Lifelong learning and quality of education are the two dominant themes in international and national education policy documents contemporaries. We have tried to systematize the abundant and varied literature on the quality of education through two discourses on quality: discourse on quality assurance and discourse on quality construction (Table 1). Each of these discourses, with all their variations and different emphases, is primarily shaped by the different understanding of the nature of systems of human activity, one of which is the system of educational practice. Professor Béla Banathy (1991), theorist of systems and systemic change, distinguishes five types of human activity systems: rigidly controlled (e.g. factory production line), deterministic (bureaucratic; highly centralized national education system), determined (businesses, industry, services), heuristics (businesses developing new entrepreneurship, research and development agencies, experimental education programs) and the search for a goal, as the education system should be (Banathy, 1991). [Table 1. Two Discourses on Educational Quality - Somewhere Here] The quality assurance discourse relies on understanding systems as rigid and/or deterministic. The theoretical context is positivist – quality is seen as something tangible and material, something that can be established and studied; something objective, independent of our values. Knowledge about quality is obtained through quantitative measurements, rating scales, correlation studies, experiments and quasi-experiments; Empirical research provides data and bases for quality theories and postulates introduced into practice. The dominant perspective on this record...... middle of article ......and Lifelong Learning: Governing the Subject, New York: RoutledgeHargreaves, D. (2004). Learning for life – the foundation of lifelong learning. Bristol: The Policy Press. Morrow, R.A., Torres, CA (2002). Reading Freire and Habermas: critical pedagogy and transformative social change. New York: Teachers College, Columbia University. Moss, P., Urban, M. (2010). Democracy and Experimentation: two fundamental values ​​for education. Bertelsmann StiftungPavlović Breneselović, D. (2012). Od prirodnih neprijatelja do Partnera – sistemski pristup odnosu porodice i javnog vaspitanja, Beograd: Filozofski fakultet.Taubman, PM, (2009). Teaching by numbers: deconstructing the discourse on standards and responsibility in education. New York: Routledge. Woodhead, M. (2006). Changing perspectives on early childhood: theory, research and policy. Paris: UNESCO.