The Project

The Education for Democracy Index (EfDI) is a tool that measures how well a country’s educational policies and practices promote democratic competences (i.e. knowledge, skills, values, attitudes and behaviours). It is a comprehensive multidimensional index in that it captures not only the areas of education that are specifically intended to foster such competences, such as citizenship education, but also institutional characteristics, such as the degree of school autonomy that may have unintended consequences on these outcomes. Apart from providing a quick scan of the democratic performance of a national education system it also allows for the identification of specific areas of improvement within it. As such it is a highly useful tool for policy makers and practitioners interested in how education in their country can more effectively enhance the democratic engagement of school-going youth.

The EfDI stands out in two ways:

1. Unlike other comprehensive indexes, it not only covers policies but also their implementation, as captured with actual school practices and pedagogy. This is relevant as policies are not necessarily enforced or acted upon, certainly not in countries where schools have a high degree of autonomy and do not closely follow national curricula or guidelines.
2. The index measures policies and practices that help to enhance both performance levels of democratic competences and equality in such competences. Hence, the higher the score on the EfDI, the better a country’s education policies and practices promote both excellence and equity regarding such competences. Looking at ways in which education can also reduce inequalities is important as the democratic engagement gap is a persistent problem in western societies.

We further note that the policies and practices included in the EfDI relate mostly to lower secondary as a crucial educational stage for the formation of democratic competences.

The EfDI does not only include the overall index but also a variety of sub-indexes that focus on a particular aspect. We thus developed sub-indexes capturing only policies or only school practices and ones that focus on the activities promoting either performance levels of competences or equality in such competences. We provide an overview where one can learn more about the index and subindexes.

These sub-indexes are further broken down in several areas and indicators for each area. Users are able to interact with the data and navigate across these levels under Explore the data. Under Methodology one can find a complete explanation of the construction of the overall index and the sub-indexes. Users can also download the EfDI database under Data.

The EfDI includes information about more than 40 – mostly European – countries and is available for three years – 2009, 2016, and 2022. This allows for comparisons across both time and space. As data is available for several countries for all three or two years, it is possible to track the performance of these countries over time.