This paper, while broadly arguing in favour of the common school, nonetheless accepts the possibility of distinct specialist institutions in the later years of secondary schooling. It also argues for a careful distinction between a comprehensive school and a comprehensive classroom; further distinguishing between grouping by reference to alleged overall or all-round ability (‘streaming’) and grouping by reference to current preparedness for particular studies (‘setting’). It favours the latter and is critical of a policy of inclusion that tends towards the (...) placing of students with special needs in the regular classroom. It argues throughout that practice and policy must be based on educational rather than social grounds, should they be in conflict. (shrink)

The integration of Ukraine into the European education area provides for handling the crisis, adapting to the conditions of market economy, training specialists of proper level, and thus for a competitive national system of education. The article deals with the notion of education philosophy in view of the human life value approach and the phenomenon of power. Particular ideas and theories, such as the humanistic, democratic, conservative, liberal ones and others, are of conceptual importance for the philosophy of education as (...) a philosophy of the human being. The tendencies of the European and the worldwide integration in the sphere of education greatly change the status of knowledge. However knowledge is a competitive product of high priority. It is the form of capital, intellectual property, the object of copyright and it is principally the national scientific market product. On the basis of years of the author’s family studies experience in the sphere of national education of students it is grounded that in Ukraine in connection with asserting its independence and the European choice Majority as a strategic national idea uniting a society becomes a matter of world view and values importance. Its realization provides for the systemic regulation of the socio-humanitarian policy on the social, family and state levels. This implies a systemic turn of the Ukrainian power structures to the youth as a condition of a positive image of the country in the international education area. (shrink)