Toward Structural Realignment in Mass Education

This conceptual preprint develops a structural diagnosis of a recurring problem in mass education: the coupling of fixed-time, age-synchronised progression to learning and development that vary in timing, readiness, and stability. Rather than treating underachievement, fragile mastery, disengagement, categorisation, remediation, and weak diagnostic signals as wholly separate problems, the paper asks whether part of their recurrence can be understood as a common progression mismatch. The argument is organised in explicit epistemic layers. Adjacent research traditions are first used heuristically to establish empirical recognisability. Three minimal analytical commitments are then stated: learning can be threshold-sensitive, development is individually variable, and early alignment can shape later trajectories. From these premises, the paper develops conditional structural consequences for synchronised progression and derives bounded design constraints concerning readiness-sensitive entry, variable time-to-mastery, cumulative misalignment, and diagnostic signal quality. Calendar design is treated separately as a testable extension rather than as a core derived consequence. The contribution is diagnostic and theory-building rather than a systematic review, empirical prevalence estimate, or complete reform blueprint. Illustrative reform mappings are included to show how different policy families may relate to the diagnosed frictions, without claiming feasibility, optimality, or causal effectiveness. This paper is positioned as a support and bridge text within the Society, Democracy, Organisation, and Education Research Programme, specifically in the education and structural-mismatch line.