More Than Education – Formal and Informal Education as a Tool to Solve Children and Youth Problems

Education (formal, non-formal and informal initiatives) as a social practice is often used to solve social problems on macro, mezzo and micro level. To analyze how educational system is treated as a tool of social change it is important to answer how those problems are defined, ranked, who is responsible for specifying those problems and finally who implements solutions and evaluates their impact.To find answers to the questions above I will focus on the analysis of the 1999 educational reform’s results. The reform aimed at equalizing opportunities (school as a main institutional actor in the area of equalizing opportunities). Moreover, I will analyze visible consequences and results of various actions taken by central and local government’s institutions, schools, NGOs and community programs. It is worth to look at relations between these actors, to try to reconstruct logics, consequences and results of actions and initiatives for children and young people.The text is based on nationwide and local researches concerning educational problems (diagnostic and evaluation studies) and my own researches (e.g. final evaluation of Youth Program 2000–2006)