After decades without major structural changes in Luxembourg's school system, it was in 2009 that extensive school reforms were introduced, which intend to reduce educational inequalities. A variety of further reforms since 2013, under the slogan 'Different schools suited to different pupils' (MENJE, 2020), aimed at diversifying the educational landscape as a direct response to the increasingly heterogeneous student body – with more than 60% of students speaking a language other than Luxembourgish at home (Eurydice, 2022). As the public education system has a trilingual nature (MENJE, 2020; n.d.), this diversity accounts for a source of inequality due to the high demanding language requirements.

In this context, the recent development of state-funded Accredited European Schools (AES) that follow the European curriculum instead of the Luxembourgish curriculum is noteworthy. Like the ‘original’ model of the European schools established for children of European Union institutions’ staff in 1953 – with its first site in Luxembourg – the AES, which are open to local children, offer different language sections from which students can choose the language of instruction.

AES were established based on the suggestions of the European Parliament and the ‘open up’ initiative starting in 2009 (ibid.). They are required to meet the pedagogical requirements of the European curriculum. Each Member State is responsible for the administration and funding. AES are also characterized by integrating skills such as critical thinking that are clearly identified within primary education syllabi (Lombardi et al., 2021). Thus, the program is also of interest regarding the need for 21 century skills.

The development of a European education system in parallel to the traditional school system in Luxembourg raises many social, political, and educational questions. An evaluation study that analyses the genesis and ethos, and functioning of the entire European school system, states that “European schooling is a particular, exportable, and replicable type of education” (Leaton Gray et al., 2018). However, under which patterns of reasoning such a school system is imported as an addition to a decades-old, persistent, stratified school system is one of the research questions.

One can argue that global models of education are not simply implemented on a national level but are transformed and adapted to national and local circumstances. Robertson (1994) calls this the “glocalisation of social problems”. With regards to education this means that there must be a group of people or an institution that on the one hand absorbs international ideas and on the other hand translates and changes them to make them usable for the national education context. Even in the 1950s and 1960s, long before the globalization era of the 1990s, global networks were very influential in Luxembourg, and knowledge producers like social scientists and politicians served as agents to translate international ideas into national policies. However, national traditions remained strong. Teachers, politicians, and researchers served as agents of change, transforming international ideas to make them acceptable for the national context. Ideas from a trans-/international context (like the European Schools) were accepted and adopted at a local level.

The study aims to understand the genesis and outcomes of the implementation of an additional curriculum in public schooling in Luxembourg by asking:

• What patterns of legitimation accompany the emerging parallel school system, and what hopes, fears, and myths underlie these narratives?
• Which student groups benefit from the AES? How do different student groups in traditional schools versus AES perform in terms of educational achievement and well-being?

To understand the legitimization patterns and the ascribed role of AES in public and political discourses, social constructivism (Hacking, 1999) is used as the European public curriculum is understood as practices, material, and emotions (Parker, 2011).

This paper is embedded in an ongoing study on ‘Managing Diversity and Tackling Educational Inequality through the European Curriculum’ consisting of (1) a document analysis (corpus: political and public debates, school websites), (2) secondary data analysis of administrative student panel data and large-scale competence tests gathered in autumn 2022 in the national school monitoring 'Épreuves Standardisées' (ÉpStan); and (3) fieldwork including semi-structured interviews with school principals and teachers as well as classroom observations (planned for 2024). The presentation will rely on parts 1 and 2 and present (1) preliminary findings of the content analysis via multicyclic coding (Saldaña, 2009; VERBI Software, 2017: MAXQDA18). The coding scheme used in the first cycles of the analysis is based on heuristics from previous research (e.g., Parker, 2022). The quantitative analysis of (2) math competence tests, as well as the well-being of students following the European Curriculum versus students following the Luxembourgish curriculum, is mainly conducted by making use of descriptive analyses as the small percentage of students in the recently established European schools does not (yet) allow for complex regression models for particular student groups (in the school year 2021/22, 3.3% of the students in public schooling are enrolled in an AES, n=3,606). Despite this limitation, the results are very valuable because Luxembourg's school monitoring (ÉpStan) is based on a full sample as all students in grades 1, 3, 5, 7, and 9 are tested annually in mathematics and other competencies and surveyed about their school well-being and attitudes towards school. Thus, the "case of Luxembourg" can be used as an example to discuss which transformations in the education system seem to offer solutions to current challenges and demands. Multiple findings on educational inequalities and underperformance in competency tests by international standards have been replicated for Luxembourg despite its large resource expenditure (Lenz et al., 2021; Fischbach et al., 2022; Backes, 2020). The effects of the changes in population structure observed in many other European countries for some time can be observed in Luxembourg as if through a lens.

Parker (2011) analyses the discourses of International Education (IE) in US public schooling and reveals different patterns: strong and predominant discourses (IE legitimized by national economic competitiveness and national military readiness) and minor discourses (such as Cosmopolitanism and International student body). For Luxembourg, the preliminary analysis suggests that the main discourse accompanying the rise of AES is based on the discourse of diversity. The main narratives follow the argument of the international student body – closely linked to educational inequalities. But there is evidence for some underlying argumentations on a second layer. First, the issue of educational inequalities is linked to the loss of cognitive potential as the study titled “Matière Grise Perdue” (1968) constates. Nowadays, this argument includes a shortage of highly qualified workers resulting in a high share of cross-border commuters and international migrants who currently account for around 70% of the Luxembourg labor force (Alieva & Hartung, 2021). Further underlying debates on AES is the controversial discussion of social cohesion which, according to supporters, is strengthened due to the European idea, and which, according to opponents, seems to be severely threatened due to the segregation of students into language sections (Leaton Gray et al., 2018). Interestingly, in Luxembourg, AES does not seem to be exceedingly discussed under the framework of Europeanisation or transnational government of education (cf. Carlos, 2012). Preliminary statistical comparisons of traditional public schools vs. AES point to a socially selective privileged student body of AES (ONQS, 2022). To what extent this raises fears, that have been revealed in other studies, i.e., International Schools might “cream off” (Bunnell, 2022) the best students, will be analysed. Based on the presented findings, the discussion reflects the (potential) role AES might have in managing diversity and transferring good practices to the traditional public system - in Luxembourg and internationally.

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