Secondary school systems and inequality of educational opportunity in contemporary societies
In modern societies, education is often seen as a key factor for economic and technological development. The emphasis on individual achievement and the ideal of equal educational opportunities have dominated contemporary school reform debates and political agendas across the world (OECD 2004) Influenced by the results of the PISA studies, educational reformers are aiming to improve both the efficiency and the equity of their school systems (Hanushek and Woessmann 2010) Whereas the organization of primary education is almost uniform across modern societies, systems of secondary school are still very different (Boli et al. 1985; Benavot and Resnik 2006) To understand why there is such a variety of educational differentiation in secondary education across countries today, we must look at the historical roots and legacies in the formation of national school systems (Benavot and Resnik 2006) Secondary education resulted from a long standing, uneven, and historically contingent process of systematization of schooling and educational forms that involved various logics, ideas, and adaptions until a globalized convergence gained momentum after the end of World War II. It is important to remember that the structure of secondary education served different needs in different nations and genuinely interacted with the dominant cultural, social, economic, and political settings in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. For instance, compared to the class based roots of European school systems, meritocratic and democratic ideals were introduced right from the start when developing the secondary school in the United States. This is best exemplified by the inclusive model of the American 'high school' (Benavot and Resnik 2006) In contrast, European models of education started out largely from much more elitist conceptions of