Issn 1392 0758 Socialiniai Mokslai

Education policy problems – links between higher and secondary school

Eglė Katiliūtė

Kaunas University of Technology, K. Donelaičio str. 73, LT-3000 Kaunas

Paper presented at the European Conference on Educational Research, University of Hamburg, 17-20 September 2003

Abstract The article exposes main problems between higher and secondary school levels: tutoring as “shadow” education coming out of “shadow” junction of secondary school and national examination system, unequal opportunities in the system of national examination and problematical aspects of different enrolment conditions into higher schools. Possible reasons for the mentioned problems in the context of education policy are ideological disagreement and absence of “social agreement”. These possible reasons are theoretical presumptions for further scientific discussion.

Introduction Entering the 21st century, due to intensive technological development, the world has been experiencing deep political and social transformations that change the environment and the mode of activities. The latter causes the new requirement for a person: he/she has to know, how to act efficiently in a changing situation and to take individual responsibility for his/her own future and career. Lithuanian educational system should ensure the ability of students to pass into education system, to move from one level to another and among educational institutions, to continue studies after some period of time. Documents of education reform highlight ideas of creation permanent education system, but practical realization of these ideas and compatibility in action of educational institutions are problematic. It is possible to make an assumption that, in the aspect of education policy, linkage problems between higher and secondary school levels are conditioned by ideological conflict in education policy and lack of social agreement. Policy problems are contextual and situational. They are raised and defined by particular historical circumstances. Therefore any solution should be evaluated considering the context, understanding, interpretation and manipulation of problems. According to Newby (1993), if the problems are conceptualized as clear and unambiguous, society is imaged as a purposefully created machine. But people are not cogs in the machine. In this paper possible reasons are brought up for further discussion. Problems of permanent education system have been analyzed by various scientists (Jarvis, 1999, Longworth, 1999, Taruškienė, 1997, Targamadzė, 1995, Jovaiša, 2001, Bitinas, 2000), but we did not succeed to locate the research which handles the problem of linkage between different levels of education system. The concept of linkage between higher and secondary school levels has not been analyzed in the documents of Lithuanian education policy. It is true to say that the linkage as a process is a research problem, which involves the following questions: where does the linkage prevail? Is it possible to evaluate it? Is it a negotiable process only from a qualitative point of view? The aim of the article is to show the main problems and their possible reasons between higher and secondary school levels. It is accomplished by the analysis of research literature and of documents of education policy. The first section of the article deals with interpretations of education policy, their levels and policy-making contexts. In the second section, it is attempted to outline the main problems between secondary and higher school levels in the contexts of practice and policy text production. Finally, in the last section, possible causes of mentioned problems are analyzed. The paper ends with conclusions.

1. Concept of education policy, contexts and levels of its making In this article the problems between higher and secondary school levels are analyzed in the aspect of education policy, therefore it is purposeful to define the concept of linkage and of education policy, its making contexts and levels. In Oxford Advanced Learner’s dictionary (2000) “linkage” has been defined as 1) the act of linking things; a link or system of links; 2) a device that links two or more things; “link” has been defined as: 1) connection between two or more people or things; 2) a relationship between two or more people, countries or organizations. A variety of policy description is conditioned by complexity of policy. As Wielemans (2000, p.25) points out, we should recognize that ‘policy’ is and has always been ‘relational’. Policy is always an expression of a relationship between an authority (a government) and the citizens. This constitutes the essence of all kinds of policy. The manifestation of this

1 relationship can take up different forms or modi, which could be situated between the two ends of a continuum, i.e. between outrageous authoritarian at one end and extremely democratic at the other. What is policy? Policy…  is “whatever governments chose to do, or not to do” (Taylor, Rizvi, Lingard, Henry, 1997);  means the outcomes or outputs of government processes;  is the authoritative allocation of values for the whole society (Timar, 2000);  are the goals that are to be pursued; administration is how people give effect to goals (Timar, 2000). Summarising these descriptions of policy, I wanted to outline that in the first description policy could be seen as praxis and in the second definition the substance of policy praxis also could be seen. I will agree with the description of policy that the goals outlined are to be pursued. If instead of society aims we insert educational aims or instead of outcomes we insert education outcomes, then we could talk about education policy. One of concise descriptions of education policy might be this: education policy is the aims of education that are to be pursued. And when we are talking about lasting or long-range goals we can say that there is strategic planning. In strategic level policy makers should try to answer the following questions: what strategy should be implemented? What values and priorities should be observed in order to recruit and maintain the best employees and to create organizational culture, which is oriented towards continuous learning and professional development? Describing a strategy of education I am talking about formulation of education aims and values and priorities not in the organizational level, but in the society level. Thus explicit strategy of education describes the process of formulating aims or objectives. As Cheng, Ng and Mok (2002, p.19) point out, ‘a new education policy often means a set of proposed initiatives, measures, or changes to the inputs and/or internal processes of the education system, with a hope of achieving some planned changes in education effects’. According to Coombs (1994), education policy making is often characterized by extraordinary complexity (involving so many participants and stakeholders at different levels), visibility of the education system and most policy deliberations (i.e. almost all citizens have education experience and believe that they are “experts” in education), dispersion of authority in education policy making at different levels, ambiguity about goals in most educational settings, and labor-intensive processes involving the majority of the education budget on staffing. The appropriate objectives of educational policy, as McLaughlin (1996) points out, may be summarized as follows: first, to empower and liberate individuals so that they can exploit their own capacities, including their moral and judgmental capacities, to the fullest possible extent; second, to ensure that society as a whole will be a beneficiary of such general educational achievement and the socialization which accompanies it; third, to see to it, as well, that individual and social workplace needs will be a major consideration in designing specific curricula and educational structures. Before highlighting possible reasons in linkage between higher and secondary school levels it is purposeful describe levels of education policy and its making contexts (see Figure 1). The first context, the context of influence, is where public policy is normally initiated. It is here that policy discourses are constructed. It is here that interested parties struggle to influence the definition and social purposes of education, what it means to be educated. As Bowe, Ball and Gold (1996, p. 285) point out, in addition ‘there is a set of more formal public arenas: committees, national bodies, representative groups, which can be sites for the articulation of influence’. This context of influence has a symbiotic but nonetheless uneasy relation to the second context, the context of policy text production. According to scientists, because influence is often related to the articulation of narrow interests and dogmatic ideologies, policy texts are normally articulated in the language of general public good. Their appeal is based upon claims to popular (and populist) common sense and political reason. Policy texts therefore represent policy. These representations can take various forms: most obviously ‘official’ legal texts and policy documents; The expression of policy is fraught with the possibility of misunderstanding, texts are generalized, written in relation to idealizations of the ‘real world’, and can never be exhaustive, they cannot cover all eventualities. Policy is not done and finished at the legislative moment, it evolves in and through the texts that represent it, texts have to be read in relation to the time and the particular site of their production. They also have to be read with and against one another – intertextuality is important. Second, the texts themselves are the outcome of struggle and compromise. Policies then are textual interventions but they also carry with them material constrains and possibilities. The responses to these texts have ‘real’ consequences. These consequences are experienced within the third main context, the context of practice, the arena of practice to which policy refers, to which it is addressed. The key point is that policy is not simply received and implemented within this arena rather it is subject to interpretation and then ‘recreated’. Bowe, Ball and Gold (1996, p. 287) further argue that ‘the policy process is one of complexity; it is one of policy- making and remaking. It is often difficult, if not impossible to control or predict the effects of policy, or indeed to be clear about what those effects are, what they mean, when they happen’. They have shown, ‘the ‘implementation’ of policy has often taken the form of detailed analyses (micro-based ethnographies for example) of how the ‘intentions’ behind policy texts become embedded in schooling or, more frequently, of how aspects of the schooling situation ‘reflect’ wider developments in the political and economic arena’. This separation between investigations of the generation and the implementation of policy, has tended to reinforce the ‘managerial perspective’ on the policy process, in the sense that the two are seen as distinctive and separate ‘moments’; generation followed by implementation (Alford, Friedland, 1988).

2 Who becomes involved in the policy process and how they become involved, according to Bowe, Ball, Gold (1996, p. 276), is a product of a combination of administratively based procedures, historical precedence and political maneuvering, implicating the State, the State bureaucracy and continual political struggles over access to the policy process; it is not simply a matter of implementers following a fixed policy text and ‘putting the Act into practice’. One key task for policy analysis is to grasp the significance of the policy as a text, or series of texts, for the different contexts in which they are used. Texts have clear relationships with particular contexts in which they are used. Textual meanings influence and constrain ‘implementers’ but their own concerns and contextual constrains generate other meanings and interpretations. Thus textual analysis makes it possible to understand knowledge production as a chain or series of transformative activities which range from the social organization of text industries, to the activities of text producers, through the symbolic transformations of the text itself, and to the transformative interaction between text and reader, or school knowledge and student (Wexler, 1982, p. 286). As Wexler goes on to point out, it is crucial that such analysis is critically informed by a political and social analysis that seeks to uncover some of the processes whereby such texts are generated. Texts, structures and agencies of control need to be attended to. The state control model actually tends to freeze policy texts and exclude the contextual slippages that occur throughout the policy cycle. Instead we would want to approach legislation as but one aspect of a continual process in which the loci of power are constantly shifting as the various resources implicit and explicit in texts are recontextualized and employed in the struggle to maintain or change views of schooling. This leads us to approach policy as a discourse, constituted of possibilities and impossibilities, tied to knowledge on the one hand (the analysis of problems and identification of remedies and goals) and practice on the other (specification of methods for achieving goals and implementation). We see it as a set of claims about how the world should and might be, a matter of the ‘authoritative allocation of values’. Policies are thus the operational statements of values, statements of ‘prescriptive intent’ (Kogan, 1975, p. 55, cf. Bowe, Ball, Gold, 1996, p. 276). They are also, as we conceive it, essentially contested in and between the arenas of formation and ‘implementation’. While the construction of the policy text may well involve different parties and processes to the ‘implementing’ process, the opportunity for re-forming and re-interpreting the text means policy formation does not end with the legislative ‘moment’; ‘for any text a plurality of readers must necessarily produce a plurality of readings’ (Codd, 1988, p. 239, cf. Bowe, Ball, Gold, 1996, p. 276). As Shilling (1988, p. 11) points out, education policy is a dialectical process; ‘policy outcomes are reliant upon the cooperation of the state, and an array of non-state organizations and individuals’. Texts carry with them both possibilities and constrain, contradictions and spaces. The reality of policy in practice depends upon the compromises and accommodations to these in particular settings. Thus Bowe’s, Ball’s and Gold’s (1996, p. 280-281) conception of policy has to be set against the idea that policy is something that is simply done to people; although they accepted that particular policy texts will differ in their degree of explicit recognition of the active (rather than passive) relationship between intended, actual and policy-in-use. If we remember Argyris’ (1985) argument, that ‘policies are espoused theories, and true reduction of the mismatches will occur only if the officers and managers behave in accordance with the intend of these policies. Without a particular kind of re-education and without changes in the organizational culture, the intent will not be implemented’. Argyris (1985) talks about organization level, but we can transfer certain theory to society level then we will see a very similar situation. Strategy makers formulate a strategy in espoused theories and they act in their theory-in-use, therefore formulated education objectives will not be implemented without changes in the social culture.

Context of policy text Context of influence production Context of practice INTENDED ACTUAL POLICY POLICY-IN-USE POLICY

Figure 1. Education policy levels and its making contexts

2. Problems in linkage between higher and secondary school levels in contexts of education policy text production and practice

3 In order to show the problems in linkage between higher and secondary school levels we will look at learners “way” from secondary school to higher education level regulated by education policy documents. One of main tasks in education reform is establishment of new national matura examination order. Results of the final examinations largely determine the graduate’s chances to continue studies at universities. Learners with low abilities could not pass final examinations well without tutors’ help. Therefore the popularity of shadow education service is growing up. It is possible to highlight tutoring as shadow linkage between secondary school and national examination system. Enrolment order to higher education system could be like official linkage between higher and secondary school levels. Summarized problems between higher and secondary school levels showed in Figure 2. One of the main links between secondary and higher school levels is national matura examination system. The study “Do all Lithuanian Pupils have equal opportunities to obtain HIGH QUALITY secondary education?” (2000) conducted by the National Examination Center pointed out the following tendencies:  Pupils coming from schools in cities and administrative centers of districts showed better results in the state final examinations than pupils studying in other schools.  An average gymnasium pupil took more state final examinations (and achieved better results) in comparison with a graduate in a comprehensive school.  The school factor greatly influences results of the state final examinations, i.e. results of a graduate largely depend on the school s/he attends. Results of the final examinations largely determine a graduate’s chances to continue studies at universities; therefore, any differences among groups of graduates are in the focus of educational policy. According to the research data, new final examination system has up-to-dated shadow education. There are some conclusions from the study “Tutoring” (Markevičiūtė, 2002) made by education policy center:  More than 50 percent of the respondents have used tutors facilities. Therefore it is true to say that shadow education exists in Lithuania.  Most of the tutors are teachers of secondary or higher schools.  Pupils did not trust the secondary school, therefore they go to tutors. Most of pupils’ thought that without tutors help it is impossible to prepare for final examinations. One possible reason of mentioned shadow linkage could be lack of paradigmatic consistency between training syllabuses and assignment of examination center (training syllabuses (curriculum) outline the learning paradigm, but assignments of examination center are orientated to knowledge reproduction). Želvys (2002, p.55 – 56) points out negative aspects of tutoring:  Tutoring has raised social inequity and stimulated inequality.  Tutoring has raised overwork of children.  Tutoring shatters confidence in school because of developing opinion, that without tutors’ help is impossible prepare for final examination and pass them well.  Tutoring is part of shadow economy, because usually tutors did not pay taxes to the state.

“Shadow” linkage Official linkage

Tutoring National Enrolment Secondary examination order Higher school system education

Shadow Unequal Not the same education opprtunities order

Figure 2. Problems in linkage between higher and school levels

4 Tutoring is a problem related to the secondary school but in this article it is important in two aspects. First, it helps to prepare for final examination that guarantee chances to continue studies at universities, and, second, that tutoring is an important problem in the aspect of education policy. The second step of linkage between secondary and higher school levels could be enrolment order in higher education institutions. Enrolment conditions have been changing in recent years. But in 2001 enrolment order was more or less equalized for all higher education institutions ant it should not change in the short run. Increase in enrolment has occurred in all sectors after an initial drop immediately following re-establishment of independence. The most significant increase has occurred in the college sector (post-secondary institutions at the non- higher education level) and in higher education institutions. From 1994/95 to 1998/99, college enrolments increased by 41 % and higher education enrolments increased by 45 %. Most of the mentioned problems have been more or less solved (for example, successful national examination system reform), but there is no coherent continuity between secondary and higher education. The problem on the level of actual policy is that the Law of Education does not define the concept of linkage between secondary and higher education. In the new legislation of education “succession” is presented as a principle, but it is not specified how it works among different levels in education system. According to the analysis of education policy documents it may be said that there are no real preconditions for full realization of linkage between secondary and higher education levels in actual policy level.

3. Possible reasons in linkage between secondary and higher education levels in the context of intended policy From the theoretical point of view it is possible to make a presumption that the roots of problems in actual and in practical policy levels lie in the level of intended policy, in the context of strategical ideas of education. In the context of education policy influence we will outline two problematical aspects: ideological disagreement and absence of “social agreement”. It is purposeful to show a concise historical overview about educational reform in Lithuania before outlining possible ideological disagreement in Lithuanian education. As Zelvys (2001) points out, the very first steps towards reforming the system of education in Lithuania were made in 1988. As a result of the "perestroika" policy in a former Soviet Union the national liberation movement "Sajudis” was founded on June 1988. Soon after that a part of the Lithuanian educational community, which shared "Sajudis” ideas, started developing the Concept of National School. The Concept was prepared and made public by the end of the same year. Therefore the year 1988 can be considered as the starting point of educational reform in Lithuania. When the Lithuanian Parliament declared the reestablishment of independence on March 1990, the new draft of the Education Law was already undergoing the process of public discussions. The Law was adopted by the Parliament in 1991, and in 1992 the General Concept of Education of the Republic of Lithuania was developed. The concept described the landmarks for further changes of the educational system. The issues discussed therein were: the entire structure of an educational system, general upbringing of children and youth, vocational training for youth, higher education, adult education, pedagogue training, management and financing of education, and support services for the process of training (scientific information, psychological, and medical). This concept declared the fundamental principles of Lithuanian education - humanitarianism, democratization, nationalism, and innovation. The General Programs of the Lithuanian schools of basic education specifies the purpose, values and assignments for such schools. The purpose of the school is the successful development of individual ability and evolution of the population, and assistance in the development of the modern, open and democratic Lithuanian state. All the efforts of basic education are oriented to the child and youth, and their talents and needs. The school recognizes the unconditional worth of individuals, and their right to freedom of choice and moral responsibility. The school develops democratic relationships, and supports the upholding of such within the internal life of the community. In that time policy makers did not use such concepts as conservative or liberalism. According to Želvys (1998), we can say that in the General Concept of Education conservative and liberal educational tendencies have been successfully linked. The question is if this has really happened? Is it so that Lithuanian education has no clear ideology? The theoretical level fits conservative ant liberal ideas, but what happens in education practice? For example, in the first grades, according to a conservative point of view, we suggested to give no marks not to daunt pupils, but when the same pupils end school they should go to open liberal competitive fight and pass national examinations. Lithuanian educational reform was planned as a systemic reform from its very start. However, lack of co-ordination while implementing changes in different sectors and levels of education remains one of the most serious challenges throughout all the reform years. In this Lithuanian context outlined above the problem of many differences between education policy and practice that was formulated looks really important. From this overview of historical background we can see that after fifty years of occupation Lithuanian State has been rebuilt. It is important to stress that if we talk about radical changes in society (from atomization of society to open society!) we should look at the field of values. As Boaz (2002) points out, ‘Marxism promised freedom and community but delivered tyranny and atomization. The tyranny of the Marxist countries is well known, but it may not be so well understood that Marxism created a society far more atomized than anything in the capitalist world. The Marxist rulers in the Soviet empire in the first place believed

5 theoretically that men under conditions of "true freedom" would have no need for organizations catering to their individual interests, and in the second place understood practically that independent associations would threaten the power of the state - so they not only eliminated private economic activity, they sought to stamp out churches, independent schools, political organizations, neighborhood associations, and everything else down to the garden clubs. After all, the theory went, such non-universal organizations contributed to atomization. What happened, of course, was that people deprived of any form of community and connectedness between the family and the all-powerful state became atomistic individuals with a vengeance’. As the philosopher and anthropologist Ernest Gellner (cf. Boaz, 2002) wrote, "The system created isolated, amoral, cynical individualists-without-opportunity, skilled at double-talk and trimming." The normal ways in which people were tied to their neighbors, their fellow parishioners, the people with whom they did business, were destroyed, leaving people suspicious and distrustful of one another, seeing no reason to co-operate with others or even to treat them with respect. Therefore, it seems that during occupation years there was a double-value system in almost every person’s life in Lithuania and in other Soviet republics as well: one set of values was officially declared and real life was built on another set of values. It is very important to pay attention to this issue of values by seeking to solve the problem of coherence in the policy of education, strategy and it’s realization, in other words, by seeking to analyse why so many differences arise between educational policy level and educational practice. We should concede that to make changes in official documents of Education and to declare a new set of values is the first and the easiest part of work, and the other part is to live according to new values in real life and to reach the desirable outcomes of education, which were declared in official documents. Questions of a normative nature inevitably arise: who is it that we, as educators and citizens, desire people to become? Do we have some social agreement? As Todd (2001, p. 435) points out, ‘philosophically speaking, exploring the place of ethics in education often begins from this normative point of departure: what values are to be invoked in educational encounters? How might students be educated to become better citizens, more responsible moral subjects, or people who can live and work better across social differences? Simon (1992, p. 62) notes that pedagogy is not just about the teaching of morals, but is itself a ‘moral vision’. Normative questions are often central in helping to define and reflect upon an educational project’. However, posing normative questions has the tendency to make ethics programmatic in its orientation to education: a set of duties or obligations that, if well-enough defined and well-enough followed, will produce the ethical behavior desired. Bauman (1993, p.20) remarks on men and women living in a post-modern world: ‘we look in vain for the firm and trusty rules which may reassure us that once we followed them, we could be sure to be in the right’. Social order is perceived as something very concrete, formed in precise terms, although in a pluralistic democratic society common agreement should prevail. The question is, whether the given concreteness (of social order) is right for all? If the social order is not acceptable to all, it is not ethic. If it is right for all, it is ethical, but the problem is, how to arrive at a common agreement on the same social order? Can a single acceptance of the group be the basis for the moral norm? If we leave objective norms with universal validity aside, will we fall in the use of force as the only solution to the conflicts between incompatible norms? Does ethical subjectivism imply the denial of the possibility of a harmonious coexistence in the sense that it does not necessarily recognize tolerance as a shared value? The rational consensus seems to be the proposal in force in order to avoid the universalization of the norms, which respond to individual or group interests. The appeal to reason, to intelligent ethics, to "minimum agreed ethics" appears to be the tool used to avoid subjective irrationalisms. It is a resource, which is not always effective as proved by our daily reality. The socio-cultural changes, as Podest (2001) pointed out, assume political and economic transformations and affect the daily life of each one of us, and shake up in many cases the bases of what we have used to structure our existence, questioning the principles and values assumed in other times when other existential scenarios were faced. The critical analysis that has been made within the new sociology of education can be further developed in line with the Aristotelian starting point “that education is fundamentally not an epistemological but an ethical and political enterprise” (Schilling, 1986, p.12, cf. Aristotle, 1990). This perspective means that the content of education cannot be referenced to any definitive scientific-technical rationality. The content aims that are expressed and the tradition within which, say, science education is embedded (including its relationship to various scientific disciplines) have to be understood as historically and socially conditioned and always open to discussion. According to Shapiro (2001), we need an approach to moral education, which will help students develop values that will enrich their lives as individuals and as members of society. It should enable them to participate in a communal effort to find a balance between individual liberty, private property, market competition, and due process on the one hand and self-restraint and community obligation on the other. Since we as a people have chosen pluralism and representative government over other forms of social organization (such as official moral orthodoxies or totalitarianism), it is incumbent upon our education institutions to prepare their students to live in a society where they will have to make their own moral choices, where they will have the capacity to help shape the moral contours of the society as a whole, and where their lives will be directly affected by the moral choices of others.

6 It is good when school creates various possibilities to develop personal qualities, yet it is very important to give the students estimation of values. The learning environment should be saturated with the values representing the social order and also other different values, coming from the students. Yet values brought by the students can exist in the learning environment only after having passed through the estimation of values. For example, if stealing is a virtue for a student, in the learning environment it should be estimated as a negative value. As Bitinas (2000) points out, educators, primarily parents, have rights to pass their values to their children, i.e. to indoctrinate. The structure of the value-orientated education is compared to the education structure and their perception is compared to their conscious apprehension, ability to use them in everyday life. Educator is supposed to stimulate learner’s ability to apprehend the essence of values, to solve problems, connected to the choice of behaviour, determined by certain values. According to this strategy, the key point is to decide the set of acceptable values in the process of education. Yet the strategy of value indoctrination trespasses the main principle of the democratic society – the right of every individual, child included, to the free choice of values. In this context of values and democracy in society to my mind is important to outline Bernstein’s (1996) view to the necessary and effective conditions for democracy. According to Bernstein (1996), ‘parents and students must feel that they have a stake in the school and confidence that the arrangements in the school will realize or enhance this stake’. He suggests that ‘if these conditions are to be realized in the schools then we will need to ensure that we have institutionalized three interrelated rights. The first right is the right to individual enhancement. Enhancement is not simply the right to be more personally, more intellectually, more socially, more materially, it is the right to the means of critical understanding and to new possibilities. This right is the condition for confidence, and operates at an individual level. The second right is the right to be included, socially, intellectually, culturally and personally. Inclusion is a condition for communitas and this right operates at the level of the social. The third right is the right to participate in procedures whereby order is constructed, maintained and changed. Participation is the condition for civic practice, and operates at the level of politics’. I think that all mentioned conditions: confidence, communitas and civic discourse might be attributed to ethic conditions. Certain ethic aspects are really existed but it is important to stress that they are not simply implemented. The problem is in evaluation and implementation of mentioned rights. Summarizing this chapter it could be said that when we look at the necessity of education policy, if we want to reach some aims, it seems very important to know what is good for educational aims, which values we are talking about with reference to implementing the curriculum, what the social order is? It is important to mention that this article shows possible reasons (ideological conflict and lack of “social agreement”) which are theoretical presumptions for further scientific discussion.

Conclusions 1. The essential thing in education policy is implementation of the set of tasks. Different levels of education policy (intended, actual and policy in-use) are made in different contexts (context of influence, context of policy text production and context of practice). Ideas outlined in the context of influence have been crystallized in actual policy level (in policy documents), but in practical level the policy is not successfully implemented because of interpretation process of policy documents. 2. Tutoring which reveals shadow education, unequal opportunities in national examination system and not the same enrolment possibilities are the main problems between secondary and higher education levels, as a learners “way” from secondary to higher education. After performance analysis of education policy documents it is true to say that there are no real preconditions for full realization of linkage between secondary and higher education levels in actual policy level. 3. Problems in linkage between secondary and higher education levels named as shadow education and unequal opportunities might be coming from problematic aspects of education policy context: ideological conflict and lack of “social agreement”.

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