This text arises out of a five year research programme examining the impact of education on the lives and livelihoods of people in developing countries. The book presents theoretical and empirical knowledge that will help to improve education and poverty reduction strategies in developing countries.
This book offers in-depth analyses of how education interacts with social inequality in Southern contexts. Drawing on a range of disciplinary frameworks, it presents new analyses of existing knowledge and new empirical data which define the challenges and possibilities of successful educational reform. It is a tribute to the work of the late Christopher Colclough, who, as a leading figure in education and international development, played a key role in the global fight for education for all children. The book critically engages with international evidence of educational access, retention and outcomes, offering new understandings of how social inequalities currently facilitate, mediate or restrict educational opportunities. It exposes the continuing influence of wealth and regional inequalities and caste and gendered social structures. Researchers in Ethiopia, Ghana, India, Pakistan and Uganda highlight how the aspirations of families living in poverty remain unfilled by poor-quality education and low economic opportunities and how schools and teachers currently address issues of gender, disability and diversity. The book highlights a range of new priorities for research and identifies some necessary strategies for education reform, policy approaches and school practice, if educational equality for all children is to be achieved. The book will be of great interest to researchers, scholars, educational practitioners and policy-makers in the fields of economics, politics and sociology of education, international education, poverty research and international development. The Foreword, Chapters 1, 6, 7, and 12 of this book are freely available as downloadable Open Access PDFs at https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/9780429293467 under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license (Foreword, Chapters 1, 6, and 12) and a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license (Chapter 7).
ÔPauline Dixon has intellectual rigour and an openness to new ideas, together with compassion and practicality. A great and unusual combination which I admire enormously.Õ Ð Dame Sally Morgan, Adviser to the Board, Absolute Return for Kids and former chief advisor to Tony Blair, UK ÔThis fine book has a powerful message for policymakers and donors: the quality of schools matters even in poor countries; hence, the poor are abandoning failed state schools and enrolling their kids in low cost private schools. Instead of trying to close them down, the state and donors would do well to invest in children (through vouchers and cash transfers) and give parents a choice rather than create more atrocious, monopolistic state schools where teachers are absent and unaccountable.Õ Ð Gurcharan Das, commentator and author, India Unbound and former CEO of Proctor and Gamble, Asia ÔThis is a must-read book for anyone interested in the plight of poor children, particularly for those readers concerned with learning about culturally sensitive and proven ways to reach out and help less fortunate children in developing countries. I was fascinated and outraged by the compelling stories and actual data that Dixon shares in this gem of an exposŽ. Most readers will similarly be shaken and incensed by the failure of billions of dollars spent on state schooling in Africa and India. Dixon makes a compelling case for the value and contributions of low cost private schools in slums and low income areas in developing countries. After reading this book, I am now a believer!Õ Ð Steven I. Pfeiffer, Professor, Florida State University, US This fascinating volume challenges the widely held belief that the state should supply, finance and regulate schooling in developing countries. Using India as an example, Dr. Pauline Dixon examines the ways in which private, for-profit schools might serve as a successful alternative to state-run systems of education in impoverished communities around the world. The book begins with a through history of IndiaÕs government-run schools Ð based on the traditional British model Ð which are currently characterized by high levels of waste, inefficiency and subpar student performance. The author goes on to present comprehensive survey and census data, along with analyses of different school management types and their effect on student achievement, teacher attendance and quality of facilities. The book also tackles the problem of inefficient allocation and use of international aid, and offers recommendations on the development of new mechanisms for utilizing aid resources in support of low-cost private schools. This meticulously researched volume will appeal to students and professors of development studies, political economy and international studies. Policymakers and other officials with an interest in educational innovation will also find much of interest in this book.
This book provides an original perspective on a range of controversial issues in educational and social research through case studies of multi-disciplinary and mixed-method research involving children, teachers, schools and communities in Europe and the developing world. These case studies from researchers "across continents" and "across disciplines" explore a range of interesting issues, including the relevance of research approaches to very different national settings, and to the kinds of questions being asked; the barriers of language and culture between researcher and researched; articulating the thinking and feelings of very young children; the challenges of dealing with "partiality" of data; issues of identity, subjectivity and reflexivity; and transferring research approaches from one national setting to the problems posed in another.
The book offers an overview of international examples, studies, and guidelines on how to create successful partnerships in education. PPPs can facilitate service delivery and lead to additional financing for the education sector as well as expanding equitable access and improving learning outcomes.
The involvement of private actors in education is not new yet in the last decade critical issues have arisen that demand close scrutiny. This volume explores emerging forms of the private through case studies from Africa, South Asia and South East Asia and makes three related observations. First, what is new about these manifestations is their scale, scope and penetration into almost all aspects of the education endeavour – from the administrative apparatus to policymaking, and from formal provision in education settings to out-of-school activities, such as private tutoring. Second, what is particularly controversial about these developments is how education itself is being recast; as a sector it is increasingly being opened up to profit-making and trade, and to agenda-setting by private, commercial interests. Third, the learner is increasingly conceptualised as a consumer, and education a consumer good. The case studies therefore enable us to see more clearly how different forms of the private in education alter what is at stake, for whom, and with what outcomes, and the consequences for individuals and societies. In turn, these raise the very important question about what they mean for our conceptualisations of education, learning and teaching, on the one hand, and for education as a site and means for emancipation, on the other. These are profound social justice concerns, and ones that make this volume distinctive. This book sets out to address these hard, but urgent, questions and will be of interest to academics and students of education, education researchers, government personnel and policymakers.
Fuelled by social equity concerns, there have been vigorous debates on the appropriateness of certain non-state actors, particularly those with commercial and entrepreneurial motives, to meet universal education goals. There are further questions on the relative effectiveness of government and private schooling in delivering good learning outcomes for all. Within this debate, several empirical questions abound. Do students from poorer backgrounds achieve as well in private schools as their advantaged peers? What are the relative out-of-pocket costs of accessing private schooling compared to government schooling? Is fee-paying non-state provision ‘affordable’ to the poorest households? What is the nature of the education market at different levels? What are the relationships between different non-state actors and the state, and how should they conduct themselves? The chapters in this volume present new empirical evidence and conduct critical analysis on some of these questions. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Oxford Review of Education.
This book brings together academics and postgraduate students, practitioners and Ministry officials all of whom are wedded to developing an understanding of what is happening to education in the broader Middle East. They cover many countries whilst recognising that many more could have been included. In drawing attention to education in Pakistan, Palestine, Oman, Turkey and Qatar they indicate the wide range of education 'policy borrowing' and, most importantly, the effects of this exchange. The contributors know that the countries of the broader Middle East are not alone in having purchased glitzy, glossy and tantalisingly wonderful educational reforms, only to find how quickly they became outdated. In other words, they became a 'baroque arsenal' of educational goods, services and models of practice which, having been discussed, designed and generated many years before in countries elsewhere, have then been sold and delivered to the unsuspecting countries of the broader Middle East. It is argued that many of the countries of the region did not suspect that their purchases were, more frequently than not, the 'off-loading' of failed educational experiments in countries of 'the centre'. This book discusses what this means not only for educational reform projects but also for the impact upon regional political stability. The two final chapters discuss the underlying key concerns of gender and of cross-border education.
In developing countries across the world, qualified teachers are a rarity, with thousands of untrained adults taking over the role and millions of children having no access to schooling at all. Teacher Education and the Challenge of Development is co-written by experts working across a wide range of developing country situations. It provides a unique overview of the crisis surrounding the provision of high-quality teachers in the developing world, and how these teachers are crucial to the alleviation of poverty. The book explores existing policy structures and identifies the global pressures on teaching, which are particularly acute in developing economies.
Low-fee private schooling represents a point of heated debate in the international policy context of Education for All and the Millennium Development Goals. While on the one hand there is an increased push for free and universal access with assumed State responsibility, reports on the mushrooming of private schools targeting socially and economically disadvantaged groups in a range of developing countries, particularly across Africa and Asia, have emerged over the last decade. Low-fee private schooling has, thus, become a provocative and illuminating area of research and policy interest on the impacts of privatisation and its different forms in developing countries. This edited volume aims to add to the growing literature on low-fee private schooling by presenting seven studies in five countries (Ghana, India, Kenya, Nigeria and Pakistan), and is bookended by chapters analysing some of the evidence and debates on the topic thus far. The book presents research findings from studies across three levels of analysis that have proven relevant in the study of low-fee private schooling: the household, school and state. Chapters address household schooling choice behaviours regarding low-fee private and competing sectors; the management, operation and relative quality of low-fee private schools; and changes to the regulatory frameworks governing low-fee private schools, and the impact of low-fee private schools on those frameworks. The book does not seek to provide definitive answers since, as an emerging and evolving area of study, this would be premature. Instead, it aims to call attention to the need for further systematic research on low-fee private schooling, and to open up the debate by presenting studies that use a range of methods and, owing to the context specificity of the issue, draw different conclusions. The hope is that these studies may serve as springboards to further research. Finally, the book does not aim to snuff out the political and vociferous debate surrounding low-fee private schooling and private provision more broadly, or to erase the complications that abound in conducting research in this area, but to engage with them. The hope is that as the 2015 target date for Education for All and Millennium Development Goals approaches, this book may help us get closer to answering the question: do low-fee private schools aggravate equity or mitigate disadvantage?