Equity and efficiency of compulsory schooling : is it necessary to choose and if so on what grounds ?

Denis Meuret (1)

1 IREDU - Institut de recherche sur l'éducation : Sociologie et Economie de l'Education

The last system of international indicators on which Norberto Bottani and I worked, together with other colleagues, concerned the equity of education systems in European countries (CERESE, 2995, 2003). I would like to take this opportunity to reply to two objections raised regarding that work. The first is that, as an objective, equity takes second place to efficiency. For example, the low dispersion of literacy scores among Italian students is immediately overridden, in the minds of the country's auditors, by their low average score, on the basis of the argument that a health system that cures a given illness better for rich patients than for poor patients is preferable to one that fails to cure it at all, if only because there is a hope in the former case that the benefits of the cure may later be extended to all. Does the same go for education ?

Mots clés: Compulsory Schooling . Educational systems; Equity; Efficiency

Mots clés: Système éducatif; Efficacité; Equité

Domaines: Education

Denis Meuret. Equity and efficiency of compulsory schooling : is it necessary to choose and if so on what grounds ?. Prospects, 2006, XXXVI (4), pp.389-410. ⟨10.1007/s11125-006-9004-8⟩. ⟨halshs-00176160⟩