Research seminar Department of Education University of Bath

University of Bath - Department of Education - Research Seminar

Education for Democracy: Explaining Why Education Systems Differ in Fostering Democratic Competences

Jan Germen Janmaat, Professor of political socialisation, UCL Institute of Education

Time: 19 March 2026, 3:15-4:15 pm

Place: 1W 3.103

What kinds of education systems best prepare young people for democratic life, and why do countries vary in this regard? In this presentation I first introduce and explain the Education for Democracy Index (EfDI). This index and its subindexes are a set of new comparative tools designed to assess how well national educational policies and practices promote both overall levels of and equality in democratic competences among adolescents. I then examine the cross-national and cross-temporal variation in the scores of the main index and explore which structural and institutional factors could explain this variation. I will show that Latin American and European post-communist countries outperform established Western European democracies on the EfDI. Although scores remain fairly stable over time, a trend can be detected across the board towards better performance.