The purpose of this chapter and chapter 15 is to examine the evolution of the countries interacting with the IBE over time. We distinguish four main possibilities for interaction:Footnote 1 participation in the IBE’s thematic surveys, the drafting of a national report for the Yearbook, representation at Conferences and membership of the Bureau. In this chapter, we focus on the first three possibilities: to what degree did they conform or not to the IBE’s objective universality (even partially)? What configurations did this universality take according to the context and time? In Chap. 15, we will analyse in detail the fourth possibility: the evolution of IBE membership, which had other implications.

Steady Growth in the Number of Countries Interacting with the IBE

Figure 14.1 summarises the number of countries active within the IBE from 1934—the date of the effective establishment of the ICPEs—to 1968, the end of Piaget’s reign.Footnote 2 We do not include the period of the Second World War when many activities were suspended (ICPEs, publication of the Yearbooks), even though the IBE continued its surveys and exchanges, but in other formats.Footnote 3

Fig. 14.1
A multiline graph of participation in surveys. It plots percentage versus years 1934 to 1968. The plotlines are inclining. In 1968, the highest plotline is for national reports for the yearbook and the lowest plotline is for I B E membership.

Participation in surveys (yearly average), national reports in the Yearbook, presence at ICPEs, membership in the IBE from 1934 to 1968

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We observe a comparable increase in three of the four types of interaction: participation in surveys and national reports for the Yearbook and representations to the ICPEs, which roughly double from 1934 to 1968. The curves are relatively close to each other. Equally constant is the gap between the number of memberships, the fourth indicator and the other activities: it always remained lower, even if the curve followed a more notable rise than the others from the 1960s onwards, as we shall see later (Image 14.1).

Image 14.1
A photograph of a page with New South Wales response to the survey concerning school systems. The sheet has a hand drawn visual representation and text. Text is in a foreign language.

New South Wales response to the survey concerning school systems (1931). This survey, the first worldwide on public education, was published in French in 1933 under the title “The Organisation of Public Education in 53 Countries”: an important step in comparative education. (© IBE)

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A More Inclusive Universality

We can therefore see growth in the first three types of interaction. However, this should be put into perspective from the outset, since many regions of the world are not represented, which testifies to the IBE’s difficulty in achieving real universality. The members of the Secretariats and the main bodies of the Bureau were aware of this from the start and regularly identified countries with which they wished to intensify their relations. With this in mind, let us examine the different phases of this evolution on the world map.

Participation in IBE activities was at a relatively high level from the beginning. Some forty countries met at the first ICPEs and as many responded to the surveys; even more provided national reports. The 1935 survey on primary teacher training, discussed at the ICPE received as many as 64 replies; in 1938 and 1939, sixty and fifty-nine countries respectively provided a report for the Yearbooks. We note that at that time this represented almost all the so-called sovereign countries that maintained diplomatic relations.Footnote 4 From this point of view, universality seems to have been almost achieved; the delegations themselves noted this throughout the ICPEs and declared themselves delighted with it. Surveys and Yearbooks attracted ministries from all over the world and also led them to participate in ICPEs insofar as it was economically and technically possible for them; the countries that least attended the conferences were from Latin America, for just such reasons.Footnote 5

Let us not deceive ourselves: the limitations of this ‘universality’ are apparent from a geopolitical analysis: thirty European and nineteen Latin American countries make up the majority of the countries, plus the United States and Canada and eight Asian countries (including the ‘giants’ India, still under British rule, China and Japan). With the exception of the Union of South Africa, which was dominated by white settlers, the whole of South-East Asia, a large part of the Middle East and the whole of sub-Saharan Africa were absent: that is, the regions colonised by Europeans.Footnote 6

After the Second World War, despite sustained cooperation with UNESCO, curiously the number of participants in IBE activities did not exceed the pre-war level and even decreased in the Yearbooks: there was a stagnation, or even a decline, from the point of view of world representativeness, since the total number of countries had increased in the post-war period, in particular thanks to their winning independence especially in Asia.Footnote 7 Put another way, if considered in terms of the percentage of sovereign countries represented, universality was even more incomplete than before. Among the reasons for this were irregular participation, notably by a number of particularly disadvantaged Latin American states, such as Paraguay, Haiti and Honduras, plus the absence of the communist bloc countries which boycotted a number of international organisations, including the IBE between 1950 and 1953.Footnote 8

From the 1950s onwards, the number of states participating in the IBE’s activities took off again. The organisers were delighted with this development:

This year, the conference realizes a decisive step towards universality, since several countries that never participated took part for the first time in the work of the Conference and others, absent since 1950, once more took their place in participating. (ICPE, 1954, p. 9)

Several newly independent Asian, Near and Middle Eastern and North African countries now became active in the IBE.Footnote 9 Moreover, after Stalin’s death, the communist countries returned to the IBE, just as they also reversed their policy towards other international organisations.Footnote 10 This beginning of a take-off was confirmed in the second half of the 1950s, thanks to the spread of independence movements in the Near and Middle East, in North Africa and, more tentatively, in sub-Saharan Africa.

At the beginning of the 1960s, there was a real leap forward, both quantitatively and geographically: twenty-five African countries were by now active in the IBE.Footnote 11 The year 1965 was a kind of culmination:Footnote 12 105 countries took part in the survey on modern languages, ninety-six in the ICPE, ninety-three in the Yearbook. The twenty or so countries which did not respond to the invitation were among those which, due to a lack of resources, collaborated once in every two or three occasions; and there was still the problem of the non-invited countries of the communist bloc, as we shall see. These developments show that the IBE had in reality almost achieved its goal of universality (as it understood it), allowing it to rely on data provided by a large majority of the world’s existing governments.

Despite this obvious success, relatively few countries had become members of the IBE: how can this be explained?