Compulsory education

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Compulsory education is education which children are required by law to receive and governments to provide. Homeschooling is typically an alternative to going to government-accredited schools.

Compulsory education at the primary level was affirmed as a human right in the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Many of the world's countries now have compulsory education through at least the primary stage, often extending to the secondary education.

The Aztec are thought to have had the first compulsory educational system. All male children were required to attend school until the age of 16. ^[1] However, such mandates were unknown in Western modernity before 1774, when mandatory schooling was introduced in Austria from which it gradually spread to other countries in the 19th century. It reached the American state of Massachusetts in 1852, and quickly spread to other US states thereafter.

1 Extent
2 See also
3 References
4 External links

[edit] Extent

In Canada, compulsory education is set for ages 6 to 16. In Finland, it starts at the age of 7 (+/- 1 negotiable), and ends after graduation from comprehensive school at the age of 16, or at last after ten school years. In the United States, the age span is somewhere between 5 and 18, depending on the state. ^[2]