J., & Elwert, F. (2011). Neighborhood effects in temporal perspective: The impact of long-term exposure to concentrated disadvantage on high school graduation. American Sociological Review, 76 (5), 713–736.

Yeung, W.-J. J., & Pfeiffer, K. M. (2009). The black-white test score gap and early home environment. Social Science Research, 38 (2), 412–437.

Social Problems Copyright © 2015 by University of Minnesota is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

The Global Trajectories of Compulsory Education: Clustering Sequences of Policy Development

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• First Online: 01 October 2021

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• Fabian Besche-Truthe 5  

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In Chap. 3 , Fabian Besche-Truthe looks at the global trajectories of compulsory education. A plethora of studies exist that examine fundamental policy changes at a national level from a global perspective. In comparison, the global policy trend of expanding the duration of compulsory education has been less explored. Besche-Truthe draws on the concepts of trajectories and ‘pathways’ in order to reveal the various development paths that account for the expansion of compulsory education. A sequence analysis (SQA) lends itself as a method of inquiry because it enables the researcher to regard the whole trajectory of policy development as a single unit of analysis. The chapter yields the first exploration into different trajectories and how these trajectories can be subsumed and clustered into specific development paths.

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Introduction.

This chapter is a product of the research conducted in the Collaborative Research Center “Global Dynamics of Social Policy” at the University of Bremen. The center is funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation)—project number 374666841—SFB 1342.

Compulsory education became an imperative trait of sound state education systems at the very latest with the Universal Declaration on Human Rights (UN General Assembly 1948 , Article 26, 1). Ever since the Education for All Dakar Framework for Action, in which the members of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) committed to ensuring access to “free and compulsory primary education” ( 2000 , 8), a nation-state without compulsory education has hardly been imaginable. In fact, only a handful of United Nations (UN) members do not have a compulsory education law in place; with Solomon Islands, Oman, and Bhutan being counted among them. Seeing as the world is pledged to Education for All, universal primary education (mentioned in the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)), and universal secondary education (mentioned in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)), one can assume that making education mandatory would constitute a viable first step toward achieving these goals. In accordance with the SDGs, extending the duration of compulsory education would be the second step. The extension can be targeted by either raising the school-leaving age or lowering the school-entry age, thus making preprimary education compulsory.

While the social sciences agree on the value of a sound education system, the focus of international comparative research has been on the determinants of the spread or retention of specific educational structures across the globe (Busemeyer and Trampusch 2011 provide a good overview). Causes relating to education system transformation have also been extensively analyzed. In this chapter, I take a step back and look at the larger picture, the constitutive factor of a state education system: compulsory education laws. In contrast to past studies, I aim to explore the development of compulsory education and its duration over time. How did policies concerning compulsory education develop globally? Are any trends discernible? Are there clusters of countries that develop similarly regarding compulsory education legislation?

Starting with the premise that there are different ideas about the necessary duration of education, compulsory education policy constitutes an observable manifestation of the importance of state-led education. Moreover, recognizing that these views are changing with time, ideas manifest themselves within policy changes. Therefore, research should spotlight the very changes over time. The policy developments grant insight into how compulsory education evolved in past decades. Finding common developments in nation-states might support further research on other policy developments and highlight commonalities previously unseen. As described below, past and current scholarship, regardless of theoretical and methodological background, focus on either the origins or outcomes of policies. Using snapshots or predefined outcome variables, these studies disregard developments that unfold over long stretches of history.

Drawing on recent developments in Sequence Analysis (SQA), this study seeks to depict and analyze the trajectories of compulsory education policies in 167 countries from 1970 to 2020. SQA lends itself as a method of inquiry because it enables the researcher to regard the whole trajectory of policy development as a single unit of analysis. Thus, it allows us to draw upon and explore the temporal context of policy development. Here, context becomes a point of entry for thinking about how processes of change relate to one another in an environment that unfurls over extended periods of time (Pierson 2004 , 172). This opens avenues previously untrodden and allows one to ask new questions, that is, how did policy develop, and how is that different from the same policy in a different location at distinct times? How can we study dynamics macro-quantitatively without losing the focus on the temporal and spatial context? How can this be accomplished with as little predetermination as possible? I utilize recent methodological developments for an inquiry that is, both, broad across time and space as well as narrow in analyzing the development paths. My chapter yields the first exploration into different trajectories of the duration of compulsory education and how these trajectories can be subsumed and clustered into specific development paths.

The chapter continues with a short overview of the current state of compulsory education legislation and summarizes potential explanatory theories that are widely used in education policy research. After presenting recent empirical evidence on the global expansion of compulsory education, I make the case for a descriptive rediscovery of changing compulsory education policies. A brief introduction into the method of SQA is followed by a detailed description of different trajectories of compulsory education policies. Furthermore, a clustering of similar trajectories based solely on the data and calculated with an Optimal Matching algorithm is presented. In the end, I provide an initial explanation regarding these different trajectories and conclude with an outlook regarding the focus of future research.

The State of Compulsory Education Policy

Even before the two World Wars, education was seen in the Western world as a salvation for a myriad of social, political, and economic problems. In Prussia, compulsory education was introduced because of the need for a polis that fit with the hierarchical structure of society as well as a military that was able to sufficiently follow orders. In line with the Pietist puritan tradition, the young United States of America introduced compulsory schooling state by state, starting in New England (Rickenbacker 1999 ). In the Ottoman Empire, compulsory education was introduced in 1869 and was intended to build a coherent Ottoman culture and populace (Cicek 2012 ).

On the other hand, former colonies quickly introduced compulsory schooling after the surge of independence—some even before formal independence. In Ghana, for example, the legislative Assembly of 1951 “declared basic education to be free and compulsory for school-aged children” (Marlow-Ferguson 2002 , 506), even though Ghana only became officially independent in 1957. In this ‘new era’, education was seen as embodying the ideals of a caring and prosperous state. Education became a human right and compulsory education an obligation for the nation-state. This is evident in the Bolivian entry into compulsory education; for example, the Movimiento Nacionalista Revolucionario introduced compulsory education as an attempt to reach new generations in their endeavor to build a truly democratic republic (Marlow-Ferguson 2002 , 72).

Compulsory education is a very divisive political issue. Changes are difficult to adopt on the policy level and even harder to implement on the ground. Political struggles revolve around ethical questions (Hodgson 2016 ; Tan 2010 ) as well as budgetary issues. Extending mandatory schooling drains governments’ monetary resources. That is why, in India, an extension of the right to free and compulsory education from the ages of six to fourteen to the ages of three to eighteen has been dropped from a recent education policy change, specifically because of the “financial burden” the state would have to bear (Dutta 2019 ). A state that has weak institutional capacities might also have a hard time monitoring whether the duration of compulsory schooling is being fulfilled, especially in rural areas.

Explanatory Attempts for Compulsory Education Policymaking

Having just explored historic and current developments of compulsory education policies, it is now time to focus on theories that try to explain the convergence of education policies. In line with this edited volume, the theories presented here build the canon of explanations on the development of ‘modern’ education systems. They either emphasize ideational influences, as evident in neo-institutionalist accounts (e.g. Ramirez 2013 ) and global economic influences, as shown in the World System approach (e.g. Griffiths and Imre 2013), or a mixture of both while highlighting specific national factors, as carried out in Cultural Political Economy (e.g. Dale 2000 ).

Proponents of the isomorphism thesis (Chap. 1 ) can be subsumed under the general headline of neo-institutionalists. When considering the global convergence of state structures, they highlight the normative influence of a World Culture pressuring policymakers to implement seemingly rational institutions. Neo-institutionalist theory argues that education policies spread around the globe through globally theorized models of ‘what is a problem that needs to be solved’ and by defining the worth of the ‘good’ salvation for that problem (Strang and Meyer 1993 ). The spread of idealistic norms has culminated in an impressive isomorphism of state structures and policies not predicted by other theories. Yet, “world cultural models are highly idealized and internally inconsistent, making them in principle impossible to actualize” (Meyer et al. 1997 , 154). Thus, the theory acknowledges the phenomenon of decoupling , leaving some room for diverging policy developments.

However, neo-institutionalist explanations lack an engagement that goes beyond the sole valuing of some abstract model of education. In a volume edited by Anderson-Levitt ( 2003b ) many anthropological case studies find a common model of schooling, for example, the so-called egg-carton school (Anderson-Levitt 2003a , 6) but they also show that these models are actually lived, experienced, and built in very different ways according to the (sub-)national contexts. Although World Culture theory claims to describe diffusion processes of abstract outcome variables quite well, it ignores probable conflating mechanisms and time inconsistencies in policy adoption (Dale 2000 ). Time, as a variable, gets degraded to specific structural frameworks, whereas norm development becomes universally influential, impacting policies with increasing rapidity. Variation in national institutional evolution, including the speed, order, and sequencing of it, is seen to starkly diminish since World War II (Boli et al. 1985 ).

Another approach analyzing the convergence of state structures can be subsumed under the headline of realist approaches, which culminated in the World System approach. It assumes political units are tied together in a world system grounded in capitalism (Wallerstein 2005 , 24). This system is divided into the core, semi-periphery, and periphery. Membership of countries in one of these spheres dictates the possibilities of policymaking because of the divergence of valuable production processes along with the capital capabilities emerging from that. From this view, economic inequalities determine specific modalities of “[s]chooling, rather than serving the interests of the majority in the periphery, abets the process of capital accumulation by hegemonic actors” (Arnove 2009 , 105). Global isomorphism might be inhibited through the different positions in this system. However, widening the agenda to also consider dependencies and hegemonic coercion, the World System approach leaves little room for intragroup differences on paths toward similar outcomes. Moreover, the theory is depicting a widespread institutional stasis in which most countries are locked in their position. This translates to a static policy arena in which, if ever, changes are rare and should overlap depending on the distance to the core.

Contrary to the purely constructivist and Marxist-oriented approaches, Cultural Political Economy (CPE) attributes changes in policy to a multitude of factors, including changing political and economic parameters (Dale 2000 ). Using a CPE framework, Toni Verger et al. ( 2016 ) focus specifically on developmental paths. The authors find that although global discourse on education privatization is surging and has to some extent, elevated into a global norm, processes constituting the privatization and policy outcomes “can be extremely diverse in nature” (Verger et al. 2016 , 148). The authors detect six different paths toward privatization. Thus, on the surface, seemingly congruent policy developments are comprised of polylithic trajectories that are influenced by different agents as well as different ideational, economic, and political rationales. The goal of the book by Verger et al. is an in-depth analysis of the different clusters of trajectories that led to education privatization. I build on that framework to quantitatively explore the routes compulsory education policy took in different locations around the world over 50 years.

All the approaches mentioned explain some similarities and dissimilarities of state education systems. Nonetheless, research has been mainly limited to a focus on either the origins, the output, or the outcome of education policy. Attempts at answering why nation-states initially required children to receive an education largely ignored differences in timing, sequencing, and the determining factors inherent to this contextual view. Research focuses on ‘why’ policies were implemented in the first place (e.g. Meyer et al. 1997 ; Wallerstein 2005 ). In this regard, event history approaches, although taking duration until an event seriously, have the caveat of a teleological focus, that is, the introduction of one (abstract) policy. While Seitzer, Besche-Truthe, and Windzio (Chap. 2 ) investigate the influence of cultural similarity regarding the introduction of compulsory education, the analysis stops at one point in time. Those attempts focus on a decisive answer on ‘when’ policy adoptions happen. Still, the method, by design, leaves blind spots, especially the possible steps taken until a predefined end-state is reached and focuses on one transition. Hence, it cannot answer the question of what happens after an initial adoption, and, since the method is focused on rather abstract policy determinants, it cannot answer exactly ‘what’ was adopted.

In outcome-centered research, duration of compulsory education is used as an independent variable in assessing the influence of longer schooling on enrollment and attendance (e.g. Landes and Solmon 1972 ), dropout rates (Diaz-Serrano 2020 ), poverty reduction (Zhang and Minxia 2006 ), fertility (Wilson 2017 ), health (Courtin et al. 2019 ), and so on (see also Stephens and Yang 2014 for a myriad of effects).

Precise investigations of the institutional change of compulsory education are a rare endeavor. When conducted, qualitative case studies account for the majority. These illustrate the highly conflictual nature of compulsory education laws. For instance, in the year 2000, after almost thirty years of denying the necessity of any law, the Singaporean government quite suddenly argued for ten years of compulsory education (Tan 2010 ). However, due to pressure from home-schooling parents and the Malay/Muslim community, attending mostly madrasah schools, compulsory education was finally introduced in 2000 with a duration of six years. Accordingly, Hodgson ( 2016 ) illustrates the remarkably ethical discourse regarding a proposed increase in duration within Western Australia. The policy discourse on extending the school-leaving age was highly idealistic and hinged on neoliberalist themes (Hodgson 2016 , 502–503). Similar discourses, highlighting the need for longer education, especially for young people at risk, can be observed in a number of Western countries starting from the 2000s (Hodgson 2016 , 495ff).

Contrary to the case studies, Murtin and Viarengo ( 2011 ) analyze factors influencing the expansion of compulsory education from 1950 to 2000 in fifteen European states. They detect strong evidence for beta-convergence : Countries with lower initial values extended the duration more than those with higher initial values. The most statistically compelling reason for the general trend of extending compulsory education is trade openness (Murtin and Viarengo 2011 , 505). This does hold true for the investigated Western European cases, but leaves open whether the same mechanism can be detected in post- or nonindustrialized countries.

While Murtin and Viarengo ( 2011 ) focus on the role of economic influence when it comes to the expansion of compulsory education in postwar Europe, Chapter 2 introduces the connection of event history analysis with a relational approach. Nonetheless, empirical attempts like the ones just mentioned use models that compare country-years and not country-trajectories, leaving the specific developments per country unattended. They might give answers to ‘what’ policies were adopted as well as ‘why’ and ‘when’ those were adopted, but they are unable to discern ‘in which order’ changes happened. Only a focus on the developmental paths enables one to combine the juxtaposition of the origin, output, outcome, and the very steps that lead or decisively did not lead to the state currently observed. This helps to recognize that any process is environed by its temporal location, its place within a sequence of occurrences (Pierson 2004 , 172).

With this chapter, I aim to analyze compulsory education policy outlined in a way that takes sequences of change serious and, thus, investigates choices of policymakers around the globe structured through the progress of time. In this approach, policy outlines are not seen deterministically but due to structural factors like timing, order, and sequencing, display much more contingency than assumed by classic social science (Howlett and Goetz 2014 , 480). In the words of Pierson ( 2004 , 172), I want to know not just ‘what’ the duration of compulsory education was and ‘when’ change occurred but ‘in which order’ changes were made. As an additional feat, I am able to see ‘for how long’ the state of one policy was static and not changing at all.

Methodological Remarks

“For many years, our usual approach in sociology has been to think about cases independent of one another and, often, of the past” (Abbott 1995 , 94). According to Abbott, empirical research erases the stories behind social reality by focusing on causality based on some variables’ manifestations. Contingent narratives become impossible (Abbott 1992 , 429). However, this does not apply to all research. There have been remarkable attempts at describing the emergence of compulsory education laws and the expansion of education opportunities, which take the past and specifically social action into account. This action is either intentional—motivated first and foremost by economic situations and interdependencies as in a capitalist World System—or unintentional—motivated by institutionalized ideals in a World Culture. However, these theories have been starkly criticized by empirically oriented researchers for lacking causal variable-oriented applications. These critiques are correct in their assessment but wrong in their solutions. What is missing in current research, especially in political science, is a thorough description of policies, their histories, and evolutions. Although not a new methodology, it is worth mentioning the unique techniques of Japanese comparative education. In their view, the primary focus should be on the description of unique features within a given area of study “rather than the discovery of ‘universal’ laws and theories” (Takayama 2015 , 39).

By placing compulsory education policy as the focal point, I aim to analyze the policy’s trajectories globally. In SQA, the unit of analysis is the sequence itself. This goes further than a time-series, cross-section model because I do not rip apart yearly observations of compulsory education durations nor try to correlate yearly measured variables on these dependent values. Event History Analysis takes time seriously, especially process time until an event. Unfortunately, it is focused only on a transition from one category to another. It thereby leaves more complex steps unattended. Instead, I take the whole trajectory of compulsory education duration as one case. The aim is to first separately describe the trajectories of the duration of compulsory education for a large number of countries and then to search for patterns of similar trajectories. Through the recontextualization, that is, regarding institutional change not as single incidents but the focus on the very development of one policy, I am able to answer questions, previous research was unable to ask: In which order did the extension of compulsory education occur? When were critical junctures that changed the outlook of compulsory education? How is a policy developing not in one country but in relation to other countries as well as to time? Hence, I argue that it is important ‘when’ institutionalization of a specific duration of compulsory education occurs. It is furthermore important to investigate how these embedded aspects interact with the broader social context of other nation-states’ policy developments (see Pierson 2004 , 77f). Analyzing sequences allows me to identify linkages between processes in distinct spaces and at distinct points in time.

My dataset contains the number of years of compulsory education as defined in the legal framework. In building the dataset, I started with data from the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS), where more historic data have been added from a variety of sources. Footnote 1 In total, the dataset covers 167 countries over a time span of fifty years from 1970 until 2020. In-depth analyses of certain cases illustrate difficulties regarding sources and the correct definition of compulsory education. For instance, while the UIS website describes the compulsory education in Guatemala as encompassing all children aged 0–15, which would result in sixteen years of compulsory education, the International Bureau of Education ( 2011 ) states that compulsory education consists of 3 years preprimary, 6 years primary, and 3 years secondary education; culminating in twelve years. The latter value has finally been coded. In case of uncertainties for countries with state responsibility over education, for example, Canada, the coding has been oriented on the law established for the most populated state or the capital. In any case, it tries to mirror what UNESCO reports on the federal nation-state. The data are available in the Welfare State Information System ( https://wesis.org ).

As previously noted, I am not interested in the specific time point of the policy’s first introduction, but rather in the trajectory. Thus, in the following analysis, I start my inquiry after a surge of former colonies gained independence for more consistency. The data were recoded into sequences using the R package TraMineR (Gabadinho et al. 2011 ): “[S]equences are made of three basic dimensions: the nature of the successive states, chosen among the alphabet; the order in which they occur; [and] their duration , that is, the duration of constant subsequences” (Blanchard 2011 , 4 emphasis in original). In my case, the nature of the state is the number of years of compulsory education. The sequences are ordered according to successive years in calendar time. Changes in the duration of compulsory education have been coded according to the de jure implementation of the policy.

Sequences of the Duration of Compulsory Education

Figure 3.1 shows all sequences ordered by their starting value in the year 1970. The horizontal lines, each represents one nation-state and the colors show the valid duration of compulsory education in that specific year. One can see that a few sequences show no change in their duration. These countries have a stagnant trajectory. On the other hand, some seem very active in policy changes. One can discern a general trend toward more years of compulsory education. However, timing and actual extension, that is, by how many years, is difficult to systematize with this first large-scale observation.

All sequences of the duration of compulsoryeducation policy

To provide a better overview and a first glance at different trajectories, Figs. 3.2 and 3.3 show the sequences grouped by income group and cultural spheres , which have been used in Chap. 2 . Following economic arguments, I would suspect stark differences between income groups and coherent trajectories within a group. If a World Culture is influential, I would suspect no discernible differences in the economic as well as in the cultural spheres.

Sequences grouped by income classification according to the WDI by the World Bank

Sequences grouped by cultural spheres

Through an economic grouping of the trajectories, one can see that although some countries never changed the duration of their compulsory schooling, a dynamic is detectable. General differences become a bit more discernible when looking at different income groups. However, there is remarkable variance in the four different groups as defined in the World Development Indicators (WDI). The durations range from five to fifteen years in lower middle-income countries and from six to fourteen years in high-income countries. One can detect on average, high-income countries have longer durations of compulsory schooling with a mean of around 11 years. In contrast, low-income countries have around eight years of compulsory education on average. The largest differences are detectable in the middle-income groups, in which we see a similar pattern of average durations in upper middle-income countries, which have higher values than lower middle-income groups. Interestingly, there are countries surpassing high-income countries in duration with fourteen to fifteen years of compulsory education. These high values are possible when preprimary education becomes compulsory—policies high-income countries seem unwilling to introduce (GSP Digest 2019 ).

Regarding grouping by cultural spheres (Fig. 3.3 ), there are huge intracultural differences observable. In ‘dominantly Muslim’ countries, the durations range from five to twelve years from the 2000s onward. Given the theoretical framing of this edited volume (Chap. 1 ), one can detect a tendency toward likeness in culturally similar groups and concurrently, a resistance toward an increasing global isomorphism. This becomes evident from the stark differences regarding the duration in compulsory education between the ‘WEIRD’ and ‘Catholic, Spanish-speaking’ countries. In the latter, the general trend toward compulsory preprimary education is detectable through the very high durations of compulsory education, which in most cases means an earlier start to education rather than a later completion. Since UNESCO ( 2000 ) is largely propagating these models, vertical interdependencies seem to be an accelerator for that phenomenon. However, ‘WEIRD’ countries are largely holding back from implementing policies regarding preprimary education as mandatory.

Additionally, groupings by democratization level in the years 1970, 1992, 2000, or 2018 (not presented here) do not show similarities in trajectories. The grouped sequences are very diverse in their outset. Nevertheless, the duration of compulsory schooling per se might have a strong effect on democratization itself, making it an inverse relationship (as suggested by Paglayan 2020 ).

In sum, we can deduce partial evidence for countries in higher income groups having longer durations of compulsory education earlier. However, this does not manifest in a simplistic center, semi-periphery, and periphery manner. Aside from the intragroup differences, it is still interesting to see that the semi-periphery, operationalized through the upper middle-income group, exceeds a large portion of the high-income group at the end of the observation. Especially the surge of making preprimary education compulsory in South American countries contributes to the picture. Taking diffusion mechanisms seriously, I do not expect to observe perfect homogeneity in development paths. Indeed, the heterogeneity is detectable, especially in later years of the time frame. However, these differences go beyond what would be expected by a diffusion mechanism that assumes a one-sided direction from Western countries to others in the world. In other words, the norms of an ever-increasing grip on childhood—which decisively includes education for very young children—overtook the former hegemonic WEIRD countries. In the future, one might expect to see the pattern develop as non-WEIRD countries adopt compulsory preprimary education first and through the interplay of horizontal and vertical interdependencies, the policy spreads around the globe. This direction is the opposite of what is observed within compulsory education in general (see Chap. 2 ). Lastly, it shows the investigation timing is relevant because the picture will probably look very different in 2030 or later.

Clustering the Trajectories

For answering the question on how trajectories might be grouped together, it is now time to benefit from SQA as a metric analysis tool that searches for similar patterns across a multitude of sequences (Abbott 1995 , 105). SQA makes it possible to compute distances between sequences and classify specific trajectories. The Optimal Matching (OM) algorithm lends itself perfectly for assessing dissimilarity. In a nutshell, the algorithm calculates which values of a sequence, when compared to another one, need to be changed to make the two sequences look similar. Thus, “an OM distance is the sum of two terms, a weighted sum of time shifts (indels) and a weighted sum of the mismatches (substitutions) remaining after the time shifts” (Studer and Ritschard 2016 , 14). The algorithm goes through all the sequences and calculates the least ‘costly’ set of operations necessary to turn one sequence into another. Here, costs refer to values that have been assigned to operations, that is, the weights for every single operation, which get summarised in the end to define dissimilarity between sequences.

Since we are not only dealing with ordered values but also metric ones, I opted to define the weights for operations in a straightforward manner. A substitution of eight years of compulsory education with nine years costs 0.1, substituting eight years with twelve years costs 0.4. Thus, the costs are proportionate to the actual difference in duration of compulsory schooling. The only nonlinear substitution is present when a country has no compulsory education law at a given time, that is, they have a duration of zero years of compulsory education. Substituting this by any number of years has the overall maximum weight of 1.5, thus representing the stark differences between having some form of mandatory education and having none at all. Studer and Ritschard ( 2016 ) report that by defining the costs for indel operations, researchers can influence the time sensitivity of the algorithm. High values render the distance measure very time sensitive because substitutions become increasingly cheaper than shifting sequences. Accordingly, I set the indel costs as low as mathematically meaningful to 0.8 so that the analysis would be as independent of small differences in the timing of policy enactment as possible. In the end, it is not my goal to overestimate time differences. For example, Indonesia and Syria both changed the duration of compulsory education from six to nine years; however, the former did so in 2003 and the latter in 2002. This one-year difference between them should not be more highly valued than the closeness in their actual overlapping trajectory.

Let us consider the example sequences of Mexico and Panama’s durations of compulsory education from 1990 to 2010 in Fig. 3.4 . Both countries start with a duration of six years of compulsory education but follow different paths after five observations. While the lower sequence (Panama) shows only one change in the state of the policy, that is, from six to eleven years, the one at the top (Mexico) shows a gradual increase regarding the duration of mandatory education from six to nine, and then eleven years. In this example, the algorithm, despite the low indel costs, opts for only substituting the values to calculate dissimilarity. For the period of 1993–1994, this means a sum of 0.3 + 0.3 and for the period of 1995–2000, this means the sum of the difference of 0.2 for a duration of six years. The dissimilarity is thus: 0.3*2 + 0.2*6 = 1.8.

Example sequences (Mexico and Panama from 1990–2010)

The output of the OM calculation is a matrix that depicts the dissimilarity of countries’ compulsory education law trajectories in the years 1970–2020. Using this matrix, I calculate clusters with the PAM (partitioning around medoids) algorithm as described by Kaufman and Rousseeuw ( 1990 ). The goal of this clustering algorithm is to assign each object to the nearest representative object. The representative object is defined “as that object of the cluster for which the average dissimilarity to all the objects of the cluster is minimal.” (Kaufman and Rousseeuw 1990 , 72). Although an elbow and silhouette test suggests four and two clusters, respectively, I opted, after several runs of the algorithm, for an eight-cluster solution. In a four-cluster solution, almost two-thirds of sequences would be part of one cluster, making the intracluster differences too high to analyze. Nevertheless, the tests show that I operate on rather slim margins. Holding true to the explorative goal of this chapter, this solution gives insights previously unseen. However, some intercluster differences are difficult to account for. Moreover, changing the time frame certainly changes the clustering. It is imperative to, again, stress that this chapter is not intended to draw causal relations or all-encompassing judgments from the clustering presented here. Nonetheless, we can generally take hints and insights from this endeavor.

Hence, the chosen solution produces clusters that are coherent in their trajectories and still downsized in a way that makes it possible to analyze and describe them. In Fig. 3.5 , the trajectories of the eight distinct clusters are shown. Next, I describe the different groups of trajectories separately.

Sequences grouped by cluster

Resilient Latecomers (Cluster 1)

The first cluster consists mostly of countries that did not introduce any compulsory education up until 2020. Although four countries introduced the policy very late and with large variation in durations, these are still part of the cluster. Similarity to one another for a long time, that is, having no compulsory education policy, is the key factor in building this cluster. After several years, we could expect the countries to become increasingly different in their durations, therefore, more similar to countries in other clusters. A large intragroup variety is visible, especially regarding countries that introduced any compulsion late. For instance, while Aruba introduced compulsory education with a duration of 13 years, Zambia’s first legislation mandates almost half of that.

Stagnant Short (Cluster 2)

Countries in this cluster started with short durations of compulsory education in 1970. After its introduction, there is a general tendency for an increase in the duration of compulsory education for some countries. The extensions are moderate and not as large as in the fifth cluster. However, this development began later in the 2000s, if at all. In the Philippines, six-year primary education was compulsory until 2011. In the same year, with the enactment of the K-12 reforms, secondary education was extended from four to six years and divided into two levels: four years of Junior High School and two years of Senior High School. All six years of secondary education are compulsory and free of charge for public schools. Additionally, one-year preprimary education became mandatory, which culminates to a total duration of thirteen years. In Rwanda, on the other hand, compulsory education started in 1962 with six years of primary school. A 1979 reform tried to extend primary school, but this did not hold for long and as ethnic tensions grew, the grades were essentially eliminated again. After the genocide, Rwanda followed quite a unique path and extended compulsory education via the ‘9-Year-Basic-Education Policy’ in 2007 to extend mandatory education through senior secondary school which is still regarded as basic education (Mathisen 2012 , 108–9).

Extending Middle of the Pack (Cluster 3)

Consisting of forty-five countries, this is the largest cluster by far and it naturally shows the largest intragroup differences when regarding it as cross sections for specific years. Concerning the trajectories, however, we see that it mostly starts with middle-range durations. While very few countries decrease the duration for a short period of time, most increase it starting as early as the 1970s. The trajectories show a rather similar path: extensions of duration occur in two waves, at the end of the 1970s and around the 2010s. Especially during the latter wave, it seems that the duration of compulsory education converges toward rather long ones. For instance, the Dominican Republic shows the highest duration of compulsory education, that is, fifteen years in 2010. This was achieved by extending compulsion to three years of preprimary education. It now includes children from ages three to seventeen at the end of secondary education. The trajectory is similar to Ecuador’s, in that both extend the durations gradually over time. This pattern of extending compulsory education toward younger children is also detectable in Brazil, Chile, and Costa Rica. Nonetheless, not all countries in cluster 3 end up with these high durations: While Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia extended compulsory education by one year in the 2000s, Croatia stayed with eight years throughout the time frame.

From Zero to Long (Cluster 4)

This particular cluster consists of countries with no compulsory education until roughly 1990 but then introduced long durations of ten to eleven years. While both Belize and Sudan introduced compulsory education in 1990 with a duration of eight years, Malawi started with five years of duration, which was then extended to eight years. The longest duration is mandated for children in Kenya. It was the last country in this cluster to introduce compulsion in 2008 but then became a frontrunner by extending the duration from eight to twelve years of education.

From Short to Long (Cluster 5)

Contrary to the previous cluster, these countries implemented compulsory education by 1970. Starting in the mid to late 1980s, the previously short durations were extended, in some cases by a large margin reaching durations of up to fifteen years. The timing for these extensions is earlier than most countries within cluster 3. Paraguay and Argentina have similar paths; they both started with six years of compulsory education and extended the duration to nine, ten and eventually thirteen years, with Argentina extending to fourteen years. The largest difference in timing of these policies is only three years and while Paraguay was a bit earlier in the 1990s, Argentina is now quicker to extend. Another example of these steady extensions includes Turkey: When the Republic was founded in 1923, five years of primary education for six to eleven-year-olds became compulsory. From 1997 onward, compulsory education encompassed eight years of primary school, after which pupils could receive a secondary non-mandatory education at a four-year lyceum. “Another reform abolished the continuous primary school education and replaced it in 2012/2013 with a three-level, 12-year compulsory schooling divided into a 4-year primary school, a 4-year middle school, and a 4-year lyceum” (Karakaşoğlu and Tonbul 2015 , 828).

Finally, a somewhat unconventional path becomes evident when looking at Thailand, where compulsory education was initially expanded in 1960 from four to seven years by extending the primary education by three years. However, after democratization in 1977, the system was rebuilt and the length of primary school was decreased by one year, which was added to upper secondary school, in effect decreasing compulsory education. Nevertheless, with the National Education Plan of 1999, lower secondary became compulsory, resulting in a duration of nine years.

Long and Extending (Cluster 6)

Subsumed under the headline of this cluster are countries that already started with long durations of compulsory education in 1970. Almost all of them went on to extend these long durations further down the line. No waves of extensions can be detected. Moreover, those at the bottom in the 1970s converged toward the long durations of roughly fourteen years, showing a good exemplary case of uncoordinated beta-convergence. This holds especially true for the rather nonlinear trajectory Peru shows: In 1972, the first three years of secondary education were moved to basic education, which made it compulsory and extended the duration from six to ten years. However, this reform was abolished in the 1980s bringing the former structure back (Chuquilin Cubas 2011 ). Then, the constitution of 1993 declared education as compulsory for preprimary, primary, and secondary levels again (Marlow-Ferguson 2002 , 1047). In the end, compulsion was extended to upper secondary education, resulting in fourteen years of compulsory education.

Another decrease in compulsory schooling happened in Azerbaijan, where after the fall of the USSRcompulsory education law prescribed a nine years’ duration, instead of the former ten years. Nevertheless, after some time, the duration was extended to eleven years in 2011. Interestingly, this new Education Law, making general secondary education mandatory, makes the Azerbaijani education system almost entirely conform to the principles of the Bologna process (International Bureau of Education 2011 ).

Late Start Extenders (Cluster 7)

Countries here start with no compulsory education, although these policies had been introduced in 2014 at the very latest. The trajectories are similar to those in cluster 4; however, the first introduction shows a rather short duration. Nonetheless, a decisive tendency for longer durations is detectable. While Cabo Verde extended compulsory education from six to ten years right away, Lebanon shows a stepwise extension from six to nine and finally ten years. Malaysia introduced compulsory education in 2003 with a duration of six years and did not alter this policy. This holds true for Cameroon and Singapore as well. Given the discussions in Singapore before the introduction of compulsory education, described above, it is clear why the government might be hesitant to extend compulsory education, although the government initially advocated for a longer duration (Tan 2010 ).

Late and Stagnant (Cluster 8)

Similar to the previous cluster and the From zero to long cluster, countries here had no compulsory education in the 1970s. In most cases, there was no change since the introduction at the end of the 1990s. This is shown by the trajectories of Yemen and Mali in which a nine-year compulsory education was introduced in 1991 and 1992, respectively. These policies still stand today. In Qatar, on the other hand, compulsory education was introduced later in the Compulsory Education Law No. 25 of 2001 covering primary and secondary education that culminate in twelve years of education. Sri Lanka is the only member of this cluster that extended the duration of compulsory schooling by expanding compulsion through senior secondary school, that is, Grade 11.

A Global Picture on Clusters of Compulsory Education Duration

Finally, I look at the global picture of the duration of compulsory education. Figure 3.5 shows the difficulty of choosing the correct clustering method, since it remains unclear why some trajectories are part of one cluster and not another. Especially, some countries in cluster 3 ( Extending middle of the pack ) and cluster 6 ( Long and extending ) have very similarly looking trajectories. So, we need to review the global picture with the caveat that always comes with drawing strict distinctions where ranges would be more appropriate. When regarding a longer time frame, say from 1900 to today, I suspect the two mentioned clusters (depicted in purple and yellow) to be part of a similar supercluster. Nevertheless, we see subtle differences on average, so I urge readers not to draw conclusive absolutes of, for example, ‘Canada is significantly different from the US’, but rather, acknowledge differences in the developments of the duration of compulsory education, as subtle as they may be.

Moreover, there are several key elements that we can take away from this endeavor: As opposed to cross-sectional observations, examining trajectories helps highlight differences and similarities that would not have been visible before. Some countries followed a specific wave of either introducing or extending compulsory education starting from the 1990s until the mid-2000s. After that, the pace and margins of extensions increased, especially concerning countries that have had shorter durations of compulsory education. One first intuitive correlation might be traced back to international initiatives, especially the Education for All Framework for Action, which might have had a large impact on countries to either introduce or extend compulsory education.

Furthermore, the degree to which domestic factors vary in clusters is striking. For a comparison, I defined the dominant religion of a country in 1970, in that at least 33% of the population is adherent to it as well as the Gender Rights variable used in building the cultural spheres. The latter is an index that combines the “Women’s political empowerment index” (Sundström et al. 2015 ) and the “Exclusion by Gender Index” (Coppedge et al. 2019 ) from the Varieties of Democracy Project. The former takes its raw data from the World Religion Dataset (Maoz and Henderson 2013 ). Additionally, I investigated the percentage of high- and low-income countries in the distinct clusters. Although there is at least one high-income country in every cluster, the highest percentages are in the Long and extending , the Extending middle of the pack and interestingly, also one in the cluster of Resilient latecomers . Furthermore, against first intuition, in the group of Resilient latecomers no country is defined as low income. In other clusters at least one low-income country can be found: in the From zero to long almost half of the countries and in the Late and stagnant cluster even more than half are low-income countries. Moreover, the Long and extending cluster shows the highest mean of the Gender Rights value, while the Late and stagnant countries show the lowest mean value. Interestingly, the Stagnant short countries have the second lowest mean gender value. Concerning the dominant religion there is no pattern discernible. In every cluster, at least half of the members have Christianity as a dominant religion, except the Resilient latecomers , where the percentage of countries is still over 40%. The Extending middle of the pack with the Stagnant short shows the highest variability in dominant religions, being made up of Animist and Syncretic religions, Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Christianity, and nonreligious persons. Again, this shows that with rather broad domestic variables it is hardly possible to find correlations on compulsory education policy trajectories.

Additionally, when plotting the previously described cluster onto a world map (Fig. 3.6 ), it is astonishing to see that for some clusters a geographic pattern is hardly detectable. The largest cluster of the Extending middle of the pack is scattered throughout Southern, Central, and Eastern Europe, South America, and North Africa. A slight North-South difference can be noticed, which shows that some sub-Saharan as well as Southeast Asian countries are clustered together. Some striking evidence we can gather from this map is that there seems to be weak colonial heritage discernible, if any. The United Kingdom (UK), except in combination with South Africa, has a different compulsory education policy since 1970 than most of its former colonies. For example, India and former British colonies in sub-Saharan Africa not only differ in their trajectories with one another but also with the UK. This also holds true for other colonies of European states. Furthermore, after the breakup of the USSR, some countries seem to follow distinctly different paths than their former Union countries.

World map showing countries’ membership in clusters of trajectories of the duration of compulsory education

The goal of this chapter is not to draw conclusive or even causal statements about the development of compulsory education policy. However, what I can show is that international comparative education should refrain from ‘easy’ and overly hasty explanations. Nation-states as diverse as Belgium, Guatemala, and North Korea ( Long and extending ) show similarity regarding their trajectories of compulsory education policy. This could excite new ways of international comparative education research.

In this chapter, I started with the observation that recent international comparative education research has advanced at a rapid pace. Notions of an isomorphism of national education systems overshadow the actual analysis of different developmental paths of single elements of these systems. Past scholarship has been focused on the origins, output, or outcome of compulsory education legislation. In contrast, I argued to take into account the whole trajectories of education policy and use them as the focal point of research. This recontextualization in terms of environing policy changes in time and relation to other countries yields the possibility to simultaneously answer questions on ‘what’ policy change looks like as well as ‘when’ and ‘in which order’ this happens or does not happen.

With the help of sequence analysis tools, I demonstrated that when looking at the duration of compulsory education from 1970 until 2020, durations of compulsory education and their development paths show large differences that cannot be explained at first glance by crude classifications of economic development or cultural spheres. However, it is possible to generally discern, that higher income countries, on average, have longer durations of compulsory education and ‘Catholic, Spanish-speaking’ nation-states have high durations. The latter is probably due to a shift of norms regarding mandatory, preprimary education. It seems that we are witnessing a new diffusion dynamic in which policy innovation starts in non-Western states but transfers to the West in the future.

I set out to quantitatively cluster countries together based solely on their actual trajectories of compulsory education law. Eight clusters have been described, which, on the one hand, show remarkable overlap but, on the other hand, still have large intragroup variances. However, we can take hints from this clustering. For example, there are some regional specialties and, generally, higher income means earlier extension on average as well as longer durations of compulsory education in general. Furthermore, a second wave of introduction and extension of compulsory education seems to correlate—at least time-wise—with the increasing intensity of international discourses like Education for All or the Sustainable Development Goals, for example. While the first started at the World Conference on Education for All in Jomtien in 1990 and was renewed in the Dakar Framework for Action in 2000, the latter are currently shaping education policies around the world since 2015.

However, these are the first intuitions and do not claim causal relationships.

Moreover, accepting the clustering leads to imprecision when reviewing it as set-in-stone boundaries. Similarly, to what is argued in Chaps. 1 and 2 , the social reality of policy change shows overlaps that are changing throughout time and space. The clusters observed look different from ones built from sequences starting in 1900 and will look different when observed in 2050.

Nonetheless, the information gathered here shows clearly the numerous, different paths, even though clustering proves difficult. Trying to discern broad trends in domestic factors is almost impossible. The precise interplay of political ideology, global discourses, and especially regional/cultural discourses can have an impact on trajectories. This complexity is difficult to discern. However, with this descriptive investigation, I have found possible avenues where scholarship might be able to place further focus. In my view, this should motivate researchers to take a step back and take stock of the complexity found in the real world of education policies. It is tedious work but should nonetheless be done in order to understand what is really going on in a global education sphere that shows isomorphism only in a very abstract way.

Going forward, I suggest keeping the following in mind: To actualize complexity does not inhibit researching on a macro-level; rather, it should motivate us to do it more often in an all-encompassing way. Different and complex trajectories do not end in one telos but are instead open for debates situated in different locations and different times. The complexity of nation-states’ education systems should be systematically described and analyzed before turning toward actual explanations that most probably will not yield one-size-fits-all solutions. I took a first step in that direction. Future research should take the insights presented in this chapter and expand on other constitutive parts of education systems. One should also focus on what determinants are influential in bringing about trajectories that unfold in a specific sequential order. Such an analysis should involve interdependencies between countries as well as national factors. A thorough and structured analysis could yield more insights into the global developmental paths of education systems. Furthermore, using this study as the starting point, new theories on the international transfer of education system characteristics could be possible. Taking a step back and considering the bigger picture helps in highlighting the shortcomings of research that global education policy needs to address.

I am especially grateful to my research assistant Philip Roth for helping to compile this vast and encompassing dataset of which I only use a small amount.

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Besche-Truthe, F. (2022). The Global Trajectories of Compulsory Education: Clustering Sequences of Policy Development. In: Martens, K., Windzio, M. (eds) Global Pathways to Education. Global Dynamics of Social Policy. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-78885-8_3

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• Compulsory Education Laws: 50-State Survey

Getting an education not only boosts individual earning potential but also helps a person contribute to our society. To this end, each state (and the District of Columbia) has enacted a compulsory education law. These laws generally require children in certain age ranges to attend school. While the age ranges vary by state, the lower limit is usually between five and seven years old, and the upper limit is usually between 16 and 18.

Parents should understand the obligations that these laws impose, as well as the nuances that may allow some flexibility in educating their children. Click on a state below to find out more about the compulsory education law in that state, including the age range, the applicable statute, the core requirement, and some of the notable nuances. If you need more specific and comprehensive guidance, you can consult an education lawyer about your situation.

• Connecticut
• Massachusetts
• Mississippi
• New Hampshire
• North Carolina
• North Dakota
• Pennsylvania
• Rhode Island
• South Carolina
• South Dakota
• Washington, D.C.
• West Virginia

Alabama Compulsory Education Law

The requirement generally applies to children between the ages of 6 and 17.

Alabama Code Section 16-28-3 provides that a child between the ages of 6 and 17 must attend a public school, private school, or church school, or be instructed by a private tutor, for the entire length of the school term in every scholastic year. A child attending a church school may be exempt from these requirements before turning 16. A parent can opt out of enrolling their child in school when they are 6 years old by notifying the local school board in writing that the child will not be enrolled until they are 7.

Certain children may not be required to attend school or be instructed by a private tutor, such as:

• Children whose physical or mental condition prevents their attendance at school or makes it inadvisable
• Children who have completed the course of study of the public schools of the state through high school
• Children who would be compelled to walk over 2 miles to attend a public school
• Children who are legally and regularly employed under the provisions of the law related to child labor and hold permits to work

To be exempt from the requirement, these children must receive certificates of exemption from the county superintendent of education or the city superintendent of schools.

Alaska Compulsory Education Law

The requirement generally applies to children between 7 and 16 years old.

Alaska Statutes Section 14.30.010 provides that a parent or another person who is responsible for a child between 7 and 16 years old must maintain the child in attendance at a public school in the district where the child resides during the entire school term. Numerous exceptions apply, such as situations when:

• The child is provided a comparable academic education by attendance at a private school with certified teachers, tutoring by certified personnel, or attendance at a certain type of educational program operated by a religious or other private school
• The child attends a school operated by the federal government
• The child is being educated in their home by a parent or guardian
• The child is temporarily ill or injured
• The child has a physical or mental condition that will make attendance impractical
• The child is in the custody of a court or law enforcement authorities
• The child lives more than 2 miles from a public school or a route on which transportation is provided by school authorities (unless the child lives within 2 miles of a federal or private school that the child is eligible and able to attend)
• The child has completed the 12th grade

If a parent or another person who is responsible for a 6-year-old child decides to enroll them in first grade at a public school, the child will be subject to the compulsory education law after their enrollment. However, if the parent or guardian decides within 60 days after enrollment that the best interests of the child are not being served, the child may be withdrawn from school, and the compulsory education requirement will not apply until the child is 7.

Arizona Compulsory Education Law

The requirement generally applies to children between 6 and 16 years old.

Arizona Revised Statutes Section 15-803 provides that it is unlawful for a child between 6 and 16 years old to fail to attend school during the hours when school is in session. There are exceptions when:

• The child is excused for any of the numerous reasons listed in Section 15-802(D) or under Section 15-901(A)(5)(c)
• The child is accompanied by a parent or a person authorized by them
• The child is provided with instruction in a homeschool

A child may be adjudicated an incorrigible child if they are habitually truant, which means that they are truant for at least five school days in a school year. (A child is truant if they have an unexcused absence for at least one class period during the day.) A child also may be adjudicated an incorrigible child if they have excessive absences, which may occur if their number of absent days exceeds 10 percent of the statutorily required number of attendance days.

Arkansas Compulsory Education Law

The requirement generally applies to children who are 5 through 17 years old.

Arkansas Code Section 6-18-201 provides that a parent or another person who has control of a child who is 5 through 17 years old on or before the date established for the minimum age for enrollment in public school must send the child to a public, private, or parochial school, or provide a home school for the child. Exceptions apply when:

• The child has received a high school diploma or its equivalent
• The child is 16 or older and is enrolled in a post-secondary vocational-technical institution, a community college, or a two-year or four-year institution of higher education
• The child is 16 or older and is enrolled in an adult education program or the Arkansas National Guard Youth Challenge Program
• The child will not be 6 years old on the statutorily established date for the minimum age for enrollment in public school of that school year, and the parent or other person in control of the child does not want them to attend kindergarten and files a waiver form

A child who will be 6 years old on or before October 1 of the school year of enrollment and who has not completed a kindergarten program may be placed in the first grade if a school district evaluation indicates this placement, and the parent agrees. Otherwise, the child will be placed in kindergarten.

California Compulsory Education Law

The requirement generally applies to children between the ages of 6 and 18.

California Education Code Section 48200 provides that each person between the ages of 6 and 18 is subject to compulsory full-time education. This means that a parent or other person who has control of the child must send them to a public full-time day school. Certain types of children are exempted from the requirement, such as:

• Children instructed in a private full-time day school by people capable of teaching
• Children who are mentally gifted and are being instructed in a private full-time day school by people capable of teaching, when at least 50 percent of the total daily instructional time is taught in English
• Children who are being instructed in study and recitation for at least three hours a day for 175 days per year by a private tutor or other person with a valid state credential
• Children who hold permits to work, although they must attend part-time classes

Children under 6 years old are excluded from public schools. The county office of education or the governing board of the school district of attendance must exclude a child who has not been immunized properly under the Health and Safety Code.

Colorado Compulsory Education Law

The requirement generally applies to children who are at least 6 and under 17.

Colorado Code Section 22-33-104 provides that a child who turns 6 years old on or before August 1 and is under the age of 17 must attend public school for at least 1,056 hours during the school year if they are a secondary school pupil, or 968 hours during the school year if they are an elementary school pupil in a grade other than kindergarten. (If they are a full-day kindergarten pupil, they must attend for at least 900 hours, or 450 hours if they are a half-day kindergarten pupil.) Various exceptions apply, such as when:

• The child is enrolled for at least 172 days in an independent or parochial school that provides a basic academic education
• The child is absent for an extended period due to a physical disability or a mental or behavioral health disorder
• The child is temporarily ill or injured, or the school administrator has approved their absence
• The child has graduated from the 12th grade
• The child is being instructed at home by a licensed teacher or under a non-public home-based educational program
• The child is pursuing a work study program under the supervision of a public school

Special rules apply to children who are deaf or blind.

Connecticut Compulsory Education Law

The requirement generally applies to children who are 5 or older and under 18.

Connecticut General Statutes Section 10-184 provides that a parent or another person who has control of a child who is 5 or older and under 18 must cause the child to attend a public school regularly during the hours and terms when the public school in the district where the child lives is in session. There are exceptions if the child is a high school graduate, or if the parent or other person in control of the child shows that the child is receiving instruction elsewhere that is equivalent to the studies taught in the public schools.

A parent or other person having control of a 5-year-old child has the option of not sending them to school until they are 6, and a parent or other person having control of a 6-year-old child has the option of not sending them to school until they are 7. The parent or other person must exercise this option by personally going to the school district office and signing an option form.

A student who is 18 or older may withdraw from school by personally appearing at the school district office and signing a withdrawal form. A parent or other person with control of a child who is 17 may withdraw the child from school and enroll them in an adult education program by personally appearing at the school district office and signing an adult education withdrawal and enrollment form.

Delaware Compulsory Education Law

The requirement generally applies to children between 5 and 16 years old.

14 Delaware Code Section 2702 provides that every person who has legal custody or otherwise has legal control of a child between 5 and 16 years old must enroll the child in a public school in the school district where the person lives. However, Section 2703 provides that this requirement does not apply to a student enrolled in a private school who is receiving regular and thorough instruction in the subjects prescribed for public schools in a manner suitable to children of the same age and stage of advancement. Similarly, a student who is homeschooled as provided by Section 2703A is exempt from the compulsory education requirement. In addition, Section 2705 provides that a child may be exempt from the requirement upon request of their parent or other person with legal control of the child when the request is supported by written documentation from a physician, psychiatrist, psychologist, or neurologist.

A child over the age of 16 may withdraw from public school before graduation if their parent or guardian provides their written consent (if the student is under 18), and an exit interview is conducted at which the student and their parent or guardian are advised that this likely will reduce the student’s future earning potential and increase their risk of unemployment.

Florida Compulsory Education Law

The requirement generally applies to children who have turned 6 (or will turn 6 by February 1 of the school year) but have not turned 16.

Florida Statutes Section 1003.21 provides that children who have turned 6 (or who will turn 6 by February 1 of the school year) or who are older than 6 but have not turned 16 must attend school regularly during the entire school term. A student who turns 16 during the school year is not subject to compulsory attendance beyond their 16th birthday if they file a formal declaration of intent to terminate school enrollment with the district school board. The declaration must acknowledge that terminating school enrollment is likely to reduce the student’s earning potential and must be signed by the student and their parent. Public school students who have reached the age of 16 and have not graduated are subject to compulsory attendance until the formal declaration of intent is filed.

Georgia Compulsory Education Law

The requirement generally applies to children between their 6th and 16th birthdays.

Georgia Code 20-2-690.1 provides that mandatory attendance in a public school, private school, or home school program is required for children between their 6th and 16th birthdays, unless a child has completed the requirements for a high school diploma. An unemancipated minor who is older than the age of mandatory attendance and has not completed the requirements for a high school diploma but wishes to withdraw from school must have the written permission of their parent or legal guardian before withdrawing. Before accepting this permission, the school principal or designee must hold a conference with the child and their parent or legal guardian within two school days of receiving notice of the intent of the child to withdraw from school.

Hawaii Compulsory Education Law

The requirement generally applies to children who have reached the age of 5 but will not have reached the age of 18 by January 1 of the school year.

Hawaii Revised Statutes Section 302A-1132 provides that children who have reached the age of 5 on or before July 31 of the school year, and who will not have reached the age of 18 by January 1 of the school year, must attend a public or private school during the school year. Any parent or other person responsible for a child whose attendance is required must send the child to a public or private school. Some exceptions apply, such as when:

• The child is physically or mentally unable to attend school (for reasons other than deafness or blindness), based on a certificate by a licensed physician
• The child is at least 15, is suitably employed, and has been excused from school attendance by the superintendent, their representative, or a family court judge
• The child may properly remain away from school, based on an investigation by the family court
• The child has graduated from high school
• The child is enrolled in an appropriate alternative educational program as approved by the superintendent or their representative

An exception also applies when the child has reached the age of 16, and the principal has decided that the child has engaged in behavior that is disruptive to other students, teachers, or staff or that their non-attendance is chronic and has become a significant factor that hinders the child’s learning, and the principal and the child’s teacher or counselor develops an alternative educational plan for the child in consultation with the child and the parent or other adult who is responsible for the child.

Idaho Compulsory Education Law

The requirement generally applies to children who have reached the age of 7 but not the age of 16.

Idaho Code Section 33-202 provides that the parent or guardian of a child who has reached the age of 7 but not the age of 16 at the time of the commencement of school in their district must ensure that the child is instructed in subjects that are commonly and usually taught in the public schools in the state. The parent or guardian can fulfill this responsibility in two ways. They can cause the child to be privately instructed by the parent or guardian (or at their direction), or they can enroll them in a public school, public charter school (including an online or virtual charter school), or private or parochial school.

However, Section 33-204 provides that the board of trustees of a school district may grant an exemption from this requirement when a licensed physician or psychiatrist states in writing that the physical, mental, or emotional condition of a child does not permit their attendance at school, and the parent or guardian of the child files a petition with the board seeking an exemption from the requirement.

Illinois Compulsory Education Law

105 Illinois Compiled Statutes Section 5/26-1 provides that anyone who has custody or control of a child between the ages of 6 and 17, unless the child has already graduated from high school, must cause the child to attend a public school in the district where the child lives for the entire time that the school is in session during the regular school term. However, children are not required to attend public school in certain situations, such as when:

• The child is attending a private or parochial school where children are taught the branches of education taught to children of corresponding age and grade in public schools and are taught in the English language
• The child is physically or mentally unable to attend school, or is excused for a temporary absence for cause by the principal or teacher of their school
• The child is over 12 and under 14 and is attending confirmation classes
• The child is necessarily and lawfully employed, and they are excused from attendance by the county superintendent of schools or the superintendent of the public school that they should be attending
• The child is absent from a public school because they are unable to attend classes or participate in schoolwork on a certain day or at a certain time of day for religious reasons
• The child is absent from a public school on a certain day or at a certain time of day for various reasons related to the service of their parent or legal guardian as an active duty member of the armed forces
• The child is 16 or older, submits evidence of necessary and lawful employment to a school district, and is enrolled in a graduation incentives program or an alternative learning opportunities program

A child is considered 6 years old for the purpose of the compulsory education requirement if they turn 6 on or before September 1 of that year.

Indiana Compulsory Education Law

The requirement generally begins in the school year when the child turns 7 (or potentially earlier) and has varying end dates.

Indiana Code Section 20-33-2-4 provides that a student must attend a public school that they are entitled to attend or another school taught in the English language. Section 20-33-2-6 provides that a student is generally covered by the compulsory school attendance rules starting with the date on which they officially enroll in a school or the beginning of the fall school term for the school year in which they turn 7, whichever is earlier. They remain covered by these rules until they graduate, become 18 years old, or become 16 years old and fulfill requirements provided by Section 20-33-2-9 for withdrawal and exit interviews that allow a student to withdraw from school before graduation, whichever is earliest.

Section 20-33-2-9 provides that a student who is at least 16 but under 18 may not withdraw from school before graduation unless the student, their parent, and the principal agree to the withdrawal, the parent and the principal provide written consent, and the withdrawal is due to illness, a court order, or financial hardship that requires the student to be employed to support their family or a dependent.

Iowa Compulsory Education Law

The requirement generally applies to children who have reached the age of 6 and are under 16 by September 15.

Iowa Code Section 299.1 provides that the parent, guardian, or custodian of a child of the required age must cause the child to attend a public school or an accredited non-public school, or place them under competent private instruction or independent private instruction as described by the statute. Section 299.2 lists certain exceptions, such as situations when:

• The child has completed the requirements for graduation in an accredited school or obtained a high school equivalency diploma
• The child is excused by a court or judge
• The child is attending religious services or receiving religious instructions
• The child is attending an accredited private college preparatory school

Section 299.1A provides that a child who has reached the age of 6 and is under 16 by September 15 is subject to the compulsory attendance requirement. If a child enrolled in a school district or accredited non-public school reaches the age of 16 on or after September 15, they are still subject to the requirement until the end of the school calendar. Moreover, a child who reaches the age of 5 by September 15 and is enrolled in a school district is considered subject to the compulsory attendance requirement unless their parent or guardian notifies the school district in writing of their intent to remove the child from enrollment in the school district.

Kansas Compulsory Education Law

The requirement generally applies to children who have reached the age of 7 and are under the age of 18.

Kansas Statutes Section 72-3120 provides that a parent or someone else who has control over a child who has reached the age of 7 and is under the age of 18 must require the child to be regularly enrolled in and continuously attend a public school for the duration of the school term, or a private, denominational, or parochial school taught by a competent instructor for a period of time that is essentially equal to the time during which public school is maintained in the school district. (The requirement does not apply if the child has received a high school diploma or a GED credential.) If the child is 16 or 17, the parent or other adult with control over the child may allow the child to be exempt from the compulsory attendance requirement by providing their written consent.

If the child is 16 or 17, the child will be exempt from the compulsory attendance requirement if the child is regularly enrolled in and attending an approved alternative educational program, the child and the parent (or the person acting as a parent) attend a counseling session and sign a disclaimer, or the child is regularly enrolled in a school and is concurrently enrolled in a post-secondary educational institution.

A child who is under 7 but enrolled in school is subject to the requirement. However, their parent or another person acting as a parent may withdraw the child from school, which will make them exempt from the requirement until they turn 7 or are enrolled again.

Kentucky Compulsory Education Law

Kentucky Revised Statutes Section 159.010 provides that a parent or another person who has custody of a child between the ages of 6 and 18 must send the child to a regular public day school. Section 159.030 provides several exceptions to the compulsory attendance rule. These include situations when:

• The child has graduated from an accredited or approved four-year high school
• The child is enrolled and in regular attendance in a private, parochial, or church regular day school
• The child’s physical or mental condition prevents them from attending school, or makes it inadvisable
• The child is under 7 and is enrolled and in regular attendance at a private kindergarten or nursery school
• The child is enrolled and in regular attendance in a private, parochial, church, or state-supported program for exceptional children

Specific rules apply to the medical condition exception, such as providing a signed statement from an appropriate healthcare provider as described by the statute.

Louisiana Compulsory Education Law

The requirement generally applies to children who are ages 5 (by September 30) through 18.

Louisiana Revised Statutes Section 17:221 provides that the parent or legal guardian of a child who is age 5 (by September 30 of the year in which the school year begins) through 18 must send the child to a public or non-public school, unless the parent or legal guardian chooses to defer enrollment of their child in kindergarten or the child graduates from high school before turning 18. The parent or legal guardian is responsible for assuring the attendance of the child in regularly assigned classes during regular school hours. The statute notes that a parent or legal guardian will be considered in compliance with the school attendance provisions if their child is enrolled in an approved home study program.

A parent or another person who is responsible for the school attendance of a child under 18 who is enrolled in school beyond their 16th birthday may ask that the student be allowed to attend an alternative education program or a vocational-technical education program. Also, a child who is at least 16 may enroll in an effective adult education program if they meet the criteria for this program.

Section 17:226 makes certain children exempt from the compulsory attendance requirement, such as children who are mentally, physically, or emotionally incapacitated to perform school duties, children unable to profit from further school experience, or children who are temporarily excused from school for reasons specified by statute.

Maine Compulsory Education Law

The requirement generally applies to children who are 6 or older and under 17.

20-A Maine Revised Statutes Section 5001-A provides that a person who is 6 or older and under 17 must attend a public day school during the time when it is in regular session. Moreover, a person who is 5 and under 6 who is enrolled in a public day school and has not withdrawn must attend that school while it is in session. This requirement does not apply to a person who graduates from high school before turning 17. It also does not apply to a person who has reached the age of 15 or completed the 9th grade if they have permission to leave school from their parent and the school board, they have been approved by the principal for a suitable program of work and study or training, and they have agreed in writing with their parent and the school board to meet annually until their 17th birthday to review their educational needs.

However, a person is excused from attending a public day school if they obtain equivalent instruction in a private school approved for attendance purposes, a private school recognized by the Maine Department of Education as providing equivalent instruction, a home instruction program that meets statutory requirements, or any other manner arranged by the school board and approved by the commissioner.

Maryland Compulsory Education Law

Maryland Education Code Section 7-301 provides that each child who resides in Maryland and is 5 or older and under 18 must attend a public school regularly during the entire school year. The statute provides numerous exceptions, such as situations when:

• The child has received a high school diploma or a GED
• The child is receiving regular, thorough instruction during the school year in the studies usually taught in public schools to children of their age
• The child is severely ill and requires home or hospital instruction
• The child provides financial support to their family
• The child is married or in the military
• The child attends an alternative educational program, or is pregnant or a parent and is enrolled in an alternative educational program
• The child is committed by court order to an institution without an educational program

This requirement applies to a child with a mental, emotional, or physical disability, but it does not apply to a child whose mental, emotional, or physical condition makes the child’s instruction detrimental to their progress, or whose presence in school poses a risk of serious physical harm to others.

Massachusetts Compulsory Education Law

The requirement generally applies to children between the minimum and maximum ages established for school attendance by the state board of education.

Massachusetts General Laws Chapter 76 Section 1 provides that a child between the minimum and maximum ages established for school attendance must attend a public day school in the town where they live, or another day school approved by the school committee. Massachusetts regulations provide that each child must attend school beginning in September of the year in which they turn 6. Attendance is not required in certain situations:

• The physical or mental condition of the child makes their attendance inexpedient or impracticable
• The child has received an employment permit from the superintendent of schools
• The child is otherwise instructed in a manner approved in advance by the superintendent or the school committee

A school committee must approve a private school when it finds that the instruction in all the studies required by law equals the instruction in the public schools in the same town, and it must not withhold its approval due to religious teaching.

Michigan Compulsory Education Law

The requirement generally applies to a child from the age of 6 until their 18th birthday.

Michigan Compiled Laws Section 380.1561 provides that a parent or another person who has control of a child must send them to a public school during the entire school year from the age of 6 until their 18th birthday. Several exceptions apply, such as situations when:

• The child has graduated from high school or fulfilled the requirements for high school graduation
• The child is being taught in a state-approved non-public school that teaches subjects comparable to those taught in the public schools to children of a similar age and grade
• The child is being educated at home by their parent or legal guardian in an organized educational program in certain subject areas enumerated by statute
• The child is under 9 and does not live within 2.5 miles from a public school, and transportation is not provided for pupils in their school district
• The child is 12 or 13 and attending confirmation classes for 5 months or less

A child who turns 6 before December 1 must be enrolled on the first school day of the school year in which their sixth birthday occurs, while a child who turns 6 on or after December 1 must be enrolled on the first school day of the school year following the school year in which their sixth birthday occurs.

Minnesota Compulsory Education Law

The requirement generally applies to children between 7 and 17 years old.

Minnesota Statutes Section 120A.22 provides that every child between 7 and 17 years of age must receive instruction unless they have graduated. Instruction may be provided through a public school or a non-public school, church, or religious organization, or through a home school. If a child under the age of 7 is enrolled in kindergarten or a higher grade in a public school, they are generally subject to the compulsory attendance requirement, although they may be withdrawn from enrollment for good cause.

A student who is 17 and wants to withdraw from school must attend a meeting with school personnel to discuss the educational opportunities available to them and sign a form to withdraw from the school. Their parent or guardian also must attend the meeting and sign the form.

A parent or another person who has control of a child may ask a school district to excuse the child from attendance for certain permitted reasons. These include situations when the child’s physical or mental health prevents them from attending school, or when the child has already completed state and district standards required for high school graduation.

Mississippi Compulsory Education Law

The requirement generally applies to children who have turned or will turn 6 on or before September 1 and who have not turned 17 on or before September 1.

Mississippi Code Section 37-13-91 provides that a parent or another person who has custody of a “compulsory school age child” (as defined above) must cause the child to attend a public school or a legitimate non-public school for the time that they are of compulsory school age. The statute provides a few exceptions:

• The child is physically, mentally, or emotionally incapable of attending school, based on medical documentation
• The child is pursuing a course of special education, remedial education, or education for handicapped or physically or mentally disadvantaged children
• The child is being educated in a legitimate home instruction program

A compulsory school age child is further defined as a child who has turned or will turn 5 on or before September 1 and has enrolled in a full-day public school kindergarten program.

Missouri Compulsory Education Law

The requirement generally applies to children between the age of 7 and the compulsory attendance age for the school district.

Missouri Revised Statutes Section 167.031 provides that a parent or another person who has control of a child between the age of 7 and the compulsory attendance age for the district must cause them to regularly attend a public, private, parochial, parish, or home school, or a combination of these schools. The compulsory attendance age for a district is generally 17, although the school board of a metropolitan school district may lower the compulsory attendance age to 16.

Exceptions apply when the child is mentally or physically incapacitated, or when the child is 14 or older and has found legal employment that is “desirable,” and their parents or guardian have been advised of this action.

A parent or another person who enrolls a child between the ages of 5 and 7 in a public school program must cause them to attend the program on a regular basis. However, they will be excused from attendance if the parent or other person makes a written request that the child be dropped from the school’s rolls.

Montana Compulsory Education Law

The requirement generally applies to a child from the age of 7 until their 16th birthday, or until they finish the 8th grade if later.

Montana Code Section 20-5-102 provides that a parent or another person responsible for the care of a child who is 7 or older before the first day of school in a school year must cause the child to be instructed in a program prescribed by the board of public education. The requirement lasts until the child’s 16th birthday or the date when they complete the 8th grade if that is later. Exceptions apply in certain situations, such as when:

• The child is provided with supervised correspondence study or supervised home study
• The child is excused from compulsory school attendance upon a determination by a judge that attendance is not in the child’s best interest
• The child is 16 or older, and the board of trustees decides that attendance is not in the best interest of the child and the school
• The child is enrolled in a non-public or home school that meets statutory requirements

The statute defines a non-public school as a parochial, church, religious, or private school, while it defines a home school as the instruction by a parent of their child, stepchild, or ward in their residence.

Nebraska Compulsory Education Law

The requirement generally applies to a child who will turn 6 before January 1 of the current school year and has not turned 18.

Nebraska Revised Statutes Section 79-201 provides that anyone who has legal or actual control of a child who is within the age range above, or who is enrolled in a public school, must cause the child to regularly attend a public, private, denominational, or parochial day school when the school is open and in session. Some exceptions may apply, such as situations when:

• The child has received a high school diploma
• The child will not turn 7 before January 1 of the current school year, and their parent or guardian has signed and filed an affidavit stating that the child is participating in an education program that will prepare them to enter grade one for the next school year
• The child will not turn 6 before January 1 of the current school year, and they were enrolled in a public school but have discontinued the enrollment
• The child is at least 16 and has been withdrawn from school through the statutorily required process

Section 79-202 describes the withdrawal process. This generally involves attending an exit interview and signing a withdrawal form.

Nevada Compulsory Education Law

The requirement generally applies to children between the ages of 7 and 18.

Nevada Revised Statutes Section 392.040 provides that a parent or another person who has control of a child between the ages of 7 and 18 must send the child to a public school in the school district where the child lives, unless they have graduated from high school. Various related statutes provide exceptions to this requirement.

For example, Section 392.050 states that a child must be excused from attendance when the child’s physical or mental condition or behavioral health prevents their attendance at school or makes it inadvisable, as shown by satisfactory written evidence. Section 392.060 further provides that attendance is excused when the child has already completed the 12 grades of the elementary and high school courses, as shown by satisfactory written evidence. Section 392.070 excuses children who are enrolled in a private school, or for whom a parent chooses to provide education and files a notice of intent to homeschool the child with the superintendent of schools.

Attendance is also excused if a child has received permission to take the high school equivalency assessment, lives so far from the nearest public school that their attendance is unsafe or impractical, or is at least 15 years old, has completed the work of the first eight grades, and is entering employment or apprenticeship.

New Hampshire Compulsory Education Law

The requirement generally applies to a child who is at least 6 and under 18.

New Hampshire Revised Statutes Section 193:1 provides that a parent of a child (or someone else who has custody of a child) who is at least 6 and under 18 must cause them to attend the public school to which they are assigned in their resident district. Various exceptions may apply, such as situations when:

• The child is attending a public school outside their district or an approved private school
• The child is receiving home education
• The child is excused from attendance because they are physically or mentally unable to attend school
• The child has completed the requirements for graduation
• The child has been accepted into an accredited post-secondary education program
• The child has gotten a waiver from the superintendent for an alternative learning plan for obtaining a high school diploma or the equivalent (only for children 16 or older)

If a child turns 6 after September 30, the compulsory attendance requirement will not apply to them until the following school year.

New Jersey Compulsory Education Law

The requirement generally applies to children between the ages of 6 and 16.

New Jersey Revised Statutes Section 18A:38-25 provides that a parent or another person who has custody of a child between the ages of 6 and 16 must cause them to regularly attend the public schools of the district or a day school that provides equivalent instruction for children of similar grades and attainments, or cause them to receive equivalent instruction elsewhere. Regular attendance is required during all the days and hours when public schools in the district are in session, unless the child’s mental condition prevents them from benefiting from instruction, or their physical condition prevents their attendance.

New Mexico Compulsory Education Law

The requirement generally applies to a child who is at least 5 (before September 1) but under 18.

New Mexico Statutes Section 22-12A-4 provides that a “school-age person” must attend public school, private school, home school, or a state institution until they are at least 18. (A school-age person is defined elsewhere as someone who is at least 5 before September 1 of the school year, has not received a high school diploma or its equivalent, and has not reached their 22nd birthday on the first day of the school year.) Exceptions apply if the school-age person has graduated from high school, received a high school equivalency credential, or withdrawn from school on a hardship waiver, which is when a parent gives signed permission for a school-age person between 16 and 18 to leave school due to hardship.

New York Compulsory Education Law

The requirement generally applies to children from 6 to 16 years old.

New York Education Law Section 3205 provides that each minor from 6 to 16 years old must attend school upon full-time instruction, whether at a public school or elsewhere. The board of education in each school district may require minors from 16 to 17 years old who are not employed to attend school upon full-time day instruction until the last day of session in the school year in which the minor turns 17. However, the statute exempts a minor who has completed a four-year high school course of study, and it allows a minor to attend part-time school for at least 20 hours per week when they have made an application for a full-time employment certificate and are eligible for it, even if they are unemployed.

For calculating the age requirements, a minor who turns 6 on or before December 1 in a school year must attend full-time instruction starting in September of that school year, while a minor who turns 6 after December 1 must attend from the following September. A minor must remain in attendance until the end of the school year in which they turn 16.

North Carolina Compulsory Education Law

The requirement generally applies to children between the ages of 7 and 16.

North Carolina General Statutes Section 115C-378 provides that a parent or someone else who has control of a child between the ages of 7 and 16 must cause the child to attend school continuously for a period equal to the time that the public school to which the child is assigned is in session. If a child under 7 is enrolled in a public school, their parent or other custodian also must cause them to attend school continuously unless the child has withdrawn from school. For the purposes of this law, “school” includes public schools and any non-public schools that have teachers and curricula approved by the State Board of Education.

North Dakota Compulsory Education Law

North Dakota Century Code Section 15.1-20-01 provides that a person who is responsible for a child between the ages of 7 and 16 must ensure that the child attends a public school. Section 15.1-20-02 provides several exceptions, such as situations when:

• The child has completed high school
• The child is in attendance for the same length of time at an approved non-public school
• The child is necessary to the support of the child’s family
• The child has a disability that makes attendance or participation in a regular or special education program inexpedient or impracticable

The person responsible for the child must prove one of the grounds for an exemption to the satisfaction of the school board. The person responsible for the child may appeal an adverse decision by the school board to a district court.

Ohio Compulsory Education Law

The requirement generally applies to children between 6 and 18 years old.

Ohio Revised Code Section 3321.01 provides that a child between 6 and 18 is of compulsory school age. A child under 6 who has been enrolled in kindergarten also will be considered of compulsory school age unless their parent or guardian withdraws them from kindergarten. Section 3321.04 requires that every parent of a child of compulsory school age who is not employed under an age and schooling certificate must send the child to a school or special education program that conforms to the minimum standards prescribed by the state board of education.

A school superintendent may excuse a child from attendance if their bodily or mental condition does not permit attendance at school, and plans are made for appropriate instruction of the child, or if they are being instructed at home by a person who is qualified to teach the topics in which instruction is required and any additional topics that the advancement and needs of the child may require. In addition, the state board of education may adopt rules authorizing school superintendents to excuse a child over 14 years old from attendance for a future limited period so that they can perform necessary work for the child’s parents or legal guardians.

Oklahoma Compulsory Education Law

The requirement generally applies to children who are over 5 and under 18.

Oklahoma Statutes Section 70-10-105 provides that a parent or another person who has custody of a child who is over 5 and under 18 cannot neglect to cause the child to attend and comply with the rules of a public, private, or other school, unless other means of education are provided for the full term that the schools in the district are in session. Moreover, a child who is over 12 and under 18 is prohibited from refusing to attend and comply with the rules of a public, private, or other school, or receive an education by other means for the full term that the schools in the district are in session.

The statute provides certain exceptions, such as when the child is prevented from attending school due to a mental or physical disability, or when a child who is at least 16 is excused from attending school by a written agreement involving the school administrator and the parent or other person with custody of the child. These agreements are allowed only if excusing the child from attending school is for the best interest of the child or the community, and the child will be under the supervision of the parent or other person with custody until they turn 18.

Oregon Compulsory Education Law

Oregon Revised Statutes Section 339.010 provides that children between the ages of 6 and 18 who have not completed the 12th grade must regularly attend a public full-time school during the entire school term. A child is 6 years old for these purposes if their 6th birthday occurred on or before September 1 preceding the beginning of the current school term. Section 339.030 lists certain exceptions to the requirement, such as situations when:

• The child has received a high school diploma or a modified diploma
• The child is being taught in a private or parochial school in the courses of study usually taught in K-12 in the public schools
• The child is being taught by a private teacher in the courses of study usually taught in K-12 in the public schools
• The child is being educated in their home by a parent or legal guardian
• The child can prove to the satisfaction of the school board that they have acquired equivalent knowledge to what is acquired in the courses of study taught in K-12 in the public schools
• The child is in the U.S. on a non-immigrant visa and is attending a private, accredited English language learner program in preparation for attending a private high school or college

Moreover, a child who turned 6 on or before September 1 preceding the beginning of the current school year is exempt from the requirement if their parent or legal guardian informed the school district in writing that the parent or legal guardian will delay enrolling the child in a public full-time school for one school year so that they can better meet the child’s needs for cognitive, social, or physical development.

Pennsylvania Compulsory Education Law

The requirement generally applies to children of “compulsory school age,” which means from 6 until they turn 18.

24 Pennsylvania Statutes Section 13-1327 provides that every child of compulsory school age must attend a day school in which the subjects and activities prescribed by the state board of education are taught in the English language. However, a child who is 15 or 16 may enroll as a day student in certain types of trade schools or business schools if they get certain permissions. (A child who is 15 must get the approval of the district superintendent and the Secretary of Education, while a child who is 16 must get the approval of the district superintendent.) Instruction to children of compulsory school age in a home education program is considered to comply with the requirement.

Certain children may be exempt from the compulsory attendance requirement, such as:

• Children who are unable to profit from further public school attendance
• Children who are 16 or older and are regularly engaged in useful and lawful employment or service, while holding an employment certificate
• Children who are 15 or older and are engaged in farm work or domestic service in a private home on a permit issued by school authorities
• Children who are 14 or older and are engaged in farm work or domestic service in a private home on a permit, and who have completed a certain level of education

In some school districts, children who live 2 miles or more from the closest public school may be exempt if free transportation to school is not provided.

Rhode Island Compulsory Education Law

The requirement generally applies to children who turn 6 on or before September 1 but have not turned 18.

Rhode Island General Laws Section 16-19-1 provides that a child who turns 6 on or before September 1 of a school year, or is enrolled in kindergarten, and has not yet turned 18 must regularly attend a public day school when public schools are in session in the city or town where they live. However, attendance is not obligatory in the following situations:

• The child has attended an approved private day school
• The child has attended an approved course of at-home instruction
• The child has received a waiver of the requirement upon proof that the child has an alternative learning plan for obtaining a high school diploma or its equivalent
• The physical or mental condition of the child makes their attendance at school inexpedient or impracticable
• The child was excluded from school due to another law or regulation

Section 16-19-2 outlines the requirements that a private school or at-home instruction must meet for the purposes of satisfying the compulsory education requirement.

South Carolina Compulsory Education Law

The requirement generally applies to children who are at least 5 before September 1 but under 17.

South Carolina Code of Laws Section 59-65-10 provides that a parent or guardian must require their child to regularly attend school from the school year in which the child is 5 years old before September 1 until the child turns 17 or graduates from high school. Any of the following schools meets this requirement:

• A public or private school or kindergarten approved by the state board of education
• A member school of the South Carolina Independent Schools’ Association or the South Carolina Association of Christian Schools, or a similar organization
• A parochial, denominational, or church-related school
• Other programs approved by the state board of education

Exceptions apply to certain types of children, such as:

• Children who have graduated from high school or received the equivalent of a high school education
• Children who are unable to attend school due to a physical or mental disability, as shown by an appropriate certificate
• Children who have completed the eighth grade and are determined by the court to be legally and gainfully employed, and their employment is necessary for the maintenance of their home
• Children who are 16 and whose further attendance is determined by a court to be disruptive to the educational program of the school, unproductive of further learning, or not in the best interest of the child

If the child is not yet 6 on or before September 1 in a school year, their parent or guardian may elect for the child not to attend kindergarten. They must sign a document indicating this decision and provide it to the governing body of the school district.

South Dakota Compulsory Education Law

The requirement generally applies to children who are at least 5 by September 1 but have not turned 18.

South Dakota Codified Laws Section 13-27-1 provides that a person who has control of a child who is not younger than 5 or older than 6 by September 1, or who is at least 6 by September 1 but has not exceeded the age of 18, must cause the child to regularly attend school until the child turns 18, unless they have graduated or are excused for certain narrow circumstances provided by statute. A qualifying school program may be public, non-public, or alternative instruction. A child must attend kindergarten until they turn 7. However, the compulsory education requirement is met if a child who is at least 16 enrolls in a high school equivalency test preparation program and successfully completes the test or turns 18.

Section 13-27-1.1 outlines a religious exemption for certain children of compulsory school age who have successfully completed the first eight grades. To fall within this exemption, the child or their parents must be members of a church or religious denomination that objects to public high school education, and the church or religious denomination must provide a regularly supervised program of instruction in which a child participates in learning activities appropriate to their likely adult occupation.

Tennessee Compulsory Education Law

The requirement generally applies to children between 6 and 17 years old, inclusive.

Tennessee Code Section 49-6-3001 provides that every parent or other person in control of a child between 6 and 17 years of age (inclusive) must cause the child to attend public or non-public school. A non-public school includes a church-related school, a home school, or a private school. The statute provides certain exceptions, such as situations when:

• The child has received a diploma or another graduation certificate from a secondary high school
• The child is enrolled and making satisfactory progress in a course leading to a GED certificate or has obtained a GED
• The child is 6 or younger, and their parent or guardian has filed a notice of intent to conduct a home school
• The child is enrolled in a home school and has turned 17
• The child is mentally or physically incapacitated to perform school duties
• The child is 17, and their continued compulsory attendance undermines good order and discipline and the instruction of other students, while not providing a substantial benefit to the child

A parent or guardian with a good and substantial reason, as agreed by the local board of education, may withdraw their child from a public school. However, they must place the child in a public school designated by the local board of education or a non-public school within 30 days after withdrawal.

Texas Compulsory Education Law

The requirement generally applies to children who are at least 6 but have not turned 19.

Texas Education Code Section 25.085 provides that a child who is at least 6, or younger than 6 and previously enrolled in first grade, but not yet 19 must attend school. The law also requires a child to attend school upon enrolling in pre-kindergarten or kindergarten. Section 25.086 provides numerous exceptions to the requirement, such as situations when:

• The child attends a private or parochial school that includes a study of good citizenship in its course
• The child is at least 17 and has received a high school diploma or high school equivalency certificate
• The child is at least 16 and is attending a course of instruction to prepare for the high school equivalency examination (if certain requirements are met)
• The child is at least 16 and is enrolled in a high school diploma program under Chapter 18 of the Education Code
• The child is enrolled in the Texas Academy of Mathematics and Science, the Texas Academy of Leadership in the Humanities, or the Texas Academy of International Studies
• The child has a physical or mental condition that is temporary and remediable but makes their attendance infeasible

A person who chooses to enroll in school or attend school after their 19th birthday must attend school for each school day during the entire period for which the program of instruction is offered.

Utah Compulsory Education Law

The requirement generally applies to children who are at least 6 but younger than 18.

Utah Code Section 53G-6-202 provides that the parent of a school-age child (defined as anyone with authority over a child who is at least 6 but younger than 18) must send the child to a public or regularly established private school. Section 53G-6-204 provides several exceptions, such as situations when:

• The child has already completed the work required for graduation from high school
• The child is in a physical or mental condition that makes their attendance inexpedient and impracticable
• Proper influences and adequate opportunities for education are provided in connection with the child’s employment
• The child is over 16 and unable to benefit from attendance at school due to inability or a continuing negative attitude toward school regulations and discipline
• The child’s parent files a signed and notarized affidavit with the child’s school district, stating that the child will attend a home school, and the parent assumes sole responsibility for the education of the child

In addition, a child over 16 may get a partial release from school to enter employment or attend a trade school if the child has completed the eighth grade.

Vermont Compulsory Education Law

16 Vermont Statutes Section 1121 provides that a person who has control of a child between the ages of 6 and 16 must cause the child to attend a public school, an approved or recognized independent school, an approved education program, or a home study program. The law provides exceptions for situations such as when:

• The child is mentally or physically unable to attend school
• The child has completed the 10th grade
• The child is excused by the superintendent or a majority of the school directors
• The child is attending a post-secondary school

Moreover, a person who has control of a child over 16 and allows them to become enrolled in a public school must cause the child to attend the school continually for the full number of school days in the term, unless the child is mentally or physically unable to continue or is excused by the superintendent or a majority of the school directors.

Virginia Compulsory Education Law

The requirement generally applies to children who have turned 5 on or before September 30 and have not turned 18.

Code of Virginia Section 22.1-254 provides that a parent or other person who has control of a child who has turned 5 on or before September 30 of a school year and has not turned 18 must cause the child to attend a public school or a private, denominational, or parochial school. Alternatively, they can have the child taught by a tutor or provide for home instruction of the child. The requirement also may be satisfied by causing the child to attend an alternative program of study or work/study offered by a public, private, denominational, or parochial school, or a degree-granting institution of higher education. For a child who is 5, the requirement may be met if they attend a public educational pre-kindergarten program, or a private, denominational, or parochial educational pre-kindergarten program.

The law provides for mandatory exemptions from attendance based on conscientious opposition to attendance due to a bona fide religious training or belief, or based on a justified concern for the child’s health or reasonable apprehension for their safety. A school board also may excuse a child who cannot benefit from education at a school. A child who is at least 16 may meet the requirement if an individual student alternative education plan has been developed for them.

Washington Compulsory Education Law

The requirement generally applies to children who are at least 8 and under 18.

Revised Code of Washington Section 28A.225.010 provides that a parent or other person with custody of a child who is at least 8 and under 18 must cause the child to attend the public school of the district where they live. The law provides several exemptions, such as situations when:

• The child is attending an approved private school
• The child is receiving home-based instruction
• The child is attending an education center
• The school district superintendent has excused the child from attendance because they are physically or mentally unable to attend school
• The child is at least 16 and has already met graduation requirements or received a certificate of educational competence
• The child is at least 16 and is regularly and lawfully employed, and they are emancipated or have gotten consent from their parent that they should not be required to attend school

The law describes in detail what home-based instruction must involve to qualify for an exemption, while noting that these provisions should be broadly interpreted.

Washington, D.C. Compulsory Education Law

The requirement generally applies to children who are 5 or older (on or before September 30) but not yet 18.

District of Columbia Code Section 38-202 provides that a parent or other person who has custody of a minor who is at least 5 (or will turn 5 on or before September 30) must place the minor in regular attendance in an educational institution until the minor turns 18. A minor who is 17 may be allowed flexible school hours if they are lawfully, gainfully, and regularly employed, although this does not provide a basis for fully excusing them from attending school or putting their timely graduation at risk. The requirement does not apply to a minor who has satisfactorily completed their senior high school course of study and been granted a high school diploma or the equivalent.

An educational institution is broadly defined as a public school, a public charter school, an independent school, a private school, a parochial school, or a private instructor.

West Virginia Compulsory Education Law

The requirement generally applies to children who are at least 6 but under 17.

West Virginia Code Section 18-8-1a provides that compulsory school attendance begins with the school year when the child turns 6 before July 1 of the year, or when the child enrolls in a publicly funded kindergarten program, and continues until they turn 17, or for as long as they continue to be enrolled in a school system if that is later. A child may be removed from a publicly funded kindergarten program if their parent or guardian decides that their best interest would not be served by further attendance. Section 18-8-1 lists certain exemptions to the requirement, such as situations when:

• The child is attending a private, parochial, or other approved school
• The child is receiving home instruction (and certain complex requirements are met)
• The child participates in a learning pod or microschool
• The child is physically or mentally incapable of attending school and performing school work
• Conditions that make school attendance impossible or hazardous to the life, health, or safety of the child exist
• The child has graduated from a standard senior high school or completed an alternate secondary program
• The child has been granted a work permit (not available for anyone who has not completed the eighth grade)
• There is a condition of extreme destitution in the child’s home

Any cause or condition that may form the basis of an exemption is subject to confirmation by the county authority for school attendance.

Wisconsin Compulsory Education Law

Wisconsin Statutes Section 118.15 provides that a person who has control of a child between the ages of 6 and 18 must cause the child to attend school regularly during the full period and hours that the public, private, or tribal school in which the child should be enrolled is in session until the end of the term in which the child turns 18. Similarly, a person who has control of a child enrolled in 5-year-old kindergarten must cause the child to attend school regularly. The law provides various exceptions, such as situations when:

• The child is at least 16 and a child at risk, and they are attending a technical college (if the child and their parent or guardian agree that the child will participate in a program leading to their high school graduation)
• The child is 16, and the child and their parent or guardian agree that the child will participate in a program or curriculum modification leading to their high school graduation
• The child is 17 or older, and the child and their parent or guardian agree that the child will participate in a program or curriculum modification leading to their high school graduation or a high school equivalency diploma
• The child is temporarily not in proper physical or mental condition to attend a school program but can be expected to return when their condition improves
• The child has been excused by the school board in accordance with its written attendance policy and with the written approval of the child’s parent or guardian

Instruction in a home-based private educational program that meets certain statutory criteria may be substituted for attendance at a public or private school.

Wyoming Compulsory Education Law

The requirement generally applies to children who are at least 7 and have not yet turned 16 or completed the 10th grade.

Wyoming Statutes Section 21-4-102 provides that a parent or other person who has control of a child who has turned 7 on or before August 1 and has not yet turned 16 or completed the 10th grade is required to send the child to a public or private school each year. A private school includes any non-public, elementary, or secondary school providing a basic academic educational program for children, such as parochial and church or religious schools and home-based educational programs.

However, the board of trustees of a school district may exempt a child from the requirement in certain situations. These include when the board believes that compulsory attendance would undermine the mental or physical health of the child or other children in the school, or when the board feels that compulsory school attendance might cause undue hardship.

A parent or other person who has control of a child under the age of 18 and has not notified the school district of enrolling the child in a different school district or in a private school or home-based educational program must meet in person with a school district counselor or administrator to provide written consent to the withdrawal of the child from school.

Last reviewed October 2023

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Global Education

By Hannah Ritchie, Veronika Samborska, Natasha Ahuja, Esteban Ortiz-Ospina and Max Roser

A good education offers individuals the opportunity to lead richer, more interesting lives. At a societal level, it creates opportunities for humanity to solve its pressing problems.

The world has gone through a dramatic transition over the last few centuries, from one where very few had any basic education to one where most people do. This is not only reflected in the inputs to education – enrollment and attendance – but also in outcomes, where literacy rates have greatly improved.

Getting children into school is also not enough. What they learn matters. There are large differences in educational outcomes : in low-income countries, most children cannot read by the end of primary school. These inequalities in education exacerbate poverty and existing inequalities in global incomes .

On this page, you can find all of our writing and data on global education.

Key insights on Global Education

The world has made substantial progress in increasing basic levels of education.

Access to education is now seen as a fundamental right – in many cases, it’s the government’s duty to provide it.

But formal education is a very recent phenomenon. In the chart, we see the share of the adult population – those older than 15 – that has received some basic education and those who haven’t.

In the early 1800s, fewer than 1 in 5 adults had some basic education. Education was a luxury; in all places, it was only available to a small elite.

But you can see that this share has grown dramatically, such that this ratio is now reversed. Less than 1 in 5 adults has not received any formal education.

This is reflected in literacy data , too: 200 years ago, very few could read and write. Now most adults have basic literacy skills.

What you should know about this data

• Basic education is defined as receiving some kind of formal primary, secondary, or tertiary (post-secondary) education.
• This indicator does not tell us how long a person received formal education. They could have received a full program of schooling, or may only have been in attendance for a short period. To account for such differences, researchers measure the mean years of schooling or the expected years of schooling .

Despite being in school, many children learn very little

International statistics often focus on attendance as the marker of educational progress.

However, being in school does not guarantee that a child receives high-quality education. In fact, in many countries, the data shows that children learn very little.

Just half – 48% – of the world’s children can read with comprehension by the end of primary school. It’s based on data collected over a 9-year period, with 2016 as the average year of collection.

This is shown in the chart, where we plot averages across countries with different income levels. 1

The situation in low-income countries is incredibly worrying, with 90% of children unable to read by that age.

This can be improved – even among high-income countries. The best-performing countries have rates as low as 2%. That’s more than four times lower than the average across high-income countries.

Making sure that every child gets to go to school is essential. But the world also needs to focus on what children learn once they’re in the classroom.

Millions of children learn only very little. How can the world provide a better education to the next generation?

Research suggests that many children – especially in the world’s poorest countries – learn only very little in school. What can we do to improve this?

• This data does not capture total literacy over someone’s lifetime. Many children will learn to read eventually, even if they cannot read by the end of primary school. However, this means they are in a constant state of “catching up” and will leave formal education far behind where they could be.

Children across the world receive very different amounts of quality learning

There are still significant inequalities in the amount of education children get across the world.

This can be measured as the total number of years that children spend in school. However, researchers can also adjust for the quality of education to estimate how many years of quality learning they receive. This is done using an indicator called “learning-adjusted years of schooling”.

On the map, you see vast differences across the world.

In many of the world’s poorest countries, children receive less than three years of learning-adjusted schooling. In most rich countries, this is more than 10 years.

Across most countries in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa – where the largest share of children live – the average years of quality schooling are less than 7.

• Learning-adjusted years of schooling merge the quantity and quality of education into one metric, accounting for the fact that similar durations of schooling can yield different learning outcomes.
• Learning-adjusted years is computed by adjusting the expected years of school based on the quality of learning, as measured by the harmonized test scores from various international student achievement testing programs. The adjustment involves multiplying the expected years of school by the ratio of the most recent harmonized test score to 625. Here, 625 signifies advanced attainment on the TIMSS (Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study) test, with 300 representing minimal attainment. These scores are measured in TIMSS-equivalent units.

Hundreds of millions of children worldwide do not go to school

While most children worldwide get the opportunity to go to school, hundreds of millions still don’t.

In the chart, we see the number of children who aren’t in school across primary and secondary education.

This number was around 260 million in 2019.

Many children who attend primary school drop out and do not attend secondary school. That means many more children or adolescents are missing from secondary school than primary education.

Access to basic education: almost 60 million children of primary school age are not in school

The world has made a lot of progress in recent generations, but millions of children are still not in school.

The gender gap in school attendance has closed across most of the world

Globally, until recently, boys were more likely to attend school than girls. The world has focused on closing this gap to ensure every child gets the opportunity to go to school.

Today, these gender gaps have largely disappeared. In the chart, we see the difference in the global enrollment rates for primary, secondary, and tertiary (post-secondary) education. The share of children who complete primary school is also shown.

We see these lines converging over time, and recently they met: rates between boys and girls are the same.

For tertiary education, young women are now more likely than young men to be enrolled.

While the differences are small globally, there are some countries where the differences are still large: girls in Afghanistan, for example, are much less likely to go to school than boys.

Research & Writing

Talent is everywhere, opportunity is not. We are all losing out because of this.

Access to basic education: almost 60 million children of primary school age are not in school, interactive charts on global education.

This data comes from a paper by João Pedro Azevedo et al.

João Pedro Azevedo, Diana Goldemberg, Silvia Montoya, Reema Nayar, Halsey Rogers, Jaime Saavedra, Brian William Stacy (2021) – “ Will Every Child Be Able to Read by 2030? Why Eliminating Learning Poverty Will Be Harder Than You Think, and What to Do About It .” World Bank Policy Research Working Paper 9588, March 2021.

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February 4, 2014 by Christie Hunter

Compulsory Education in The United States: A Brief History

February 4, 2014 04:55 by Christie Hunter    [About the Author]

Education - an early history

Early forms of educational systems have been detected as far back as ancient Egypt. The first culture to really create a system of notable education was in Judea, where they were adamant about education, regardless of class. Elementary schools were established for boys and those who showed some brightness continued learning in the Synagogue. In ancient Greece and Rome, education was meant to create citizens ready for life in society. Rome wanted to create good orators, so there was a strong emphasis on Latin, literature and discipline. [1]

Education in The Middle Ages

The Middle Ages were dark times for education in Europe, and if it had not been for the church, education may have been lost completely. In contrast to early schools, medieval schools were non-graded, meaning all ages were taught together. They were cold, dreary places, really intended to create clergymen. In the 1400’s in the Americas, it was the Aztecs who were actually the first civilization to create a recognized compulsory education system for children of all classes. The Aztec Empire lasted from 1428 until 1521, until their defeat by the Spaniards. The system did not take root.

The Renaissance and Reformation

The Renaissance in Europe saw major conceptual changes to education. For the first time, education was seen as a happy experience, not the disciplined, dreary experience of the past. More subjects were added to the curriculum as well, truly creating a well rounded education in letters and science. This “happy” idea of teaching did not last long.

The real and lasting changes in education began with the Reformation in Germany. School once again became a discipline. The new religion of Protestantism wanted to defend their faith so everything pagan was removed from the curriculum and once again emphasis was on  drilling the Greek and Latin languages. The innovation at the time of the Reformation was the introduction of vernacular schools, that is, local schools where poor children could learn reading, writing, and religion in their dialect. Martin Luther really advocated for compulsory education in 1524 in Germany and Strasbourg passed legislation accordingly in 1598. This was followed shortly thereafter by the School Establishment Act in Scotland in 1616, which was an early form of public schooling in that it mandated that parishes with the means to pay for a school did so. [2]

Frederick the Great of Prussia

It was in 1763 that public school was changed forever, as Frederick the Great of Prussia, a country that used to exist between what is now Germany and Poland, introduced a centrally controlled compulsory system of education. The concept of the final exam was implemented in 1788 and was required to continue on into the professional world. Additionally, in 1810, Prussia introduced teaching standard certificates, which raised the level of teaching. Although attendance was supposed to be mandatory, it was not actually enforced by law until 1840 in Austria.His tax-funded education system was an eight year course of mandatory schooling. It is said that the King of Prussia had political need to create such schools, as he was trying to steer influence away from the increasingly powerful aristocracy and back to the King. In some ways, the schools were created to teach children to do the will of the King by not only teaching reading, writing and arithmetic, but duty, ethics and obedience. [3]

The Prussian Model and the United States

Frederick the Great’s model of education quickly gained a lot of traction, as leaders from many nations flocked to adapt it. In 1790, Pennsylvania called for free education for poor children, assuming that richer parents could pay for their child’s education and in 1805 New York followed similarly, by providing educations for poorer children. By 1870, all states had free elementary schools. [4]

In 1837, Horace Mann became head of the newly formed Massachusetts Board of Education. In 1848, Massachusetts created a reform school for children who refused to go to public school and in 1851 it also created the first compulsory education law. Mann based his educational system ideas on the Prussian model and called for the same content in education. Schools had been largely made up of classrooms of groups of students of all ages. It was Mann who took the idea of age grading from the Prussians and put it to use in the United States. This model spread to all the states and in 1917, Mississippi became the last state to require education. By 1918, every state required that children finish elementary school. [5]

For the next century, public school in the United States continued to expand and evolve into the system we currently know today.

 _______________________________________________________________________________________________________ 

[1] [“The History of Education” Edited By: Robert Guisepi http://history-world.org/history_of_education.htm]

[2] [“Compulsory Education” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compulsory_education ]

[3] [“ Prussian education system” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prussian_education_system] 

[4] [“Historical Timeline Of Public Education In The US”  http://www.arc.org/content/view/100/217/] 

[5] [History of education in the United States”

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_education_in_the_United_States#Colonial_era]

About the Author

Christie Hunter is registered clinical counselor in British Columbia and co-founder of Theravive. She is a certified management accountant. She has a masters of arts in counseling psychology from Liberty University with specialty in marriage and family and a post-graduate specialty in trauma resolution. In 2007 she started Theravive with her husband in order to help make mental health care easily attainable and nonthreatening. She has a passion for gifted children and their education. You can reach Christie at 360-350-8627 or write her at christie - at - theravive.com.

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The importance of compulsory education

By Chu Zhaohui | China Daily | Updated: 2019-07-22 07:30

Among the remarkable achievements of the People's Republic of China in the 70 years since its founding is the nine-year compulsory education system. Thanks to the nine-year compulsory education, China has one of the highest literacy rates in the world, which is a great achievement considering that in 1949, the country's primary-school enrollment rate was only about 25 percent.

Efforts to raise the literacy rate in China didn't yield the desired results until the nine-year compulsory education system was introduced in 1986. The rapid growth of the Chinese economy played a big role in making the literacy campaign a success, especially because governments at all levels included the progress in the nine-year compulsory education system in the officials' work performance.

On Jan 1, 2001, the Chinese government declared that the country had basically succeeded in promoting the nine-year compulsory education from the primary to the middle school level and thus eradicated illiteracy in most parts of the country.

The battle against illiteracy then shifted to the country's western and poverty-stricken areas. By 2010, more than 98 percent of the country's young adults were covered by the compulsory education system. As such, less than 2 percent of the country's young adults and less than 5 percent adults were illiterate in 2010.

China completed the task of implementing the compulsory education system in the country in November 2011. In 2018, the nine-year graduation rate was 94.2 percent, and the country had 213,800 elementary and secondary schools with 149.9 million students.

Moreover, since reform and opening-up significantly raised the demand for talents, the college enrollment rate for 18-to 22-year-olds increased from 1.55 percent in 1978 to 9.76 percent in 1998. The rate climbed to 15 percent in 2002, three years after the universities began increasing enrollments in 1999. And by 2018, China had 2,663 higher education institutions with more than 1.67 million full-time teachers and 38.33 million students.

In particular, the emergence of private educational institutions has broken the monopoly of State-funded schools, enhanced the efficiency of educational resources and given students another option to fulfill their academic dreams. They have thus made a big contribution to the development of education in China.

From 2002 to 2017, the increase in the numbers of private institutions and students in those institutions were 120,000 and 40 million. During the same period, the numbers of State-funded institutions and students in those schools declined by 280,000 and 25 million. But 99 percent of the education funds, which increased from 350 billion yuan ($50.90 billion) to 3,400 billion yuan, were spent on public schools.

In other words, public schools spent about 10 times more funds in 2017 than 15 years ago but enrolled fewer students than private schools.

However, despite China making great achievements on the education front, it still faces certain problems. For instance, given the gap between the standard of education in cities and rural areas, even among different schools in cities, a large number of rural students seek to study in cities, leading to overcrowded classes in many schools－over 56 students in one classroom. In fact, in 2018 there were 178,700 "super-classrooms" in primary schools and 86,300 in middle schools, accounting for 6.49 percent and 8.62 percent of the total classes in the country.

This calls for measures to be taken to ensure compulsory education is provided uniformly and more fairly to students. A large percentage of the more than 15.2 million students studying in private elementary and secondary schools last year were "left behind children", who are disadvantaged as their parents' incomes are lower than a majority of households and many of them can't get education subsidies as government funding is yet to flow into private schools.

The nine-year compulsory education system needs to be made more efficient, too. School buildings and classrooms have been refurbished in recent years, but poor teaching methods and unqualified teachers still make education less attractive for some school-age children.

Therefore, the education authorities have to take measures to improve the quality of education in rural schools. It is also important to nurture creative minds that in the future will help China become an innovative and prosperous economy.

The author is a senior researcher at the National Institute of Education Sciences. The views don't necessarily represent those of China Daily.

Rep. Burlison: It’s time to expand education freedom and choice in Missouri

America’s failing education system desperately needs reforms to return power to families and away from the government. That’s why Republican lawmakers nationwide have been leading the charge in passing education choice policies.

As President Donald Trump said four years ago, “Each child is a gift from God who has boundless potential and deserves a fair shot at the American Dream.”

But to have that fair shot, Trump explained, “children and their families must be free to pursue an educational environment that matches their individual learning style, develops their unique talents, and prepares them with the knowledge and character needed for fulfilling and productive lives.”

Three years ago, Missouri’s Republican legislature heard this call and implemented the Missouri Empowerment Scholarship Accounts policy (MOScholars), which empowers families with the freedom to choose the schools and other learning environments that align with their values and best meet their children’s learning needs. Under MOScholars, low-income families and parents of students with special needs can receive scholarships worth $6,375 to spend on tuition, textbooks, tutoring, curriculum, educational therapy, transportation costs, and more.

Now the legislature recently passed a bill to expand MOScholars to more families.

Sponsored by Sen. Andrew Koenig, SB 727 expands eligibility for MOScholars from 200% to 300% of the federal poverty level, or from $62,400 to $93,600 for a family of four. Under the previous law, the children of a typical firefighter , police officer or registered nurse in Missouri were not eligible, but now that SB 727 has been signed into law, they will be.

The bill doesn’t go as far as I would like — ideally, all students would be eligible — but it’s clearly a step in the right direction for Missouri families.

Why? Because school choice is one of the most important things we can do if we are going to save America and save Missouri. The alternative is to continue on the same path and believe that somehow the current style education — government-run schools indoctrinating our children into anti-American, anti-freedom beliefs — will somehow produce anything but more socialists.

There has been a lot of falsehoods and conspiracy theories targeted at conservatives in an effort to stamp out school choice.

Some critics of school choice have claimed that education choice policies like MOScholars increase regulations on private and home schools. These concerns are understandable but misplaced. If that were true, I certainly wouldn’t support it.

Another false claim being made is that the bill would ban guns in homes used for homeschooling. That is simply untrue, as the Missouri Firearms Coalition has made clear.

Critics have misinterpreted a line in the bill which defines a “home school” as a type of school for purposes of meeting the state’s compulsory education requirement. However, this language is not new — in fact, it is directly imported from the state’s existing homeschool statute , and has never been interpreted to incorporate all the regulations governing public, charter, and private schools.

The reality is that the conservative lawmakers who enacted MOScholars made sure that guardrails against government control are in place. For example, the statute already ensures that a private school which voluntarily accepts MOScholars funds from participating families “shall not be considered an agent of the state or federal government due to its acceptance of the payment” and “shall not be required to alter its creed, practices, admissions policy, or curriculum.”

I greatly respect homeschoolers who want to pay their own way and keep their distance from government interference. My own children do part of their schooling at home. To alleviate their concerns, the bill even explicitly distinguishes between traditional homeschoolers, who do not use MOScholars funds, and “family paced education” (FPE) schools, which do.

However, there are lots of families with children stuck in failing government schools where their children are too often indoctrinated with woke ideology. Our state and our country would be better off if those families had access to MOScholars so they could choose schools that work for their kids and reflect their values.

As Corey DeAngelis of the American Federation of Children and Jason Bedrick of The Heritage Foundation recently wrote at Fox News , “States with more school choice generally have more freedom to homeschool.”

DeAngelis and Bedrick explain that many of the best states for homeschooling according to the Home School Legal Defense Association also have universal or nearly universal school choice policies. Likewise, most of the worst states for homeschooling don’t have any school choice policies at all.

Education choice policies put parents in charge instead of politicians and unelected bureaucrats. Conservatives who support stronger families and less government should support school choice.

Spartacus Educational

Orthodox church.

Most of the people living in the Russian Empire were members of the Russian Orthodox Church. In 1721 the Orthodox Church became a government department called the Holy Synod. It was run by the Chief Procurator, an official appointed by the Tsar.

Completely under the control of the government, the Orthodox Church played an important role in the various russification campaigns (forbidding the use of local languages and the suppression of religious customs). t also became closely associated with the Jewish Pogroms that took place during the last part of the 19th century.

As a state department the Russian Orthodox Church lost the right to plead with the Tsar on behalf of the poor and dispossessed. The church was therefore seen by those seeking reform as a reactionary institution condoning serfdom .

The Bolsheviks , as Marxists , regarded religion as the "opium of the masses". After the October Revolution the Soviet government were extremely hostile to the Church.

In January 1918 the Soviet government passed legislation that attempted to separate the Church from the state and education. They also deprived the Church of all legal functions concerning the family and marriage.

During the Civil War all church buildings, funds and property were confiscated. It is estimated that around a thousand priests were killed during this period.

A decree passed on 14th April 1929 established that the Church could not own property nor establish central funds, or make compulsory levies. Their religious activities are confined to worship within the registered congregation. They were also forbidden to engage in missionary or welfare work.

None of the new cities and industrial centres, built under the Five Year Plans , included churches. Old churches were pulled down and by the 1930s Moscow only had a dozen churches compared to over 200 before the October Revolution .

In 1937 there was 30,000 registered religious communities. During the purges this figure dropped significantly and by 1939 it was only 20,000. However, it was estimated that there was a large number of unregistered congregations.

Russia: A History