Western Colonialism and
World Society in National
Education Systems: Global
Trends in the Use of HighStakes Exams at Early Ages,
1960 to 2010
Sociology of Education
1–18
Ó American Sociological Association 2020
DOI: 10.1177/0038040720957368
journals.sagepub.com/home/soe
Jared Furuta1
Abstract
National high-stakes exams are a fundamental structural feature of education systems around the world.
Despite their importance in shaping educational stratification, little is known about the social processes
that influence how and why national high-stakes exams are used at early ages on a global basis. I argue
that global trends in the use of primary-level high-stakes exams during the postwar period are shaped
by competing international and historical pressures. On one hand, Western colonialism instigated pathdependent processes that led former French and British colonies to continue to use high-stakes exams
at the primary level, even after gaining independence. On the other hand, a worldwide cultural shift toward
universalistic conceptions of education as a human right has led other countries to abandon high-stakes
exams at early ages. Drawing on a newly constructed panel data set of 138 countries from 1960 to
2010, I show that national high-stakes exams have declined over time at early ages of schooling. Evidence
from a series of panel regression models supports arguments about the importance of Western colonialism and universalistic conceptions of education in world society in shaping the use of high-stakes exams at
the primary level.
Keywords
high-stakes exams, world society, institutional theory, cross-national analysis, Western colonialism, comparative education
National high-stakes exams are a fundamental
structural feature of education systems around
the world. High-stakes exams are designed to
sort, select, and certify students through formally
‘‘meritocratic’’ processes (in policy, rather than
in practice) that allocate educational opportunities
in an equitable manner (Heubert and Hauser
1999). At the national level, these exams are
used at various age levels in nearly every country
in the world. In Europe, for example, the French
baccalaureat is the most notorious example of
a meritocratic exam used to determine university
admission, but almost every other country in the
region uses a similar type of selective exam at
this level. In East Asian countries, university
entrance exams impose a well-documented
1
Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA
Corresponding Author:
Jared Furuta, Sociology, Stanford University, 450 Jane
Stanford Way, Building 120, Stanford, CA 94305-6104,
USA.
Email: jkfuruta@stanford.edu
2
‘‘exam hell’’ on students, who often spend several
hours after school and on weekends in cram
schools to prepare for them (Rohlen 1983). In
Africa, the majority of countries continue to use
high-stakes exams at the primary level to determine who advances to lower-secondary education
(Kellaghan and Greaney 1992).
These high-stakes exams, especially those used
at early ages, have significant consequences for
both individuals and nation-states. At the individual
level, a long line of research emphasizes how educational stratification at early ages shapes social
class reproduction (e.g., Bol and van de Werfhorst
2013; Turner 1960): Strong mechanisms of early
selection are more likely to limit future educational
opportunities and occupational choices among
socioeconomically disadvantaged populations
(Buchmann and Park 2009). In some developing
countries, sizeable proportions of students fail the
exam administered at the end of primary school.1
As a result, many students in these countries are
unable to continue their schooling at the secondary
level. More generally, high-stakes exams at early
ages have been shown to significantly restrict secondary enrollments; these constraining effects of
high-stakes exams on educational expansion also
have become stronger in more recent time periods,
in spite of recent global pressures to increase educational access from the ‘‘Education for All’’ movement (Furuta, Schofer, and Wick forthcoming).
Despite the enormous influence of high-stakes
exams on educational expansion and stratification,
little is known about how commonly high-stakes
exams are used around the world at early ages of
schooling, how these trends have changed over
the past several decades, and the macro-level factors that shape whether countries use high-stakes
exams at early ages. Existing research on highstakes exams tends to focus more narrowly on
(1) ad hoc case studies of high-stakes exams in
a given country, (2) the effects of high-stakes
exams on individual- or national-level outcomes
in a handful of developed countries, or (3) crosssectional analyses.2 Longer-term and global data
on high-stakes exams have never been systematically collected. As a result, basic facts about
global trends in one of the most central institutions
of schooling around the world remain unknown,
and more general sociological theories that
explain why countries use high-stakes exams at
early ages remain untested at a more global level.
To address this gap in existing knowledge, I
utilize a new and originally constructed data set
Sociology of Education XX(X)
on high-stakes exams for 138 countries from
1960 to 2010. Drawing on historical institutionalist and world society theories, I argue that global
trends in the use of primary-level high-stakes
exams during the postwar period are shaped by
competing historical and international pressures.
On one hand, Western exam regimes like Great
Britain’s Cambridge Overseas Exam and the
French exam system diffused through colonial
processes. These initial conditions instigated
path-dependent processes that led former colonies
to continue high-stakes exams at the primary level,
even after they gained independence. On the other
hand, egalitarian conceptions of education as
a human right, expanded individual personhood,
and a growing worldwide consensus on the normative importance of educational access and expansion that developed after World War II have led
other countries to abandon high-stakes exams at
lower levels of schooling. My argument thus
emphasizes that primary-level high-stakes exams
are shaped by global and historical processes
rather than merely functional or idiosyncratic
country-level characteristics.
In this article, high-stakes exams are defined as
exams that all students in a given country or track
take to determine (1) whether they are promoted to
the next level in the educational process or (2)
which sharply differentiated track they are sorted
into (Heubert and Hauser 1999). As a form of
selection, high-stakes exams can be contrasted
with less standardized forms of evaluation (e.g.,
grades, school-based exams, or other types of
‘‘continuous assessment’’) or student ‘‘personhood’’ characteristics in the U.S. college admissions process (Furuta 2017).
GLOBAL COLONIAL PROCESSES
AND PATH DEPENDENCE IN THE
USE OF HIGH-STAKES EXAMS
As a top-down global process that spanned several
centuries, Western colonialism generated economic, political, and cultural changes that fundamentally shaped institutions around the world
(Acemoglu, Johnson, and Robinson 2001; Bergesen and Schoenberg 1980; Fieldhouse 1966). As
part of this process, colonial powers often established Western educational institutions to recruit
and train a small handful of political elites (Coleman 1965:229–30), and the exam regimes of these
colonial powers diffused around the world. Great
Furuta
Britain’s former colonies, for example, often use
exams constructed by the Cambridge International
Examinations Syndicate (created in 1858) to structure their school curricula (Raban 2008), and France’s former colonies often emulate the French
exam system (e.g., centralized, competitive
national exams for the certificat d’etudes primaires at the primary level) (Debeauvais 1965).3
During the postwar waves of decolonization
(Strang 1990), many newly independent countries
rapidly constructed and expanded their education
systems, given the importance of modern educational institutions for staking claims to legitimate
nation-statehood (Ramirez 2012). The initial historical conditions shaped by Western colonialism,
however, created ‘‘path dependent’’ processes
(Mahoney 2000) that led many of these newly
independent countries to maintain Western European exam regimes at early ages of schooling.
Existing literature and case studies (e.g., Benavot
and Resnik 2006; Coleman 1965; Raban 2008;
Vlaardingerbroek and Taylor 2009) suggest three
structural pathways that shaped the continued
use of high-stakes exams at early ages, even several decades after gaining independence.
First, during this period of rapid decolonization
and educational expansion following World War
II, newly independent countries faced strong
external pressure from the international community to expand education and modernize their
institutions. In this context, Western forms of education were often seen as more internationally
legitimate models and standards,4 even if these
models did not fit local conditions (Garnier and
Schafer 2006; Meyer, Nagel, and Snyder 1993).
As a result, many countries maintained the exam
regimes of their former colonial powers, despite
internal pressures to adopt more authentically
national institutions (Benavot and Resnik 2006).
Even former British colonies that did abandon
the Cambridge exam regime (upon gaining independence) often developed regional exam boards
that were closely modeled after the Cambridge
system, which helped their institutions to be seen
as legitimate by other countries (see Agbodeka
2002 on the West African Examinations Council
and De Lisle 2014 on the Caribbean Examinations
Council).
Second, in this context of intensifying pressures to expand education, Western high-stakes
exam regimes were maintained at the primary
level because they provided an efficient and formally (but not in practice) meritocratic mechanism
3
for stratifying students (Kellaghan and Greaney
1992). As education became increasingly linked
to an organized stratification system, higher-paying jobs and occupational status were increasingly
tied to higher levels of educational attainment (van
Noord et al. forthcoming). In this context, highstakes exams were seen as instrumental for maintaining uniform academic standards in a country’s
education system and structuring educational stratification along formally (but not in practice) meritocratic processes (Bol et al. 2014; Jackson and
Buckner 2016).5 For example, a report from Malta’s Ministry of Education notes that the country
abolished its secondary entrance exam, which it
inherited from Great Britain’s ‘‘111’’ system, in
1972; however, a high-stakes exam was quickly
reinstated in 1978 because it was a ‘‘non-discriminatory way of admitting pupils to the limited
number of places available as the number of pupils
seeking admission kept increasing’’ (Grima et al.
2008:17).
Third, high-stakes exams are just one component of a more general institutional framework
organizing the schooling process that former colonies inherited from their colonizers. In former
French colonies, for example, high-stakes exams
are part of a ‘‘statist’’ organization of schooling
inherited from France (Garnier, Hage, and Fuller
1989). After independence, education in these
nation-states continued to be organized around
a centralized bureaucracy, a national curriculum,
and a stringent set of norms of achievement that
reinforce the use of high-stakes exams at early
ages (Garnier and Schafer 2006:155–56). It may
be difficult for newly independent countries to
eliminate these high-stakes exams because they
are embedded in an institutional framework that
shapes a country’s overall approach to organizing
the schooling process.
The foregoing discussion suggests Western
colonialism created path-dependent processes
that shape the ongoing use of primary-level
high-stakes exams around the world. In particular,
the British and French empires developed and
implemented the most extensive exam regimes in
their colonies and are therefore especially likely
to have shaped the use of high-stakes exams in
their former colonies. Former British and French
colonies can be contrasted with former Spanish
colonies, which gained independence much earlier
in history (before modern institutions of mass education were developed in Europe) and developed
formal education systems that were more oriented
4
Sociology of Education XX(X)
around Enlightenment rhetoric of equality and
freedom (Weinberg 1983; cf. Rivera 2016). Other
colonial powers (e.g., Belgium, Germany, Portugal) typically invested fewer resources in their colonies and instead focused mostly on extracting
resources from them (Fieldhouse 1966).
Hypothesis 1a: Former French colonies are
more likely to use high-stakes exams at
lower levels of the educational process.
Hypothesis 1b: Former British colonies are
more likely to use high-stakes exams at
lower levels of the educational process.
THE DEVELOPMENT OF
UNIVERSALIZED CONCEPTIONS
OF EDUCATION IN WORLD
SOCIETY
World society theories of educational institutions
emphasize that nation-states are embedded in
a global institutional environment composed of
norms, scripts, and abstract cultural models of
education. A long line of research emphasizes
that nation-states have shaped their educational
institutions around this increasingly global cultural
framework during the postwar period in order to
enact an identity of legitimate nation-statehood
(e.g., Meyer et al. 1997). During the postwar
period, education at the lower-secondary level
came to be seen as an increasingly universal entitlement, rather than an elite privilege, in this
global institutional environment (Furuta 2020).
On a worldwide basis, education became increasingly conceived of as an individual and collective
good, access to education became a matter of
human rights, and all individuals came to be
seen as educable (Schofer and Meyer 2005). These
cultural changes in the global institutional environment suggest that high-stakes exams, which
had been used to stratify and limit students’ opportunities in the education system (see Kandel
1930), have become increasingly delegitimated
at lower levels of schooling.
Several related institutional channels reflect how
these cultural changes in the global institutional
environment, toward more universalistic conceptions of education, have increasingly delegitimated
the use of primary-level high-stakes exams. First,
the enormous growth of international assessment
tests (e.g., Trends in International Mathematical
and Science Study [TIMSS], Progress in International Reading Literacy Study [PIRLS], Programme
for International Student Assessment) and national
assessments during this period reflects a growing
cultural assumption that all children are capable of
learning the same curricula and obtaining the
same academic skills as well as the belief that all
children should have access to the same education
at early ages (Kamens and McNeely 2010). International assessment tests, in particular, reflect a proactive commitment to global ideals of educational
equality in world society (Baker and LeTendre
2005). At the national level, since 1990 and the
rise of global norms of Education for All, use of
assessment tests has grown rapidly: These tests are
primarily administered at early stages of the educational process to measure access to education and
assess educational quality across different schools
or regions within a given country (Kamens and
Benavot 2011).6
The formal goal of international and national
assessments is thus to improve access and equality
in the provision of education, rather than to certify,
stratify, or remove students from the school system
as high-stakes exams do (Furuta et al. forthcoming).
Unlike high-stakes exams, national and international assessments are low-stakes tests that do not
directly determine an individual student’s educational opportunities; instead, assessment tests hold
schools and countries accountable for student outcomes, and test scores are rarely reported at the
individual level (Ramirez, Schofer, and Meyer
2018). Both types of assessments are negatively
correlated with the use of high-stakes exams (see
Appendix A3 in the online supplemental material).
Countries that implement more of these assessment
tests are therefore expected to be less likely to use
high-stakes exams at the primary level, given that
they reflect this cultural assumption of extending
and expanding equal educational opportunities.
Hypothesis 2a: Participation in international
assessment tests is negatively associated
with use of high-stakes exams at lower levels of the educational process.
Hypothesis 2b: Use of national assessment
tests is negatively associated with use of
high-stakes exams at lower levels of the
educational process.
Second, universalistic conceptions of education in world society have diffused through global
associational processes that draw on globally
Furuta
legitimate cultural models of education and the
nation-state (Meyer and Ramirez 2000). These
models emphasize ‘‘open’’ and comprehensive
models of education (Schofer and Meyer 2005)
and the contributions of education to several
dimensions of economic and societal development
(e.g., as human capital). As a substantial literature
on world society demonstrates, international nongovernmental organizations (INGOs) play an
important role in shaping and disseminating these
conceptions of education and the individual on
a global level (Mundy and Murphy 2001). Nations
that are more closely tied to the ‘‘core’’ of world
societal ideology through social pressures from
INGOs are more likely to adopt policies aligned
with these models in order to reinforce their identity as legitimate nation-states in the international
community (Meyer et al. 1997). These global
social pressures have delegitimated the use of
strong selection mechanisms like high-stakes
exams at lower levels of schooling.
Hypothesis 3: Countries with higher memberships in INGOs are less likely to use highstakes exams at lower levels of the educational process.
Third, the massive growth of international
human rights instruments since World War II
reflects expanded conceptions of general individual rights and freedoms in world culture (Elliott
2007), which are closely tied to advocacy for
more universal access to higher levels of schooling. Education is seen as a crucial mechanism
for advancing human rights through its role in
empowering individuals as actors, expanding their
capabilities, and equalizing social conditions
among various subgroups (e.g., race/ethnicity or
gender groups) (Nussbaum 2013). High-stakes
exams at early ages are diametrically opposed to
this ideal, given that they routinely restrict substantial proportions of the student population
from pursuing secondary education (Furuta et al.
forthcoming). A country’s commitment to individual rights also has been shown to delegitimate educational institutions like between-school tracking,
which similarly restrict educational opportunities
at higher levels (Furuta 2020).
Hypothesis 4: Countries that have formally ratified more international human rights
instruments are less likely to use primarylevel high-stakes exams.
5
Fourth, the World Bank’s growing involvement in the Education for All movement may
influence countries that receive funding from the
World Bank to eliminate primary-level highstakes exams, given that funding for educationrelated projects increasingly supports universalizing access to education at higher levels (Mundy
and Verger 2016). In contrast to more cultural
and neoinstitutional processes, World Bank funding presents a more coercive set of economic pressures on countries to adopt certain policies. Prior
studies show that use of national assessment tests
is strongly shaped by World Bank funding (e.g.,
Lockheed 1995); it is therefore possible that
some of the mechanisms specified earlier (e.g.,
national or international assessment tests) merely
reflect these more coercive pressures from international institutions to adopt certain policies. In the
analyses below, this independent variable is
included in all models to differentiate between
the economic and cultural global processes that
may shape national education systems.
Hypothesis 5: Countries that receive funding
for education-related projects from the
World Bank are less likely to administer
high-stakes exams at the primary level.
DOMESTIC/FUNCTIONAL
EXPLANATIONS
An additional set of factors, which are often discussed in the case study literature on high-stakes
exams, emphasizes how more domestic and functional processes shape why countries administer
high-stakes exams at early ages. My argument
does not suggest these factors are unimportant;
instead, my hypotheses emphasize the importance
of international processes, either historical or part
of an institutional environment external to nationstates, in shaping global trends in the use of
primary-level high-stakes exams. Thus, my hypotheses should hold even after the following distinctively national characteristics are held constant.
First, more economically developed countries
may be less likely to use primary-level high-stakes
exams. Less developed countries have fewer
resources to invest in the organizational infrastructure, teaching staff, and basic materials that enable
schooling to take place. These countries must
therefore create stronger selection mechanisms to
efficiently allocate students into a limited number
6
of opportunities at the secondary level (Kellaghan
and Greaney 1992).
Second, more democratic countries may be less
likely to use primary-level high-stakes exams. In
democracies, schools are perceived as a crucial
space for creating free and open societies of individual citizens who are capable of making
informed political decisions (Diamond 2008). In
this context, severe selection mechanisms like
high-stakes exams may be perceived as illegitimate because they restrict individuals from pursuing further levels of schooling.
Third, countries with higher primary enrollment ratios may be less likely to use primary-level
high-stakes exams. As primary enrollments
expand in a given country, education at this level
confers fewer social advantages, and national governments may face stronger domestic and mechanical pressures to allow all students to continue pursuing further educational opportunities (see Furuta
2020). These domestic pressures may compel
countries to eliminate high-stakes exams at this
level as a mechanism that restricts enrollment
expansion at the secondary level.
Fourth, countries with older ministries of education may be more likely to use high-stakes
exams at the primary level. High-stakes exams
require a formidable organizational infrastructure
to produce a standard national curriculum, monitor
academic standards, and implement the test (Eckstein and Noah 1992; Kellaghan and Greaney
1992). Older, more established ministries of education have greater organizational capacities to
conduct high-stakes exams at early ages.
DATA
High-Stakes Exams Data Set
To empirically test the argument, I draw on
a unique data set of 138 countries from 1960 to
2010 that was constructed to identify the use of
high-stakes exams at the primary, lowersecondary, and upper-secondary levels (including
university entrance exams) as well as the grade
level at which a given country first administers
a high-stakes exam.
To code and compile this data set, I drew on
several primary sources (e.g., United Nations Education, Scientific, and Cultural Organization
[UNESCO] surveys, international conference
reports, comprehensive encyclopedia articles) that
Sociology of Education XX(X)
contain detailed descriptions of national education
systems during a given year for each wave of
data collected. For example, the UNESCO World
Survey of Education comprises four volumes (published between 1955 and 1966) on primary, secondary, and tertiary education systems for more than
130 countries and territories each year, with specific sections and diagrams describing the types
of schools at each level of education, the number
of years in each level, promotion and selection policies at each level, and the names of exams and curricular streams. Similar information is provided in
other sources used, such as The International Encyclopedia of Education (Husen and Postlethwaite
1985, 1994) and UNESCO’s (2006, 2010) World
Data on Education reports. A full list of primary
sources, with their corresponding waves of data,
is provided in Appendix A1 in the online supplemental material.
Every effort was made to identify as many
comprehensive sources on national education systems as possible for each wave of data. Where
multiple reports for a country were available in
a given decade, I cross-checked data across all
available sources to verify the validity and consistency of the sources. For example, for the 1980s,
descriptions of national education systems were
available from Husen and Postlethwaite’s (1985)
International Encyclopedia of Education, Kurian’s (1988) World Education Encyclopedia, and
123 country reports for UNESCO’s (1960–2000)
International Conference on Education; I compared and coded each country’s descriptions based
on information from these multiple sources.
I coded high-stakes exams using the definition
provided in the first section; these exams are taken
by everyone (or have few exceptions) in a given
country’s public education system. To code this
variable, I scoured the histories of every national
education system in the data set (using the primary
sources described earlier and as many additional
secondary sources as necessary) to identify, wherever possible, the exact year in which a country
changed whether it used high-stakes exams at different levels. For example, South Korea administered two high-stakes exams in 1960: a middle
school entrance exam (at the end of the primary
school cycle) and a university entrance exam (at
the end of the senior-secondary cycle). In 1969,
the middle school entrance exam was abolished
by Park Chung Hee’s ministry of education and
replaced with a randomized lottery process
through which students were assigned to schools
Furuta
within a given district (Seth 2002:152–55). South
Korea is therefore coded as having two high-stakes
exams in 1960 to 1969: one at the primary level,
and one at the senior-secondary level; the first
grade-level high-stakes exam administered during
this time is coded as grade 6. From 1969 to 2010,
South Korea is coded as having one high-stakes
exam at the senior-secondary level, and the first
grade-level high-stakes exam is coded as grade 12.7
Dependent Variables
The existence of a primary-level high-stakes exam
in country i at time t is coded as a dichotomous variable, where 1 indicates an exam is administered at
the end of the first level of the educational process,
and 0 indicates that no exam is administered.
Independent Variables
A country’s colonial history is measured as a series
of time-invariant dichotomous variables that identify the colonial power ‘‘that was most responsible
for shaping the development of the entity (or entities) that became this modern state’’ (Hensel n.d.).
Data for this variable are drawn from the Colonial
History Data through the International Correlates
of War Project (Hensel 2014). Former French,
British, and Spanish colonies are identified
through a set of dichotomous variables; countries
colonized by all other colonial powers (e.g., Portugal, the Netherlands, Belgium) are combined as
a separate dichotomous variable. The reference
category for this series of variables is the set of
countries that were never colonized (e.g., Thailand, Ethiopia, most of Western Europe).
Commitments to universalistic conceptions of
education in world society are measured in several
ways. First, a country’s linkages to world society
are measured as a time-varying variable that identifies the number of individual memberships in
INGOs for country i in time t (using the natural
log to reduce positive skewness) (Boli and
Thomas 1999). This measure draws on data from
the UIA Yearbook of Organizations (Union of
International Associations various years).
Second, I include a time-varying measure that
identifies the cumulative number of international
assessment tests (e.g., TIMSS, PIRLS, or other tests
administered by the International Association for
the Evaluation of Educational Achievement)
administered in country i up to time t, since 1960
7
(compiled by Kijima 2013). In addition, the cumulative number of national assessment tests captures
the total number of national assessment tests
administered in a given country up to a given
year (logged to reduce positive skewness); these
tests are typically administered by national ministries of education (e.g., the Evaluaciones Nacionales in Peru), and data were compiled and made
publicly available through UNESCO (2015). Given
that increasing implementation of these assessments over time reflects stronger commitments to
universalistic conceptions of education, both variables are coded as cumulative measures.
Third, a country’s commitment to human rights
is coded as the number of ‘‘core’’ international
human rights instruments ratified by country i at
time t. The United Nations categorizes eight
instruments as ‘‘core’’ (and ‘‘non-optional’’) during the time period of this study. Ratification years
for each instrument, by country, were collected
from publicly available sources (United Nations
Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner
2019). The total number of human rights instruments ratified for country i by year t is coded as
a single variable ranging from 0 to 8.
In the analyses presented here, I created an
index that reflects a country’s commitments to
more universalistic conceptions of education in
world society by standardizing and summing the
four aforementioned variables (a = .80). Taken
together, this index reflects how abstract models
and conceptions of education in the global institutional environment shape a country’s use of highstakes exams at the primary level (for a similar
discussion, see Furuta 2020).
Fourth, a country’s cumulative funding from
World Bank projects is measured as the cumulative number of education-related World Bank
projects country i received funding for by time t
(from 1947 to 2010) (logged). Using the complete
list of 13,108 World Bank projects funded from
1947 to 2017 (according to its ‘‘Projects and Operations’’ website), I manually coded whether a project’s topic was education related based on projects’ titles. For example, Guatemala received
funding from the World Bank for seven projects
from 1968 to 2007, including one titled ‘‘Education Project’’ in 1967, another titled ‘‘Basic Education Project’’ in 1983, and another titled ‘‘Universalization of Basic Education Project’’ in
2001. Following standard practices, I add a small
number to this variable before taking the natural
log to account for the large number of zero values.
8
Sociology of Education XX(X)
A country’s gross domestic product per 10,000
capita captures its level of economic development
in a given year and is logged to reduce the positive
skewness of the measure. Data for this variable are
taken from the Penn World Tables (Feenstra, Inklaar, and Timmer 2015).
A country’s level of democratization is measured as a time-varying interval variable for country i in time t, using a standard measure taken from
the Polity IV data set (Marshall, Gurr, and Jaggers
2014), which rates a country’s level of democracy
on a scale from –10 (fully autocratic) to 110 (fully
democratic).
A country’s primary enrollment is measured as
its gross primary enrollment ratio. This variable
draws on data from the World Development Indicators (World Bank 2013) and other sources
described by Meyer, Ramirez, and Soysal (1992)
and Benavot and Riddle (1988). The variable is
capped at 100 percent to account for overage students enrolled at the primary level and to reduce
the measurement errors this potentially contributes
to the analyses.
The age of a country’s ministry of education is
coded as the total number of years since a ministry
of education was founded in country i at time t.
This variable is coded using data from the Statesman’s Yearbook, which identifies the founding
dates of several government ministries in every
country (Drori and Meyer 2018). The variable is
logged to reduce the positive skewness of the distribution of values.
Appendix A2 in the online supplemental material provides descriptive statistics of the variables,
and Appendix A3 reports a correlation matrix.
METHODS
I use random-effects panel regression models to
estimate the effects of the aforementioned independent variables on use of primary-level highstakes exams (Wooldridge 2009). These models
take the following general form:
yit 5mt 1bxit 1gzi 1ai 1eit :
ð1Þ
For country i and time t, yit is the dependent variable, mt is a time-varying intercept, xit is a vector
of time-varying independent and control variables,
zi is a vector of time-invariant independent and
control variables, ai is a time-invariant error
term, and eit is a time-varying error term (Allison
2009). The models estimated here rely on a sample
of 138 countries, from 1960 to 2010.
My argument relies on testing the effects of
several crucial time-invariant variables (e.g.,
a country’s colonial history) on the use of highstakes exams at the primary level; given this,
fixed-effects models cannot be used because they
are estimated by relying exclusively on withinsubject variation (Allison 2009). Given that the
structural features of education systems do not
change drastically over time, an additional problem is that many countries do not change their
use of high-stakes exams at the primary level during the study’s time period. Random-effects models allow me to overcome both of these problems
by exploiting between-countries variation, given
that random-effects models do not treat ai as fixed
(Allison 2009).
In the models estimated in Table 1, I use logistic regression models for panel data, given that the
dependent variable follows a binomial distribution
(see Long 1997:chap. 3). In this series of models,
a country’s probability of using a high-stakes primary exam is transformed
using a logit link func
Pit
tion, where yit = log 1P
(Long 1997:49). All
it
independent and control variables are lagged by
five years to ensure the values of these variables
precede the dependent variable in time; results
are consistent when several alternative lags are
used.
RESULTS
Figure 1 depicts global trends in the proportion of
countries that use high-stakes exams at the primary, junior-secondary, and senior-secondary levels during the time period of this study. The clearest finding from this figure is that almost every
country in the sample uses high-stakes exams at
the senior-secondary level of the educational process (this includes university entrance exams);
their use declines slightly over time, but almost
90 percent of countries continued to administer
a high-stakes exam at this level in 2010. The stability of this trend, however, can be contrasted
with use of high-stakes exams at the primary level,
which decreased from around 63 percent of countries in 1960 to 43 percent in 2010. These trends
indicate that high-stakes exams became partially
delegitimated over time at early ages of the
schooling process. Their persistence at upper levels of schooling, however, suggests they continue
Furuta
9
Figure 1. Proportion of countries using exams at all levels, 1960 to 2010.
Note: n = 109 (primary exam), n = 83 (junior-secondary exam), n = 119 (senior-secondary/tertiary exam).
to be an important mechanism for allocating individuals into unequal opportunities later in life.
Figure 2 illustrates more detailed trends in the
use of high-stakes exams at the primary level, by
region. One of the most dramatic changes in the
descriptive trends presented here is the decline in
the use of primary exams by Western countries.
In 1960, more than half of Western countries in
the sample used high-stakes exams at the primary
level; this decreased sharply by 1970 and declined
to nearly zero by 2010. The decline in use of primary exams also occurred across other regions.
Schooling in sub-Saharan Africa, however,
remained extremely exam based for the entire
time period: This region had the highest proportion of countries that administered primary-level
high-stakes exams during the entire 50-year time
span (83 percent of countries in 2010). Given
that countries in this region tend to be less economically developed and many were former
French and British colonies, it is not surprising
that this area is the most exam-dependent region
in the world.8
Figure 3 shows how the global average grade
level at which a high-stakes exam is first administered changed over time. Given that a growing
number of countries have eliminated high-stakes
exams at the primary level, one would expect the
average grade level in which students first take
a high-stakes exam to increase over time. As
Figure 3 shows, this is in fact the case: The global
average grade level when a high-stakes exam is
first administered increased by a little more than
one grade, from 7.8 in 1960 to 9.1 in 2010.
Table 1 presents logged odds coefficients from
a series of random-effects panel regression logit
models that estimate the effects of several independent variables on the use of high-stakes exams
at the primary level. As hypotheses 1a and 1b predict about the importance of a country’s colonial
history, use of high-stakes exams at this level is
especially common among former British and
French colonies when compared to countries that
were never colonized, net of all other factors
(p \ .001 in all models). Former Spanish colonies
are much less likely to use high-stakes exams at
the primary level (p \ .05 in all models), whereas
countries colonized by other imperial powers are
typically more likely to use primary-level highstakes exams, although this effect is not consistently significant. Taken together, these results
suggest French and British colonialism instigated
path-dependent processes that led to the continued
use of high-stakes exams at the primary level.
As hypotheses 2, 3, and 4 predict, countries
that are more strongly committed to universalistic
conceptions of education are much less likely to
use high-stakes exams at the primary level (p \
.001 in models 2 to 5, for independent variables
that identify a country’s memberships in INGOs,
10
Sociology of Education XX(X)
Figure 2. Proportion of countries using primary exam, by region.
Note: n = 24 (West), n = 7 (Central/Eastern Europe), n = 14 (Asia), n = 14 (Middle East), n = 20 (South/
Central America), n = 29 (sub-Saharan Africa).
Figure 3. Global average grade level of first exam, 1960 to 2010.
Note: Countries with no high-stakes exams are assigned a value of 15 (one grade level above the highest
grade level in the data set among countries that administer high-stakes exams at the end of the seniorsecondary level); n = 100.
participation in international assessment tests,
implementation of national assessment tests, and
ratification of international human rights instruments). These effects are consistent and significant, net of several other country-level
characteristics. In model 6, the index that reflects
a country’s commitments to these more universalistic conceptions of education and individual
rights is also negative and significantly associated
with use of high-stakes exams at the primary level
11
Years since education ministry founded (log)
Primary enrollmentc
Democracy score
Domestic/functional processes
Gross domestic product per 10,000 capita (log)
Cumulative World Bank project funding (log)
Universalistic conceptions of education indexb
Human rights instrument ratification
Cumulative national assessments (log)
Cumulative international tests
World society linkages
International nongovernmental organization memberships (log)
Former Other colony
Former Spanish colony
Former British colony
Colonial history
Former French colony
a
–2.09***
(0.20)
–0.00
(0.02)
–0.04***
(0.01)
1.27***
(0.19)
–0.40***
(0.09)
19.37***
(1.95)
10.78***
(1.56)
–4.95**
(1.89)
3.12y
(1.60)
(1)
–1.26***
(0.23)
0.04*
(0.02)
–0.02*
(0.01)
2.19***
(0.21)
–0.02
(0.10)
–1.89***
(0.22)
18.69***
(1.69)
10.85***
(1.61)
–6.41***
(1.67)
3.25y
(1.66)
(2)
–1.30***
(0.22)
0.01
(0.02)
–0.04***
(0.01)
1.66***
(0.19)
–0.44***
(0.08)
–0.51***
(0.07)
18.08***
(1.62)
10.41***
(1.53)
–5.93***
(1.64)
3.57**
(1.37)
(3)
–1.75***
(0.21)
0.00
(0.02)
–0.04***
(0.01)
1.33***
(0.19)
–0.37***
(0.08)
–0.61***
(0.14)
19.77***
(1.97)
11.07***
(1.55)
–4.79*
(1.92)
3.39*
(1.55)
(4)
–1.23***
(0.22)
0.04y
(0.02)
–0.03**
(0.01)
1.93***
(0.18)
–0.12
(0.09)
–0.50***
(0.06)
18.22***
(1.00)
10.18***
(0.93)
–5.51***
(1.16)
4.10
(4.34)
(5)
Table 1. Random-Effects Panel Regression Logit Models of Primary Exams on Independent Variables, 1960 to 2010 (All Years Pooled).
(continued)
–0.97***
(0.21)
0.04*
(0.02)
–0.03**
(0.01)
1.87***
(0.17)
–0.58***
(0.07)
–0.20*
(0.09)
17.59***
(1.07)
10.15***
(0.97)
–6.00***
(1.20)
2.38*
(1.10)
(6)
12
–0.43
(1.83)
4.53***
(0.22)
4,884
138
458.55
–775.29
9.00
(1)
4.03*
(1.92)
4.66***
(0.23)
4,884
138
790.55
–741.00
10.00
(2)
–3.58*
(1.79)
4.56***
(0.23)
4,884
138
525.71
–729.75
10.00
(3)
–1.98
(1.84)
4.52***
(0.23)
4,884
138
402.08
–763.74
10.00
(4)
–4.75**
(1.46)
4.55***
(0.28)
4,884
138
1129.23
–735.11
10.00
(5)
–6.64***
(1.42)
4.57***
(0.23)
4,884
138
888.04
–725.34
10.00
(6)
Note: Standard errors are in parentheses. All independent and control variables are lagged five years.
a
Reference category = countries never colonized.
b
Universalistic conceptions of education index is a composite variable of four standardized variables that identify a country’s cumulative number of national assessment tests (log),
cumulative number of international assessment tests participated in, international nongovernmental organization memberships (log), and number of human rights instruments ratified
(a = .80).
c
Variable capped at 100 percent enrollment ratio.
y
p \ .10. *p \ .05. **p \ .01. ***p \ .001.
N
Countries
l2
Log likelihood
df
ln s2v
Constant
Table 1. (continued)
Furuta
13
Figure 4. Predicted probabilities of having a high-stakes exam at the primary level.
Note: Calculations are from Table 1, model 6.
(p \ .001). As hypothesis 5 expects, a country’s
receipt of funding from the World Bank is negatively associated with its use of primary-level
exams, although this effect is not consistently significant. Taken together, these results support the
argument that changes in conceptions of education
in the global institutional environment shape how
countries construct their educational institutions.9
Figure 4 presents the predicted probabilities
that a country will administer a high-stakes exam
at the primary level, over two key independent
variables of interest: (1) the index that captures
a country’s commitments to universalistic conceptions of education in world society and (2) whether
a country is a former French colony. These probabilities are calculated from the logged odds coefficients presented in Table 1, model 6, wherein all
control variables are held at their means. Countries
with higher values on the index capturing commitments to universalistic conceptions of education
have a much lower predicted probability of administering a high-stakes exam at this level (predicted
probability = .53 for countries with a value of –6
on this variable versus predicted probability =
.16 for countries with a value of 16). These differences also are stark when former French colonies
are compared with countries that were never colonized (predicted probability of administering
a high-stakes exam at the primary level = .84 for
former French colonies versus .26 predicted probability for countries never colonized).
Finally, in terms of the domestic/functional
processes identified earlier, it is unsurprising that
the effect of a country’s gross domestic product
per 10,000 capita is significantly and negatively
associated with use of high-stakes exams at the
primary level (p \ .001 in all models). Less developed countries are more likely to use high-stakes
exams at this stage, given that high-stakes exams
provide them with a way to efficiently select a proportionately small number of students to move on
to the secondary level. Surprisingly, more democratic countries are not significantly less likely to
use high-stakes exams at this level. This indicator
is somewhat related to the argument advanced earlier (at a domestic, rather than global, level), however, and it is moderately correlated with some of
the independent and control variables included in
the models (see Appendix A3). Countries with
more expanded primary enrollments are less likely
to use high-stakes exams at the primary level, as
expected (p \ .05 in all models). Finally, countries
with more established ministries of education are
much more likely to use high-stakes exams at
early ages (p \ .001), given that they have much
stronger organizational capacities to implement
these exams.10
DISCUSSION
In this article, I emphasized a set of global and historical factors that have shaped global trends in the
use of national high-stakes exams at early ages: (1)
French and British exam regimes diffused through
colonialism, which instigated path-dependent processes that led former colonies to continue using
high-stakes exams at the primary level, even after
gaining independence. At the same time, (2) the
development of global conceptions of education
as a human right and universal entitlement delegitimated the use of high-stakes exams at early ages.
14
Results from a series of panel regression models
indicate that former French and British colonies
continue to use these exams at early ages of
schooling; former Spanish colonies, by contrast,
which achieved independence earlier in history,
developed formal education institutions that were
more influenced by liberal ideals and eventually
invested more heavily in low-stakes tests for
assessment purposes instead of high-stakes exams
for selection purposes (Kamens and Benavot
2011). Countries that are more strongly committed
to universalistic conceptions of education in world
society, as reflected in their linkages to INGOs,
implementation of more assessment tests at the
national and international levels, and ratification
of international human rights treaties, are less
likely to use primary-level high-stakes exams.
It is important to emphasize that although highstakes exams at early ages have declined over
time, they have not been abandoned at upper levels of schooling. Formal standardized measures of
merit continue to be important in shaping educational stratification at this level in most countries,
but these selection mechanisms are delayed in the
schooling process because they conflict with
norms of inclusivity, egalitarianism, and access
to education as a human right that shape conceptions of schooling at earlier ages. This trend is
consistent with studies showing that betweenschool tracking has declined dramatically in different regions of the world at the junior-secondary
level, even though most countries continue to
track students at the senior-secondary level (Furuta 2020). These trends reflect a more general
internal tension in globalizing conceptions of education that developed after World War II. As education became an increasingly central component
of social stratification, countries faced pressures
to create fair and meritocratic selection processes
based on a standard academic curriculum; at the
same time, education also came to be seen as a fundamental human right and universal entitlement
(Furuta et al. forthcoming).
These conflicting conceptions of education
reflect an underlying tension in notions of individual equality that shape liberal institutions (Lerch,
Bromley, and Meyer 2020). The Hobbesian Leviathan, for example, develops from a social contract between free and equal individuals in the
state of nature who also are free and equal in their
capacities to brutally kill each other. Education
Sociology of Education XX(X)
reflects a more benign situation: In a world
increasingly shaped by an underlying assumption
of individual personhood, nation-states develop
educational institutions that aim to both expand
individual equality and allocate individuals into
an unequal role structure in society (cf. Furuta
2017). In this context, the increasing importance
of education in social stratification after World
War II structures and legitimates this inherent tension in liberal notions of individual equality
(Lerch et al. 2020). The case of high-stakes exams
provides an important example of this more general phenomenon in a world increasingly shaped
by liberal institutions (Ikenberry 2011).
Finally, the cross-national and historical perspective in this article highlights the distinctiveness of educational institutions in the United
States when compared with those of other countries. Unlike most countries, the United States
does not administer national high-stakes educational exams at any level of schooling (cf. Warren
and Kulick 2007). Instead, social promotion policies were common in many districts and states
during the twentieth century (Labaree 1984), and
college admissions tests like the SAT and ACT
have never been a mandatory admission requirement for all students (Furuta 2017). Similarly,
the United States is distinct as one of few countries
in the world that does not track students into
sharply differentiated types of schools at any level
of the educational process (Furuta 2020). Scholars
of educational stratification should therefore be
somewhat cautious in making theoretical generalizations using empirical evidence that draws on
only the United States, given the relatively
‘‘exceptional’’ quality of institutionalized educational stratification in this country in this broader
comparative perspective.
RESEARCH ETHICS
This study analyzes country-level data that are publicly
available from primary and secondary sources, and it
did not require review from the institutional review board.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The author thanks John Meyer, Evan Schofer, Michelle
Jackson, Francisco Ramirez, Patricia Bromley, members
of the Stanford Comparative workshop, and several anonymous reviewers for valuable comments on the article.
Furuta
15
ORCID ID
Jared Furuta
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3405-3576
SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL
Supplemental material is available in the online version
of this journal.
NOTES
1. For example, only 41.6 percent of students passed
the primary school leaving exam in Madagascar in
1996; and only 28.6 percent of students passed the
Primary School Leaving Exam in Tanzania in
2001 (UNESCO 2006).
2. For example, see Eckstein and Noah (1992); Vlaardingerbroek and Taylor (2009); Kellaghan and
Greaney (1992); Bray and Steward (1998); Warren
and Kulick (2007); Bol and colleagues (2014); or
Warren, Jenkins, and Kulick (2006).
3. To list just two examples, Malaysia administered
the Overseas Senior Cambridge Examination until
1956 (before becoming independent in 1957), and
the Lebanese baccalaureat was modeled after the
French exam in 1929 (before independence in
1943) (Vlaardingerbroek and Taylor 2009).
4. As one example of the importance of developing academic standards that were recognized as internationally legitimate, Sri Lanka tried and failed to replace
the British General Certificate of Education O-level
and A-level exams with their own national exams
in the 1970s. After a few years, they quickly reverted
back to the British system because their own exams
were unable to garner international recognition and
were perceived as incompatible with academic standards in other countries (Lewin and Little 1984).
5. The comparable academic standards provided by
these exams also enabled students with credentials
in one country to gain access to schooling in others.
As Garnier and Schafer (2006:155) note, ‘‘interstate agreements [among former French colonies]
make it virtually automatic for students who have
taken examinations in one Francophone country to
enter another country’s education system.’’
6. The cultural assumptions that these assessment tests
embody can be contrasted with alternative historical
assumptions that (1) education is primarily meant to
socialize an exclusive social elite and (2) national
education systems around the world are distinctively
different and incomparable (Kandel 1930). In
a world shaped by these cultural assumptions,
assessment tests would have little perceived value.
7. If the exact year a country changed its use of a highstakes exam was not identifiable in any of the primary or secondary sources consulted (30 percent
of changes identified in the data set at the primary
level), the change was coded at the start of the
new decade. For example, if country i had a highstakes exam at the primary level in the 1980s but
did not have a high-stakes exam at this level in
the 1990s, this variable was coded 1 from 1980 to
1989 and 0 from 1990 to 1999. For countries with
no formally codified lower-secondary level of
schooling, exams at the lower-secondary level
were coded as missing, and exams at the end of
the first formally stated schooling level were treated
as primary-level exams.
8. Asia fluctuates during the last few decades of trends
depicted here. The small uptick in this region from
1990 to 2000 is driven by only a few countries:
Laos, which implemented a high-stakes exam at
the primary level after abandoning a Sovietinfluenced education model in the 1990s (UNESCO
2010), and Pakistan, which implemented a highstakes exam as part of a continuous effort to
improve education standards in the country (Husen
and Postlethwaite 1985, 1994; UNESCO 2010).
9. This argument suggests that the grade level during
which a high-stakes exam is first administered will
be (1) lower in former French or British colonies
and (2) higher in countries that are more strongly
embedded in universalistic conceptions of education. Appendix A4 in the online supplemental material presents the results of a series of random-effects
Tobit models, where the dependent variable is
a right-censored outcome that identifies the grade
level of the earliest high-stakes exam in country i
at time t. Almost all the coefficients are significant
and in the expected direction. The most notable difference with the results of Table 1 is that former
British colonies are more likely to use high-stakes
exams at earlier ages, but this result is not statistically significant. Note that the French approach to
colonialism was centralized, autocratic, and predicated on the idea of assimilating its colonies into
the metropole; British imperialism, by contrast,
was typically organized through ‘‘indirect rule’’
(Fieldhouse 1966), and this approach created more
national autonomy and enabled local policies to
develop more easily (Garnier and Schafer 2006).
10. In supplementary analyses, I included an additional
independent variable that identifies the proportion
of countries in region r of country i that did not
administer a primary-level high-stakes exam at time
t. Following existing research on world society and
institutional change, other countries within the
same region may shape a nation-state’s conception
of legitimate state behaviors (Ramirez, Soysal, and
Shanahan 1997). Higher proportions of countries
that do not implement high-stakes exams may thus
create stronger normative or mimetic pressures for
a given country to do the same. Results are consistent
with this proposition but not included because of collinearity issues with other variables in the models.
16
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Author Biography
Jared Furuta is a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University, where he studies how nation-level educational
institutions like high-stakes exams, tracking, and assessment testing have been shaped by a postwar vision of an
international liberal order. In other work, he has studied
the rise of test-optional college admission policies in the
United States. His prior research has appeared in Sociology of Education and Social Forces.