In a context of increased primary school enrollment rates, secondary education is appearing as the next big challenge for Latin American and East Asian countries. This report seeks to undertake a detailed diagnostic of secondary education in these two regions, understand some of the main constraints to the expansion and improvement of secondary education, and suggest policy options to address these constraints, with focus on policies that improve the mobilization and use of resources.
This book aims to promote a better understanding of the education policy choices and implementation modalities that have enabled many East Asian countries over the last 30-40 years to move from education and economic conditions similar to those of many Sub-Saharan Africa countries to attain the level of development they enjoy today.
Understanding what and how students learn has emerged as a salient issue in Latin America, a region where the majority of children now have access to schools but few students learn the skills they need to succeed. 'Raising Student Learning in Latin America' examines recent advances in our understanding of the policies and programs that affect student learning and provides policy makers with effective options. This volume relies on indicators from national and international assessments of subject matter knowledge plus intermediate learning indicators, such as dropout and completion rates. The first part focuses on the central role of student learning in education. The second part reviews the evidence on factors and policies that affect student learning. The final part addresses policy optons on education quality assurance.
Recent discussions of the 'Chinese economic development model', the emergence of an alternative 'Muslim model' over the past quarter century and the faltering globalisation of the 'Washington Consensus' all point to the need to investigate more systematically the nature of these models and their competitive attractions. This is especially the case in the Muslim world which both spans different economic and geographic categories and is itself the progenitor of a development model. The 'Chinese model' has attracted the greatest attention in step with that country's phenomenal growth and therefore provides the primary focus for this book. This volume examines the characteristics of this model and its reception in two major regions of the world - Africa and Latin America. It also investigates the current competition over development models across Muslim contexts. The question of which model or models, if any, will guide development in Muslim majority countries is vital not only for them, but for the world as a whole. This is the first political economy study to address this vital question as well as the closely related issue of the centrality of governance to development.
This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International licence. It is free to read on the Oxford Academic platform and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. The key to sustained and equitable development in Latin America is high quality education for all. However, coalitions favoring quality reforms in education are usually weak because parents are dispersed, business is not interested, and much of the middle class has exited public education. In Routes to Reform, Ben Ross Schneider examines education policy throughout Latin America to show that reforms to improve learning--especially making teacher careers more meritocratic and less political--are possible. Several Andean countries and state governments in Brazil achieved notable reform since 2000, though on markedly different trajectories. Although rare, the first bottom-up route to reform was electoral. The second route was more top-down and technocratic, with little support from voters or civil society. Ultimately, by framing education policy in a much broader comparative perspective, Schneider demonstrates that contrary to much established theory, reform outcomes in Latin America depended less on institutions and broad coalitions, but rather--due to the emptiness of the education policy space--on more micro factors like civil society organizations, teacher unions, policy networks, and technocrats.
The launch of the ASEAN Economic Community raises key issues: the deepening of regional trade and the associated problem of exchange rate management. This volume questions the capacity of a shallow institution to deal with complex impacts on employment and inequality. Contributors analyze ASEAN's potential and weakness in readable terms.
'Linking Education Policy to Labor Market Outcomes' examines current research and new evidence from Ghana and Pakistan representative of two of the poorest regions of the world to assess how education can increase income and help people move out of poverty. This study indicates that in addition to early investments in cognitive and noncognitive skills which produce a high return and lower the cost of later educational investment by making learning at later ages more efficient quality, efficiency, and linkages to the broader macro-economic context also matter. Education and relevant skills are still the key determinants of good labor market outcomes for individuals. However, education policies aimed at improving skills will have a limited effect on the incomes of that skilled workforce or on the performance of a national economy if other policies that increase the demand for these skills are not in place. For education to contribute to national economic growth, policies should aim at improving the quality of education by spending efficiently and by adapting the basic and postbasic curricula to develop the skills increasingly demanded on the global labor market, including critical thinking, problem solving, social behavior, and information technology.
Learning to Educate: Proposals for the Reconstruction of Education in Developing Countries is a practical and strategic guide for education leaders and others who want to do more to improve the quality of curriculum, learning, teaching, and assessment. The book is also a philosophical guide that articulates and affirms the fundamental values and purposes of education in a rapidly changing world. It confronts us with the opportunity and the necessity to unravel bedrock assumptions and stimulate further discussion about the nature of teaching and learning. What does it take to change mindsets? And how do we bring about “reconstruction” without losing our groundings and bearings? The authors, Ernesto Schiefelbein and Noel McGinn, use the full weight of their extensive knowledge in education research, teaching, policy, and action, to argue that, in order to reconstruct quality education, we must begin by improving its foundation. The result is a seasoned and superbly articulated examination of the principles and practices of teaching and learning, which focuses on the crucial need of all children to learn how to learn. Innovative, cultured, and consistently captivating, this book is bold and, in the field of comparative and international education, unprecedented. “... Current and cutting-edge knowledge on critically important dimensions of effective teaching and learning ...” – N’Dri Thérèse Assié-Lumumba, Cornell University “... A treasury of insights into the education challenge currently proposed by the UN global 2030 Agenda: universal quality learning ...” – Kenneth King, University of Edinburgh “... A helpful roadmap to the essential questions facing educators today ...” – Fernando M. Reimers, Harvard University
The latest addition to The Open and Flexible Learning Series addresses the challenges created by the successes and the failures of the universal primary education campaign. It advocates new approaches for providing access to secondary education for today’s rapidly growing youth population.
