Education

Abstract

Of all the subjects on which statistical material exists, probably none shows less uniformity, both over time and between countries, than education. There is no universal definition of what constitutes a primary school, or a general secondary school, and even that of a university has shown considerable flexibility in the recent past. Moreover, there have been several major reorganizations of school systems in practically every country, and minor changes have been very frequent. Furthermore, the statistics of pupils and teachers have not always been collected in a consistent manner, even within the same school system. In addition, the date in the school year to which the statistics relate has been altered on various occasions; the exact meaning of the data has changed, sometimes referring to all pupils on the register, sometimes to those in regular attendance, sometimes to those present on a particular day, and sometimes to those present when an inspector visited. Moreover, private schools have not always been included in the data collection process, and in some cases statistics for tertiary education have not distinguished between different types of institution, teacher-training even being included quite frequently with secondary education. Nevertheless, for all the impossibility of making precise comparisons over long periods of time, and, even more, between many countries, when used with care these statistics do provide useful comparative material, even if only of a very rough nature.