It is very difficult to say anything strikingly new about »effectiveness and efficiency in education«, particularly in the context of a symposium addressing the very broad question of the futures of education, and the classical types of discourse on effectiveness and efficiency do not necessarily offer an appropriate solution. Of course, »effectiveness« and »efficiency« are elegant constructs, which obligingly lend themselves to commentary in terms of epistemological questions, but this would exceed the scope of this paper. »Effectiveness« and »efficiency« also hold in store ample opportunities for analytical refinement, but then the question of the relevance of the exercise would quickly arise. I will therefore attempt to address effectiveness and education in a slightly different way, and after briefly recalling the analytical meaning of these concepts (if only because they are often used interchangeably in everyday speech, to plunge directly into some questions related to their application.