Europe at School

Book excerpt: Originally published in 1977. This is a lively account of the day-to-day running of European schools based in five countries - France, West Germany, Italy, Spain and Portugal. It outlines the organisation of education in these countries, and examines aspects of curriculum, teaching methods, examinations, attitudes of teachers and pupils, buildings, equipment, out-of-school activities, pastoral care, discipline and rules and depicts what it is like to be a pupil or teacher in a European school. The schools discussed are mainly primary and lower secondary grades - the basic compulsory education of each country. Details of working hours, programmes and curricula which are, notably, often government controlled, are given in Appendices. But the author stresses that his aim throughout has been to show how individual schools work and adopt these rules to their own situation. He discusses the relative advantages and drawbacks of different educational systems, and draws his own conclusions about the favourable impressions he gained from many schools and the Awful Warning he saw in a few. This survey throws as much light on schools at home as on those in Europe and suggests that we have a good deal to learn from our neighbours.