Elementary and Secondary Schools
SIC 8211
NAICS 611110
Elementary and secondary schools furnish academic training for scholars ranging in age from approximately 5 to 17 years. Courses of study usually are offered in age-level divisions (commonly known as grades in the United States), and schools generally subdivide younger and older groups of students into elementary and secondary schools, respectively. Included within this category are both public and private institutions. The industry includes parochial schools and military academies providing academic courses, as well as secondary schools that provide both academic and technical courses.
Most experts, government officials, and the general public agree that effective education is necessary for a nation's economic health. The world's industrialized nations, including such countries as the United States, France, Germany, Japan, and the United Kingdom, typically invest heavily in public education. By contrast, education in the developing world, while often a recognized priority of governments and families, receives considerably less support from the public treasury, with significant variation by nation and region. Consequently, economic opportunities for young people just out of secondary school are extremely variable around the world. In turn, weak economic growth in a particular part of the world can encourage surges of immigration to more affluent nations, which eventually leads to higher costs for administering, operating, and maintaining schools in the countries whose populations may burgeon from immigration inflows.
To compete in an increasingly global economy, national, regional, and local school officials and administrators in many countries examine educational operations in other economically successful countries. Interest thus has grown in developing international studies of education, and efforts to compile truly comparative educational statistics across nations have increased noticeably. For example, in 2004 the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) reported on worldwide education statistics with the "Global Education Digest." The comparative report looked at the educational systems, trends, goals, and standards of many countries around the globe. Among other findings, the study reported a significant correlation between a country's income and its emphasis on education at any level, with average time spent in formal schooling ranging from 4 to 17 years. In addition, the study found that 10 percent of students in 35 countries repeat primary grades, and in 38 countries repeat secondary grades.
Concern over developing a future workforce capable of meeting employer needs has led numerous educational institutions and employers to develop collaborative programs to train students for twenty-first century jobs. Enhanced programs for teaching reading, writing, and mathematics; new emphasis on "managerial" skills such as communication, decision making, and problem solving; and efforts to improve the variety and quality of vocational and technical skills-training programs have been the result. In many nations, school systems increasingly have emphasized training in computer literacy to give elementary and secondary school students the necessary skills and hands-on experience for computer use in college and industry.
Although educators around the world share the need to keep pace with changes in the global economy and even more rapid changes in technology, approaches to educational innovation have varied widely across countries. While the United States has clung to a "single-ladder" approach to education, with essentially one course of elementary and secondary study taken by all students, other nations have seen advantages in offering more specialized education to students beginning at an earlier age. Germany in particular has endorsed early differentiation between vocational and pre-university preparation. In the United Kingdom, the number of comprehensive secondary schools—those that somewhat resemble U.S. public high schools by including students on all academic paths—grew around the turn of the millennium. Additionally, egalitarian, "progressive" education was supplanted by more orthodox schooling in some parts of the United Kingdom in the late 1990s. However, the British continued to emphasize official testing in order to evaluate schools, determine student achievement, and steer students in academic or vocational directions. In France students are assured of carefully legislated curricula designed to provide equal opportunities to all students. Once reserved for the academic elite, the coveted French baccalauréat has been subdivided into academic and vocational tracks and is now awarded to all students who successfully complete their secondary studies. With Japanese legislation outlawing educational discrimination based on ability or potential, Japanese students are trained identically throughout elementary school, their achievement seemingly more closely related to parental example and expectation than to any particular government education policy. The Japanese have provided very little specialized vocational education; nonetheless, Japanese schools methodically support a strict work ethic for students.
Internationally, elementary and secondary school systems encompass a wide variety of institutions such as:
Government-funded elementary and secondary schools (known as "public" schools in the United States);
Self-standing, publicly or privately funded kindergartens;
Privately funded day schools, boarding schools, and secondary finishing schools;
Religiously affiliated schools (some of them known as "parochial," or parish-supported, schools);
"Charter" schools (publicly subsidized and supervised but independently run schools);
Vocational high schools;
Military academies;
College-preparatory schools;
Visual and/or performing arts academies;
Schools for students with special needs such as physical, behavioral, emotional, learning, psychological, and/or other mental handicaps or disabilities;
Online, Internet-based schools; and
Home schools.
In many countries governed by parliamentary systems, various national government organs such as ministries of education, youth, and sports set the tone for the writing and implementation of educational policy and/or for evaluating the success of schools. The U.S. Department of Education in many ways operates similarly to a ministry in that educational policy decisions are often made in this executive agency and then supported through specific education laws enacted by the U.S. Congress. As in a parliamentary system, the U.S. national government also features educational initiatives and guidelines presented by the head of government (the U.S. President), which are then elaborated by others within the executive and legislative branches. However, U.S. education policy is often diluted through the influence of state governments, who until the twenty-first century have been allowed wide jurisdiction in educational standard-setting and the detailing and funding of educational programs.
Governments around the world assume responsibility for supporting educational costs to widely varying degrees. In some countries, especially in the developing world, school fees and textbook costs are borne by the parents of students, making schooling often inaccessible to those lower on the socioeconomic scale, even where some government support has been provided for building the physical infrastructure of schools and/or for outfitting schools with basic furnishings. This limits the opportunity of many students to go to school and severely hampers universal access to education.
The United Kingdom features a wide range of both public and private school options to students at the elementary and secondary levels. The United States also provides these options, but on a lesser scale. Most other countries have tended to see smaller proportions of students enrolled in private academies in contrast to government-supported schools. While private schools in the United States frequently are day schools, in Britain and on the European continent many non-government school pupils live in residential houses attached to the schools.
Many European and emerging Pacific Rim countries provide highly specialized vocational education to high school students through combinations of apprenticeship systems, on-the-job training, and traditional academic learning. Almost all countries outside the United States offer specific vocational paths of study and make these available to students well before graduation from secondary school.
Only gradually has vocational training in the United States become a more sophisticated offering, frequently involving school-to-work partnerships with business and industry. Despite the appeal of U.S. higher education to foreign students, the competitive position of U.S. workers declined in the 1990s in some industry sectors, especially when compared to workers' status in some European and Pacific Rim countries. Critics suggested that this resulted from a lack of support in the United States for vocational training and education programs.
Germany's vocational training system in particular has been highly acclaimed worldwide, and is given much credit for Germany's economic success. What has made the German system unique is the intense interconnection of business and education in ways untried in most other...
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