• Educational pluralism is a system of education in which the government funds and regulates, but does not necessarily deliver, the education.
• Robust systems of educational pluralism are characterized by availability, accessibility, and accountability.
• This paper offers metrics by which educational pluralism can be assessed across countries, and it applies these metrics to seventeen OECD countries.
• The top-line findings of this study are:
  • Countries can provide significant scope for pluralist education while also maintaining a commitment to academic quality for all students.
  • Most countries studied have policies that support accessibility, especially for underprivileged communities.
  • Each country studied has some accountability structure in place for independent schools.
• The paper notes that accountability and freedom can come into conflict. Public policy regarding school accountability should be developed carefully to preserve the freedoms for education expressed, for example, in international human rights documents.

This paper examines the extent to which educational pluralism is present in seventeen OECD countries. As discussed in the Cardus paper “The Three Pillars of Educational Pluralism,” educational pluralism is a system of education in which the government funds and regulates, but does not necessarily deliver, the education. 1 1 J. DeJong VanHof, “The Three Pillars of Educational Pluralism,” Cardus, 2025, https://cardus.ca/research/education/reports/the-three-pillars-of-educational-pluralism/. Educational pluralism is premised on the conviction that education is not a neutral enterprise but rather is indivisible from worldview and value systems. It also asserts that education has both a particular and a public character: Parents need to be able to choose the kind of education that aligns with their convictions and best fits their child’s needs, and the broader society also has an interest in the outcomes of education and in the development of its citizens.

A robust system of educational pluralism has three pillars or essential characteristics: availability, accessibility, and accountability. The first pillar, availability, refers to the presence of schooling options within a given geographical area. The second, accessibility, refers to the ability of students of varied socioeconomic backgrounds to enrol in these schools, typically through some form of government funding. And the third, accountability, refers to the mechanisms by which schools are accountable to the state for the quality of education that they provide.

By presenting measures for each pillar of educational pluralism, this paper offers a way to evaluate the extent of educational pluralism across countries. This paper also suggests that descriptive measures of the third pillar, accountability, ought to be included in any evaluation of robust educational pluralism.

Scholars of educational pluralism point to challenges relating to an inconsistent use of terminology and unclear or limited definitions. The most frequently applied terms to describe state and non-state schools are the terms “public” and “private.” These terms are inadequate, however, in contexts of robust pluralism. For example, charter schools are “public” schools that may be privately managed, and “private” schools may be government-funded. Moreover, the term “private” carries the connotation that such schools exist to exclude others or to advance private interests. This may be accurate in some cases, but many “private” schools in Canada are non-profit institutions that strive to be accessible to applicants and view themselves as educating for the common good.

Cardus uses the terms “district” and “independent.” The term “district” was chosen instead of “public” because in most education systems, when students attend these schools they attend the one in their district, based on their place of residence. The term “independent” was chosen for schools that are fully or partially managed independent of government. Thus the category includes charter schools, independent schools that are state-funded, and independent schools that receive no state funds. Often all three can operate side by side.

This paper draws on data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the International Organization for the Right to Education and Freedom of Education (OIDEL), and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). Where Cardus would use the term “independent school” or “independent education,” the OECD speaks of “private schools,” OIDEL of “non-governmental schools,” and UNESCO of “non-state actors.” 2 2 OECD, “PISA 2022 Technical Report,” March 2024, https://doi.org/10.1787/01820d6d-en; OIDEL, “Freedom of Education Index 2023: A Quantitative Analysis of Educational Pluralism Worldwide,” https://www.oidel.org/fei/?lang=en; UNESCO, Global Education Monitoring Report: Non-State Actors in Education, 2021–22, https://www.unesco.org/gem-report/en/non-state-actors.

We began by limiting our study to the thirty-eight OECD member countries, all of which are democracies, because comparison between countries is more challenging under different government regimes and educational pluralism is fostered by democratic norms and institutions, in education systems as a whole and in individual schools. 8 8 “Members and Partners,” OECD, https://www.oecd.org/en/about/members-partners.html; A.R. Berner, Educational Pluralism and Democracy: How to Handle Indoctrination, Promote Exposure, and Rebuild America’s Schools (Harvard Education Press, 2024), 7–12, 45–61; Q. Wodon, “Measuring Education Pluralism Globally,” The Review of Faith & International Affairs 19, no. 2 (2021): 102–109, https://doi.org/10.1080/15570274.2021.1917155. In addition, these countries all participate in the OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), and we wanted to include these academic outcomes in our analysis.

These countries also each exhibit, at least to a minimum degree, the three pillars of educational pluralism:

• Availability. Non-state education is legally protected, and the country has some percentage of the student population enrolled in independent schools.
• Accessibility. The country provides some level of government funding for independent schools.
• Accountability. The country has the state capacity to regulate district (public) schools, and thus by implication also has the capacity to regulate independent schools. 9 9 State capacity is assumed based on the World Bank classification of these countries as upper-middle to high income (GNI per capita of $4,516 to $14,005, and $14,005 or more, respectively) in 2024–25. E. Metreau, K.E. Young, and S.G. Eapen, “World Bank Country Classifications by Income Level for 2024–25,” July 1, 2024, https://blogs.worldbank.org/en/opendata/world-bank-country-classifications-by-income-level-for-2024-2025.

From this initial group of thirty-eight countries, seventeen were selected for full examination, representing a diversity of population size and geography. The final list includes Australia, Canada, Chile, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Israel, Japan, the Netherlands, Norway, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

Charles Glenn and Jan DeGroof, pioneers in the definition, description, and measurement of educational pluralism, produced a four-volume publication in 2012 that laid the groundwork for a philosophy of educational pluralism and applied a chosen set of metrics to evaluate the extent to which it existed in education systems around the world. 10 10 C.L. Glenn and J. De Groof, Balancing Freedom, Autonomy, and Accountability in Education, 4 vols. (Wolf Legal, 2012). Their work has been preserved in Johns Hopkins University’s Educational Pluralism Database. 11 11 “Educational Pluralism Database,” Johns Hopkins School of Education Institute for Education Policy, https://education.jhu.edu/edpolicy/k-12-education-solutions/educational-pluralism-database/. Importantly, the country profiles in this database include metrics to assess the three pillars of educational pluralism: accessibility, availability, and accountability. However, many of the profiles are more than ten years old, and much has changed in the various countries since that time.

The International Organization for the Right to Education and Freedom of Education (OIDEL) publishes a Freedom of Education Index every two years. The index includes measures for whether the country recognizes a right to establish independent schools; whether it provides funds to independent schools, and if so, to what extent; and the percentage of enrolment in independent schools. Thus, while this index provides a useful indication of the availability and accessibility of educational options, it does not include metrics relating to accountability. OIDEL’s latest study, in 2023, applied this index to 157 countries, resulting in a score for each country out of a possible total of 100 points, and a rank ordering from 1 (the country with the highest degree of educational pluralism) to 157 (lowest). 12 12 For details, see I. Grau, J. Zingg, and M. San Andres, Freedom of Education Index 2023: A Quantitative Analysis of Education Pluralism Worldwide (OIDEL and FUNCIVA, 2023), 16–18, https://www.oidel.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/FREEDOM-OF-EDUCATION-INDEX-2023.pdf.

Building on the work of Glenn and DeGroof, scholars D’Agostino and Grau i Callizo use the criteria of “autonomy” and “educational freedom” to assess the extent of educational pluralism in various countries. 13 13 A. D’Agostino and I. Grau i Callizo, “Toward Understanding the Global Landscape of Educational Pluralism,” Journal of School Choice 16, no. 3 (2022): 379, https://doi.org/10.1080/15582159.2022.2088072. They use OECD PISA 2009 data to plot countries according to measurements of accessibility and autonomy for independent (private) education. 14 14 In their index, the authors define pluralistic schools as “any school operated in full or in part by a non-state actor” (p. 378). The autonomy index is created from survey responses indicating whether schools have control over hiring and dismissal of staff, can set teacher salaries, and can make curricular and/or assessment decisions, and accessibility is determined from variables of market share and percent of government funding for independent (private) education.

Wodon et al. created an index of educational pluralism based on traditional measures of market concentration, using UNESCO data on the number of students enrolled in district (public) or independent (private) schools. Positing that the market share of independent education when disaggregated by different types of schooling is a reflection of the extent of educational pluralism in a given country, they adapted the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index to quantify the diversity of school provision. 15 15 Q. Wodon, “Measuring Education Pluralism Globally,” 104. Here again, these metrics shed light on the availability and accessibility pillars but do not enable assessment of accountability.

And finally, UNESCO has conducted extensive analysis on the presence and action of independent providers of education (what UNESCO refers to as “non-state actors”) worldwide, demonstrating that these providers are increasingly prevalent. This activity takes various forms in different countries, making the delineation between public and private education difficult and thus rendering the diversity of non-state activity within education challenging to quantify. Still, UNESCO estimates that “without non-state actors, the education of 350 million more children would fall to the responsibility of the state,” and that the proportion of independent providers has increased to approximately 17 percent for primary education and 26 percent for secondary education over the last twenty years. 16 16 UNESCO, “Global Education Monitoring Report: Non-State Actors in Education,” 2021–22, 2, 33, https://www.unesco.org/gem-report/en/non-state-actors. Independent providers make up a considerable proportion of the global educational landscape.

In all of the above frameworks, it is challenging to adequately account for the ways in which different regulatory frameworks, or countries with higher or lower concentrations of religious communities, interact with the metrics chosen. Additionally, it should be noted that these frameworks do not account for the existence of choice within district (public) systems, which may also contribute toward educational pluralism in a given jurisdiction.

The country profiles provided in the appendix of our study draw on the “Three Pillars” paper and on these other scholars’ work, to assess the extent of educational pluralism present in each country by means of the following information:

1. A brief description of the overall structure of the country’s education system, as well as the country’s most recent Gross National Income (GNI) per capita as an indication of relative country wealth.
2. The enrolment distribution for district (public) and independent schools, based on the most recent available data. The overall percentages are provided, and percentages for primary and secondary enrolments are broken out, if available.
3. Two OECD-related outcomes:
   1. The country’s most recent PISA scores in mathematics, reading, and science for fifteen-year-old students (the OECD average is provided for comparison).
   2. The country’s achievement gap (the difference between the highest- and lowest-performing students, according to income levels) in mathematics (the OECD average is provided for comparison). The achievement gap expresses the relationship between socioeconomic status and academic achievement. 17 17 We present the achievement gap for PISA 2022 math scores. Globally, academic achievement has been trending downwards, and it was particularly negatively affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. In many countries, achievement gaps widened since the previous iteration of PISA in 2018. It remains to be seen whether these gaps will close in future PISA iterations. Further context to these scores is provided in the executive summary of the 2022 PISA results: OECD, PISA 2022 Results (Volume I): The State of Learning and Equity in Education, 2023, tables I.1, I.2, I.3, I.4, 28–35, https://doi.org/10.1787/53f23881-en.
4. Two OIDEL measures (as described above):
   1. The Freedom of Education score (out of a possible 100 points).
   2. The Freedom of Education Index, rank from 1 (highest) to 157 (lowest).
5. Metrics to assess the availability pillar:
   1. Is non-state education protected by legislation?
   2. Is non-state education protected by mention in the country’s constitution?
   3. Is home-schooling legal?
   4. Are independent schools diverse in terms of pedagogical, religious, and cultural identity? 18 18 This assessment is based on descriptions in the country profiles in the UNESCO Global Education Monitoring Report, “Profiles Enhancing Educational Reviews (PEER),” https://education-profiles.org/. For schooling within a country to be considered diverse, all three forms of schooling (religious, pedagogical, and cultural) had to be readily apparent in the profile.

   These metrics offer an indication of the range of educational options that exist. Legal or constitutional protection of independent schooling indicates historical, cultural, or social support for diversity in education such that it is a norm within the country. To permit home-schooling suggests a level of commitment and openness to parental decision-making.

6. Metrics to assess the accessibility pillar:
   1. Does the government provide funding for independent schooling? If so, what is the percentage of funding provided?
   2. Is the funding delivered to schools, or to students?
   3. Is any funding directed specifically to underserved or low-income students?
   4. If funding is delivered to schools, are they required to maximize access to the school (e.g., through government regulation of fee setting, and/or admission policies?

   Funding may be delivered to schools based on enrolment, or may be delivered through grants, subsidies, or vouchers directly to students. Countries may provide funds specifically for low-income students, students with disabilities, those who live in more remote locations, or other disadvantaged groups. Countries may use various policy levers to require or encourage schools to maximize their accessibility.

7. Metrics to assess the accountability pillar:
   1. Are all schools required to follow a common national or subnational (e.g., provincial) curriculum?
   2. Are all students assessed via a national or subnational form of assessment (e.g., national exams, diploma exams, or regular assessments for core benchmarks of achievement)?
   3. Is certification required for educators?
   4. Are safety parameters required in all schools (e.g., staff background checks, fire and building code compliance, health and safety protocols)?
   5. Are all schools regularly inspected?
   6. Are all schools subject to reporting requirements?
   7. Are independent schools subject to governance requirements (e.g., that they must be non-profit)?
   8. If home-schooling is legal, is it regulated?

These metrics provide an indication of the extent to which all schools, whether district (public) or independent, are held accountable for quality and safety. Countries may vary in the ways and extent to which these measures of accountability are assessed and applied, but the presence or absence of these measures gives perspective on the extent to which a shared commitment to the outcomes of education exists within the country.

The seventeen profiles demonstrate that educational pluralism varies across countries. At the same time, three additional observations may be drawn from this study.

The first observation is that it is possible for countries to provide a significant amount of support for pluralist education while maintaining a commitment to academic quality for all students. Although no analysis has been done in this study to associate educational pluralism with academic performance, a correlation can be informally observed. Based on the most recent PISA results, fourteen of the countries have scores at or above the OECD average for math, fifteen countries have scores at or above the average for reading, and fourteen countries have scores at or above the average for science. Eleven of the countries have a math achievement gap at or below the OECD average. A body of research has uncovered specific policy levers that contribute to high academic achievement, one of which is school autonomy. 19 19 L. Woessman, E. Luedemann, G. Schuetz, and M.R. West, School Accountability, Autonomy and Choice around the World (Edward Elgar, 2009). Whether additional levers that are directly related to educational pluralism can be associated with educational quality is a subject for ongoing research.

Second, there are policies in most of the countries (though to varying degrees) to support accessibility, especially for underprivileged communities. Of the seventeen countries profiled, fully sixteen provide a significant level of funding to independent schools (at least 30 percent of the school’s operational funding), and six provide funding of at least 80 percent (with some providing capital funding as well). At least thirteen have policies that seek to increase access for low-income or other disadvantaged communities, such as funds targeted for students with special education needs, priority funding for Indigenous populations or rural communities, and grants for schools with high percentages of students from low-income communities. The policies vary by country and subnational jurisdiction, and this study does not evaluate their relative efficacy. Other research suggests that the efficacy of various policies is difficult to determine and that as enrolment broadens to include the most disadvantaged students, the achievement gap tends to widen. 20 20 A.K. Chmielewski and S. Bell, “Cross-National Socioeconomic Inequality and Educational Policy,” in The Sage Handbook of Sociology of Education (2024), 327–42, https://doi.org/10.4135/9781529783506.n21. That these policies exist, however, demonstrates a commitment to access within educationally plural systems. The ability of these countries to provide funding to increase access for low-income communities, and the specific policies that facilitate this access, may be instructive for jurisdictions in which pluralism is increasing.

The third observation is that each of these countries has some accountability structure in place for independent schools. Measures of accountability have not historically been included in assessments of pluralism. The UN Special Rapporteur for Education’s call for accountability to be included as a fifth “A” (alongside the existing principles that education should be available, accessible, acceptable, and adaptable) is very recent. 21 21 F. Shaheed, “Q&A with the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Education,” 2023, updated 2024, UNESCO, https://www.unesco.org/en/articles/qa-un-special-rapporteur-right-education. Yet it is an important consideration, not least when considering the need for learning recovery at a global scale, as is the current reality post-COVID-19 pandemic. Indeed, the OECD’s publication of the 2022 PISA results includes the remark that resilient education systems—those best able to withstand shocks coming from the outside—are more likely to exhibit certain features, including “combining school autonomy and quality assurance mechanisms.” Additionally, research suggests that the kind of regulatory policy that balances the autonomy of educational institutions with their accountability for student outcomes may be very important for school participation in government accessibility and accountability mechanisms. 22 22 M.H. Lee, E.W. Price, and L.E. Swaner, “The Effect of Private School Choice Regulations on School Participation: Experimental Evidence from the Christian School Sector,” Journal of School Choice 18, no. 1 (2024): 138–56, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15582159.2022.2113011. Finally, in a global context in which concern may exist about the unregulated proliferation of some forms of private enterprise within education, the inclusion of accountability measures may be increasingly relevant for the study of educational pluralism.

Introducing accountability into the measurement of educational pluralism carries with it philosophical and ideological challenges. 23 23 For a thorough discussion of the consequences and challenges posed by systems of education committed to pluralism, see A.R. Berner, Educational Pluralism and Democracy. By their very nature, accountability and freedom can come into conflict, which perhaps is why accountability has not been included in metrics of educational pluralism until now. However, it is difficult to compare academic or civic educational outcomes cross-nationally if the nature of regulation in each country’s system of education is not considered. Moreover, the role that regulation can play in ensuring not only the quality but also the sustainability of diverse schooling options suggests it is an essential component of any measurement of educational pluralism. However, in formulations of educational pluralism that include an accountability component, care needs to be taken to define this accountability in ways compatible with freedoms expressed, for example, in international human rights codes. 24 24 For an extended treatment of how such trade-offs are addressed within international rights documents, including what is meant by the phrase “minimum educational standards” and the limits of parental rights pertaining to standards for educational structures and educational content, see I. Grau, “To What Extent Can Parental Rights Be Limited by ‘Minimum Educational Standards as May Be Laid Down or Approved by the State’?” Peabody Journal of Education 99, no. 5 (2024): 541–56, https://doi.org/10.1080/0161956X.2024.2407246. In the case of the Netherlands and Denmark, for example, a commitment to educational freedom is deeply rooted in these countries’ histories and cultural values and thereby also protected by their respective constitutions. Denmark articulates this right to freedom of education as encompassing five components: ideological freedom, pedagogical freedom, financial freedom, freedom of employment, and freedom to admit pupils. 25 25 Hojskolerne, “The Danish Free School Tradition,” 2018, https://danishfolkhighschools.com/media/17344/faelles_international_hefte_18.pdf.

This paper has sought to articulate a set of variables that might be used to measure educational pluralism across countries. We focused on independent schools, and measurements of availability, accessibility, and accountability for them. As mentioned earlier, however, there is an additional factor contributing to educational pluralism—the extent of choice that exists within district (public) school systems. For example, some Canadian provinces fund religious (primarily Roman Catholic) and minority-language schools within district systems, rendering the profile here an underestimate of educational pluralism in Canada. Though a less robust form of educational pluralism, the availability of choice within district systems is an additional component to consider. 26 26 For a thorough treatment and quantification of the availability of choice within and outside of district systems across Canada, see S. Asadolahi, J. Farney, T. Triadafilopoulos, and L.A. White, “Charting the Rise of School Choice Across Canadian Provinces: A Policy Index,” Canadian Journal of Political Science 55, no. 1 (2022): 188–207, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0008423921000901.

As independent education continues to grow worldwide, it will be increasingly necessary to examine the systems and policy mechanisms that enable educational pluralism and to understand the relationship between achievement outcomes and specific policy choices, in the context of each country’s history and culture.