Valérie Lussi Borer

‘A Necropolis of Numbers’: Data Production in Switzerland's Decentralised Education System:

Since 1876 the educational landscape in Switzerland has been made up of more than 20 distinct education systems that are largely managed by the cantons themselves, with minimum interference from the federal state. However, approximately a century ago, Switzerland embarked on a policy of harmonisation, which draws on various data sources that are progressively shaped to serve this aim. Why are data important and what exactly are these data? Who needs, who collects and who shapes them? To what end? This article looks at the processes of collecting, comparing and shaping data through the journal published for close to 100 years by the Swiss Conference of Cantonal Ministers of Public Education. This journal was the first to produce yearly statistics on Swiss education at the end of the nineteenth century. The authors compile and compare the two versions of the journal — one in German, the other in French — and focus on two periods which seem particularly relevant for the history of statistics — namely, from the end of the nineteenth century to the First World War, and the 1960s-1970s.