![Sample our Education journals, sign in here to start your access, latest two full volumes FREE to you for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5932/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Education.jpg"})
Abstract
Denominational schooling makes up an important part of European educational systems. Given its specificity, denominational schooling can be expected to place a greater weight on values teaching and moral education. It also may be more successful in creating a warm and caring atmosphere, thus helping students to better emotionally connect to the school community. We compare public and publicly supported private (as a proxy to denominational) schools on 2 dimensions, namely the emotional integration with the rest of the school community and the concern and feelings of responsibility towards the environment. Except for Austria, Belgium, and Spain, no evidence could be found that the type of the school has any impact on the reported psychological adaptation to the school. In these 3 countries, publicly supported private schools tend to be more successful in integrating their students. Also, students in public and private dependent schools were equally environment oriented.
Acknowledgements
This article is one of the products of the cross-national project “Religious education in a multicultural society: School and home in comparative context”, directed by Emer Smyth (Economic & Social Research Institute, Dublin) and financed by the European Commision within the 7th Frame Work (FP7-SSH-2007-1- REMC). An earlier version was presented at the second biennial meeting of the EARLI special interest group 18 Educational Effectiveness in Leuven, Belgium, August 25–27, 2010.
Notes
1. The term secularization can be taken to have several meanings; here, secularization is understood as the declining significance of the role of the Church over the social sphere and the weakening of “institutionalized” religious practice.
2. The role of the Church used to be very strong in the provision of health and welfare services, as well; although it continues to maintain a presence in these areas, its authority and involvement have declined and been replaced by state institutions.
3. This argument has been strongly made especially in American educational research, where neo-liberal ideas have been debated much more, but can also be found in the British context.
4. Both Belgium and The Netherlands have experienced bitter cultural and school wars centered around the issue of control over educational establishments; similar situations could be found in France, Italy, and parts of Germany.
5. A reverse argument has been formulated as well: Given that denominational schools tend to cater to their own group primarily, they become sectarian and thus hinder integration into the larger society and foster intolerance towards those not from the same religious group.
6. The Program for International Student Assessment is carried out once every 3 years by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD); see http://www.pisa.oecd.org/pages/0,2987,en_32252351_32235731_1_1_1_1_1,00.html
7. Detailed descriptions of the national educational systems (rules governing the private sector included) can be found in the Eurybase database Executive Agency – Education, Audiovisual & Culture (2005–2008), see http://eacea.ec.europa.eu/education/eurydice/eurybase_en.php
8. An important exception to this general system is the UK (England and Scotland), where denominational schools are more thoroughly integrated with the public system, albeit the Church (especially the Catholic Church) retains important attributes in running the school; in the PISA dataset, these schools are labeled public, therefore neither England nor Scotland could be included in the analysis.
9. In Ireland, almost 100% of grant-aided schools are denominational, in The Netherlands, around 80% of grant-aided schools are denominational, while in Luxembourg, the figure is 83% for the secondary level (Euridyce, 2000).
10. The Civic Education Study (CivEd) conducted by the International Educational Association (IAE) contains more non-cognitive attitudes, norms, and values of students (Prokic & Dronkers, 2010), but the measurement of the public/private nature of the schools is even more meager than that of PISA.
11. In particular, in many European countries the overwhelming majority of schools are public; moreover, public financing is restricted to the public sector; countries where the Orthodox Church has been dominant have also lacked a tradition of Church-established schooling, separate from the public network.
12. While basic information on students and schools is available in all three waves of PISA, particular issues such as attitudes toward the environment or psychological well-being in the school have been probed only in particular waves. Questions on student psychological integration have been asked during 2000 and (in a slightly restricted form) in 2003, whereas items containing information on environmental attitudes can be found only in the 2006 wave.
13. Scale values have been constructed by averaging all non-missing items belonging to the scale; if all constituent items are missing, the value of the composite scale is set to missing as well; this approach allows for a minimization of missing values in the data.
14. Calculating the propensity scores means that students are matched on one dimension instead of all the dimensions which are used to calculate the propensity score.
15. Such heterogeneity is especially relevant when subjects self-select into the treatment as in this case; students that attend private school have actually made a conscious choice to attend this type of educational establishment.
16. The matching techniques usually trade accuracy for efficiency; the most accurate is the nearest neighbor with caliper, as this ensures that the best match and only cases with a good match are kept in the analysis; however, this greatly reduced the number of cases, since all subjects that cannot be matched are discarded and the standard errors increase accordingly; Mahalanobis distance matching places greater weight on the variables which are included in computing the distance; however, it is the method most prone to bias in this case, since tolerance bands have been set relatively high.
17. For an overview of regulations governing private schooling in Europe, see the Eurybase database Executive Agency – Education, Audiovisual & Culture (2005–2008), http://eacea.ec.europa.eu/education/eurydice/eurybase_en.php
18. Not all variables that form a theoretical point that could potentially influence selection processes are present in our dataset; nevertheless, we do control for a large number of individual and school characteristics.
19. Admittedly, the freedom of establishment means that all private schools receive government support as long a they comply with the rules set forward by the relevant authority; as a result, many Waldorf, Montessori, et cetera, schools receive financial help alongside more traditional denominational schools.
20. The increased salience of environmental issues for Catholic Church teachings is illustrated by the new list of modern sins, released in 2008, 1,500 years after the original one; polluting the environment is listed as a mortal sin.
21. The other interpretation would be that there are strong social desirability issues when asking these questions; however, there is no reason to expect that these should affect one school sector more.
22. The Netherlands is probably the best example of a country with a large section of its population declaring no denominational affiliation but with a very strong and vibrant denominational school sector.