Education in Flanders : balancing social and economic rationales while tackling early school leaving

Abstract: Tackling early school leaving is one of the main EU 2020 targets and Flanders responsi - ble for education policy in the Dutch speaking part of Belgium fully endorsed these targets. However, educational issues are often heavily politicised in Flanders, and in particular the funda - mental restructuring of secondary education is seen as one of the most salient issues. In this paper we study the tensions between a social equity and an economic rationale underlying this debate. A general finding is that the position of Flanders in the PISA rankings is often recuperated by both sides of... Mehr ...