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Globally, enormous gains have been made towards the goal of universal primary education, leading to increased demands for secondary education. Consequently, more youth and young adults are now entering the formal and informal labour markets from the secondary level, which makes it important to ensure that secondary schools teach skills relevant to the world of work. This article reports on a Results...
The article provides an overview of the global economic landscape in which the contemporary skills development discourse is located. Effective skills development oriented to market needs and to competitiveness in high-value global value chains will help developing economies to avoid the middle income trap. It outlines major issues and challenges that developing economies need to deal with in crafting...
Most countries in South Asia are either in the middle-income bracket or moving towards it; to move up the value chain towards higher incomes, they need more skilled people and larger investments in infrastructure. The combination of globalization, technological advancement, unprecedented labour mobility, and the demographic dividend offers them enormous opportunities—but they urgently need to catalyze...
This article offers a definition of prejudice and then reviews the literature on relevant theories of its development and methods to identify and map it. It then discusses how prejudice is institutionalised and legitimised in schools, before turning to the main thrust of its investigation: the extent to which international education (K-12) can reduce prejudice. It then offers several sets of suggestions...
In 2009, a reform in teachers’ pay, linking remuneration to performance, was implemented in China. The intention was to improve the quality of education by making teachers more diligent and creative and removing the inequality in pay between teachers in different schools. A review of this reform reveals that it has resolved the problem of inequality between teachers working in different schools but...
Equity is the most significant problem educators face. Very large inequities and inequalities persist in both education and society. Why? What can be done about them? While much has been written about these issues, progress is very slow and there is little agreement on why or what to do. While this article cannot resolve these questions, it raises five important issues concerning them: inter-agency...
The educational challenges girls face are often explained by economics. However, gender norms and identities, constructed historically but subject to change, also play a crucial role. In Kenya, little attention has been paid to the negative social constructions that keep girls from attaining the education they want. This article analyses the role of social construction among girls who are in and out...
This article reports on a study of community participation in School for Life, a complementary education programme operating in northern Ghana. The researchers investigated three components of community participation: the nature of the mechanisms used to engage community members as participants in the education process; the actors who engage as participants in education; and the factors that enhance...
The international literature contains few formal analyses of the state of Colombian higher education and its most critical issues. This article systematically and comparatively analyzes the emergence of Colombian doctoral programmes within a national and international context. It shows that, while Colombia has experienced a significant growth in the number of Ph.D. graduates per million people over...
This article has three purposes. First, it presents findings from a study of student retention and dropout in Cambodia, as pupils transition from primary to lower secondary school. Second, it aims to understand from an in-depth, emic perspective the dynamics of this process and the challenges that individual families and their students face around this transition. Third, it offers policy-relevant...
This paper analyzes the parent decision-making processes underlying school selection in Nepal. The analysis is based on primary survey and focus group data collected from parent meetings in diverse local education markets in two districts of Nepal in 2011. It highlights three main arguments that are less frequently discussed in the context of school choice, including in developing countries. First,...
Schools in the most deprived areas in Brazil are marked by extreme poverty, a situation that has obvious consequences for the everyday life in schools and for efforts to develop a supportive culture of schooling. Nevertheless, schools’ responses to poverty are far from uniform. Although the context of poverty generally determines what is possible for schools to achieve, this context is by no means...
Young people in Africa encounter many difficulties in entering the labour market and in searching for decent and productive jobs. Research on the links between formal education and vocational training and their economic returns are especially crucial in understanding the inadequate demand for their labour. This article presents evidence based on the 1-2-3 Surveys conducted in seven West African countries;...
This article addresses the core competences, attitudes and knowledge that the authors believe will promote transformative learning in the 21st century and should, therefore, feature in curriculum design. It first defines the purpose of curriculum, stressing the need for a coherent worldwide understanding of what is meant and intended by curriculum, and then focuses on learning as the cornerstone of...
The 2006 UNESCO conference Building Creative Competencies for the 21stCentury had international participants and a global reach. The Director-General’s proclamation that “Creativity is our hope” captured the essence of the proceedings and participants saw the focus on creativity as offering solutions to global problems. However, educators tend not to understand creativity appropriately or to value...
United Nations development goals have consistently placed a high priority on the quality of education—and of learning. This has led to substantive increases in international development assistance to education, and also to broader attention, worldwide, to the importance of children’s learning. Yet, such goals are mainly normative: they tend to be averages across nations, with relatively limited attention...
This article considers lessons learnt through involvement in several assessment projects. Early experience, in university work and in school examinations, led to an opportunity to help establish a novel system of assessment for an innovative school curriculum. Different lessons were then learnt from work on a national survey of school students’ learning of science, and different lessons again while...
At a time of unprecedented multiple crises threatening life on earth, the wholesale transformation of cultures and societies has never been more imperative. This article draws on insights and experiences of a group of women leaders who met in Oxford in October 2013, for five days of intensive thinking and discussion on the emerging future. They concurred that more than any other single factor, transformed...
This article highlights some of the key issues in current discussions around curriculum, such as values education, inclusive education, competency-based approaches, soft and hard skills, and scientific and digital culture. It starts with the assumption that quality education for all is necessary to achieve social justice, and it looks at curricula as resulting from a process that reflects a societal...
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