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The Czech Republic is a relatively small country (10.3 million inhabitants) with a long educational history. After the arrival of Christianity in the ninth century, the first schools, which were run by the Church, were established in Bohemia and Moravia. The Czech king and Roman emperor Charles IV founded the oldest university in Central Europe, in Prague (1348). During the period 1526 to 1918, the Czech lands were part of the Catholic Habsburg monarchy. As a result of the Habsburgs’ counter-reformation politics, a great educational reformer, Jan Amos Comenius (1592-1670), was forced to emigrate from Moravia and had to live and work outside his homeland.

Croatia has a population of 4,381,352 (March 2001). In the school year 2002-03, approximately 813,000 pupils and students attended Croatian educational establishments, including those attending institutions of adult education and those pursuing special courses of studies. The majority of pupils and students were younger than twenty-five; this age bracket makes up about 18% of the total population. Approximately 105,000 children were looked after in nursery schools (about 38% of the age group), 396,000 pupils (99%) attended obligatory primary school, 196,000 adolescents studied at middle school, and 116,000 young adults were enrolled in universities and colleges. In the year 2002, approximately 5% of the 1.4 million employees in Croatia worked as teachers. The illiteracy rate for those over fifteen years of age was stated as 2% in 2001.

Cyprus is an island in the north-eastern Mediterranean with a surface area of 9251 km. The estimated population in 2003 was 800,000, with an ethnic composition of 80% Greek Cypriots, 17% Turkish Cypriots, 3% foreign residents, and a few Maronites, Armenians, and Latins. These figures do not include Turkish settlers and military personnel, estimated at 85,000 and 40,000 respectively, who have moved into the Turkish-occupied areas since the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974. At that time one third of the Greek population (about 200,000 persons) was expelled from their homes in the northern part of the island and forced to resettle in the southern areas. The economy of the island depends on agriculture and tourism, which may be regarded as the major economic forces in Cyprus. The quality and standard of life are high and the standards of health provision, the functioning of other social organizations, and the provision of public education can be favourably compared with the European Union.

Unlike the other Scandinavian countries, Denmark is densely populated, with approximately 5.3 million inhabitants living in an area of only 43,000 square kilometres. Almost 70% of the land area is given over to agriculture, but only 5.7% of the population works in the farming sector. An important economic sector is the fishing industry. Denmark changed from an agrarian to an industrialized nation during the 1960s. About 28% of employed persons are active in industry, while 66% work in the service sector. The high export potential for Danish industry is secured by a concentration on modern production and research technologies and a highly trained workforce. In 1999 the unemployment rate was 5.9%. In 2001 the gross national product amounted to 182,000m euros. Spending on education comprised about 14% of public expenditure. With the expansion of the Welfare State, expenditure on education climbed from 2% of GNP in the 1950s to 14% in 2001.

The origins of school education in Estonia can be traced back as far as the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, when churches and monasteries founded Latin-language educational institutions. The first primer in the Estonian language was published in 1575. In the year 1632, the first university was established; the was the predecessor of the present University of Tartu (Dorpat). The B. G. Forselius seminary trained the first generation of teachers; this institution offered two-year courses in the period between 1684 and 1688 in the Tartu region. While two thirds of the peasants could read at the end of the eighteenth century, hardly anyone was able to write. Between 1870 and 1880, three years of compulsory education were introduced. According to the 1881 census, almost all peasants were able to read and between 30 and 40% could also write. In 1940 and, after the break caused by World War Two, from 1944 on, the Soviet school system was introduced.

The Faroe Islands are located in the North Atlantic, halfway between Norway and Iceland. The archipelago consists of eighteen inhabited islands, covering an overall territory of 1399 square kilometres. Until 1948, the islands were a Danish county. Since that time, they have been a self-governing territory of the Kingdom of Denmark, as laid down in the Home Rule Act. On this basis, the Faroe Islands have their own legislative assembly () and their own government (). The Home Rule Act declared Faroese, a West Nordic language derived from Old Norse and closely related to Icelandic, as the principal language. Nevertheless, both Danish and Faroese are used as official languages. While responsibility for defence issues and foreign policy is exercised jointly with Denmark, the Faroe Islands did not follow Denmark in 1972 in joining the European Community, and they are not a member of the European Union today. The economy is heavily based on the fishing industry. Around 48,500 people live on the Faroe Islands, 38% of them in the area of the capital, Tórshavn.

Finland was a part of the kingdom of Sweden until 1809. Education was governed by the Church, and was provided in monastic schools and in the cathedral school established in Turku in the thirteenth century. Instruction was in Latin and aimed primarily at training clerics for an ecclesiastical career. The first Finnish university, the , was established at Turku in 1640. In 1809, Finland became an autonomous Grand Duchy under Russia. The legislation and social system from the Swedish era were preserved, however, during the period of autonomy. Russian educational statutes were not applied to Finland and internal conditions remained very much as before. Finland also established its own parliament and maintained autonomy in economic affairs. During the nineteenth century, basic education was greatly developed and expanded. The municipal elementary school was established in the 1860s. From 1898 onwards, local authorities had to provide formal educational opportunities for all school-aged children, and compulsory schooling was introduced in 1921.

The French educational system received its theoretical foundations through the ideas of the French Revolution of 1789; the basis of its real shape, however, was conferred only at the end of the 19 century by the education acts of the Third Republic concerning, in particular, primary education. Indeed, the promoters of the French Revolution did not have the financial means at their disposal to realize their ideas concerning ‘education for all’. The priority of educational policy under Napoleon’s regime, however, was rather the extension of secondary education (the ) in order to train the elite for the new state (Hörner 1996, p. 83).

Georgia (in Georgian, Sakartvelo), situated in the southern Caucasus region on the border of Europe and Asia, is a mountainous country with an area of 69,700 square kilometres and a population numbering 4,600,000 (July 2004 estimate). Some 60% of the nation’s inhabitants live in cities. The population is concentrated mainly along the coast of the Black Sea and in the river valleys. Previously one of the fifteen republics of the former Soviet Union, the territory of Georgia today includes two autonomous republics – Abkhazia, which has severed relations, and Adjaria (also spelt Adzharia), which is on reasonable terms with the central Georgian government – and one autonomous region, South Ossetia. Tbilisi is the capital and the largest city.

The beginnings of the German school system can be traced back to ‘monastery schools’ (), which are documented from the ninth century, and to cathedral and collegiate schools (), documented from the twelfth century. The monastery schools are considered to be the precursors of the later grammar schools. In the Middle Ages, especially in the context of the growth in trade, the emergence of cities, and the institutionalization of handicrafts, competencies in reading, writing, and numeracy became necessary for larger and larger portions of the population. In response to these needs, private and later communal schools were established in which elementary skills were taught. The heyday of these German schools for writing and mathematics stretched from the thirteenth to the eighteenth century, and they are regarded as one of the roots of the (‘people’s school’), which later became the . The emergence of the broader middle class from the eighteenth century led to the establishment of the . Its guiding principles were to cater for those who desired an education which went beyond that of the , but did not intend to pursue an academic career. The education imparted at this school differed from both classical humanistic and popular education. During the course of the nineteenth century, a three-track school system came into existence, whose role was essentially to cater to and stabilize the social interests of the three-class society of Germany.