Luxembourg is hyper-diverse in terms of the socio-economic, cultural, and linguistic backgrounds of its inhabitants. While this diversity is an asset, it is also a source of inequality in its education system, given the very demanding language requirements of its trilingual nature (Eurydice, 2022; MENJE, 2023). The country is becoming even more multicultural due to the increase in immigration and cross-border workers (Eurydice, 2022). This societal change poses further challenges to the Luxembourgish education system, as the trilingual public education system no longer reflects the multicultural and plurilingual nature of the country (Eurydice, 2022; MENJE, 2023).

After decades without major structural changes, comprehensive school reforms were introduced in 2009 to reduce educational inequalities, which were followed by further reforms since 2013, under the slogan “Different schools suited to different pupils” (MENJE, 2020) to diversify the educational landscape in response to an increasingly heterogeneous student body with more than 60% of students speaking a language other than Luxembourgish at home (Eurydice, 2022). These reform initiatives led to the creation of the Accredited European Schools (AES), or European Public Schools (EPS). Originally created for the children of staff working for the EU institutions, the first European School to offer multilingual education was established in Luxembourg in 1953. In the following years, schools implementing the European Curriculum mushroomed in other European countries, and since 2005, the curriculum has been made available to the national schools in the Member States (Office of the Secretary-General of the European Schools, 2023). Years after its first implementation, the European Curriculum has returned to Luxembourg as an additional public-school offer, thanks to the recent reform initiatives aimed at combating educational inequalities. Like the “original” model, the EPS, which are open to local children, free of charge, offer greater flexibility in the choice of medium of instruction by using the European Curriculum with its pedagogical principles and approaches to student learning (Eurydice, 2022; MENJE, n.d.; Office of the Secretary-General of the European Schools, n.d.).

Global models of education are being transformed and adapted to the national and local contexts in what Robertson (1994) calls the “glocalization of social problems”. In the case of the establishment of the EPS in Luxembourg, the global model of education, the European Curriculum, is transformed in such a way that the schools refer to the  language backgrounds of the students and help them to possess the linguistic requirements of the country by offering three language sections (i.e., English, German, and French-speaking sections), second and third language courses, and mandatory Luxembourgish courses as the language of integration.

The European school system is considered to be exportable and replicable (Leaton Gray et al., 2018). However, the establishment of the EPS was a major structural change in Luxembourg’s decades-old, persistent education system, and national traditions remained strong among some groups. Therefore, this parallel school system raised many social, political, and educational questions. This study aims to understand the genesis and outcomes of the implementation of an additional curriculum in Luxembourgish public education system with the following questions:

• What were the reasons for the establishment of EPS in Luxembourg?
• What are the opinions of different stakeholders on the reasons for implementing the European Curriculum and its contribution? What are the problems identified by them?
• What patterns of legitimation accompany the establishment of EPS?

Legitimization patterns and the role of the EPS are explored by using social constructivism (Hacking, 1999). The "case of Luxembourg" is used as an example to discuss educational transformations in response to current challenges and demands, as it observes the effects of changes in population structure, in line with trends observed in other European countries.

This study is embedded in an ongoing project on “Managing Student Heterogeneity and Tackling Educational Inequality through European Curriculum”, which consists of (1) a document analysis of policy and public debates, (2) a secondary data analysis of administrative student panel data and large-scale competency tests collected as part of the National School Monitoring; and (3) fieldwork including semi-structured interviews with stakeholders and classroom observations. The current presentation will rely on parts 1 and 3 and presents preliminary findings from content analysis of policy and public debates and semi-structured interviews with stakeholders using multicyclic coding (Saldaña, 2009; VERBI Software, 2017: MAXQDA18). The first part of this study consists of a document analysis of newspaper articles to reveal the patterns of legitimation that accompany the establishment of EPS, and the hopes, fears, and myths that underlie these narratives. For this purpose, two newspapers with different political views were selected, and articles were collected using a keyword search. Inclusion and exclusion criteria were set by the researchers. After a careful analysis, 169 articles were included in the analysis, and they were coded by the researchers. The document analysis will be followed by semi-structured interviews with different stakeholders (policy makers, accreditation experts, education experts, school principals, teachers) who have system relevant knowledge (Gläser & Laudel, 2010). The target population is people who were/are involved in European public schools. At least two representatives from each stakeholder group will be included in the sample, but the exact number of participants will depend heavily on the saturation of the data (Guest, Bunce & Johnson 2006). The researchers developed the interview schedules based on the expertise and role of the stakeholders included in the study sample. Overall, the interview schedules include questions to understand the reason behind the implementation of the European Curriculum in Luxembourg as a form of a public schooling offer, the problem that was meant to be solved by this initiative, the initial target group of this initiative, the opinions of different stakeholders on why to implement European Curriculum and its contribution, and the problems or unintended consequences related to the implementation of European Curriculum. The data collection will take place during the school year 2023-24. To systematize our analyses and embed them in a functioning theoretical framework, Steiner-Khamsi's (2023) analytical grid will be used as a guideline, focusing on the problem, politics, and policy streams that influenced the establishment of EPS in Luxembourg.

According to the preliminary analysis, EPS target Luxembourgish and international students, with increasing competition for enrollment. They offer different language sections with flexibility in the medium of instruction. This reduces the language barriers experienced in the Luxembourgish public schools, while still emphasizing the importance of Luxembourgish for integration. However, there is criticism of the missed opportunities to integrate multilingual literature. EPS are presented as a response to the government’s commitment to diversifying the school offers, and they stand out for their pedagogical approaches that encourage autonomy while promoting student motivation and progress. Moreover, initiating actors and stakeholder voices are frequently mentioned whether in the form of positive or negative statements. In terms of the discourse analysis, problem and solution frames, as well as the concepts of diversity, heterogeneity and inequality, emerged. For example, EPS were seen as a solution to educational inequalities and as a way to address heterogeneity by providing a better linguistic fit for students from different linguistic backgrounds. However, some argued that social cohesion was severely threatened by segregating students into language sections (Leaton Gray et al., 2018). Research suggests that students with low SES and/or diverse linguistic backgrounds face challenges in the Luxembourgish education system (e.g., Sonnleitner et al., 2021). The better linguistic fit of EPS potentially helps some students and addresses inequalities in the public education system. However, it should be noted that the student population is slightly different. Therefore, more data and longer observations are needed to draw robust conclusions, which would also help us to identify what can be learned and transferred to other school systems within and outside Luxembourg. This is important because the highly diverse and rapidly growing nature of Luxembourg (population increase of 25.7% in 10 years; STATEC, 2023, February) may be relevant for other countries in the near future.

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