Peter Henrik Raae

Denmark: New Links Between Education and Economics

The Danish educational system is described within general, societal and political frames. Both structures and discourses of education are changing, as all sectors of society are affected by an economic move towards a global marketplace. From 1980 and onwards the Nordic welfare state, created after the Second World War, has been gradually transforming into a competitive state. Parallel to this trend, and partly as a consequence of it, we see thorough restructurings of the public sector and educational politics. New public management trends like decentralisation, privatisation, top-down management and focus on outcome are accompanied by new accountability technologies like social contracts, quality reports and national testing. Furthermore, considerable effort is put into shifting the general discourse of education from a vision of participatory, democratic Bildung to a focus on academic knowledge and basic skills, because of the need to educate all students for employability on a competitive labour market in a competitive state.

Principals Think Organisation: Dilemmas in the Management of Today’s Education

This chapter demonstrates how a range of transnational trends is brought together in a complex discourse of modernisation. It calls attention to a complexity consisting of not only competing but also conflicting forms of reasoning about school and the school’s task. This presents schools’ management with tasks that increasingly seem to involve deciding how best to create those frameworks and limits around school as an institution and organisation that are best able to ensure the school’s integrity and allow space for its core activities, namely good teaching. Taking as its starting point in a concrete case – the implementation of a comprehensive national school reform – the chapter describes how principals attempt to cope with this new ambiguity by setting up a variety of notions about and models for organisation. The chapter claims that principals face increasing challenges to their ability to create structurally supported holistic conceptualisations defending the school against the fragmenting pressure coming from the world outside.