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Originally, education was in the hands of churches for centuries but later on became a fundamental feature of the modern state. Therefore, this study interprets the institutionalisation of national school systems as a process of secularisation and reconstructs six typical secularisation paths from a comparative historical perspective in order to determine general patterns of educational secularisation in Western Europe. The author shows that school systems, as a rule, match the national configurations within which they evolve. Depending on the changing church–state relations during nation-building, educational institutionalisation proceeds along national paths and thus follows three general patterns of educational secularisation.