Report: Teacher supply, recruitment and retention in six Anglophone sub-Saharan African countries (EI, 2007)

From Eldis

Title:Teacher supply, recruitment and retention in six Anglophone sub-Saharan African countries
Authors: D. Sinyolo
Publisher: Global Campaign for Education , 2007

Full text of document

This document reports on a survey conducted by Education International, which investigated teacher supply, teacher attrition, teacher remuneration and motivation, teacher absenteeism and union involvement in policy development in six Anglophone African countries. The survey was undertaken in The Gambia, Kenya, Lesotho, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia.

 

Resource: Child protection project in Europe website

This website offers access to a variety of resources, including a very useful documentary library with reports and documents on topics related with education, child protection and living conditions of disadvantage children (For instances see the 2008 report Last in Line, Last in School)

The Child protection project in Europe website is a product of the Regional Child Protection Project, located in Budapest, Hungary.

This project is implemented by Terre des hommes - Child Relief, based in Lausanne, Switzerland.

Terre des hommes - Child Relief launched in mid 2005 the Regional Child Protection Project (RCPP) for South Eastern Europe. At the end of the pilot phase, in January 2007, Tdh decided to concentrate the efforts of the RCPP to contribute to the common goal: children in migration are better protected against exploitation.

Links:

• Child protection project in Europe
• Terre des hommes

 

Report: ‘The Bologna process and the UK’s international student market’ (HEPI, May 2008)

The Higher Education Policy Institute (HEPI) as recently publish a report analyzing the impact of the bologna process ‘for the future of the UK as a destination for international students’. “The Bologna process and the UK’s international student market” indicates that ‘UK has been an active and influential participant in
European higher education reform’. A recent article at the Guardian, “UK universities at risk of losing foreign students“, offers an overview of the report an points out that the paper warns that UK could lose out lucrative international students as a result of the Bologna process. In short, “the Bologna process means that other European countries are providing the bachelors then masters degree structure that was unique to the UK” thus, this is resulting in an increasingly competitive market in a context that erodes some of the competitive advantages that UK universities had.

Links:

Report: “The Bologna process and the UK’s international student market” (HEPI), May 2008

Article: Lipsett, Anthea (May 22, 2008). “UK universities at risk of losing foreign students” The Guardian.

 

Report: “The Bologna Club: What U.S. Higher Education Can Learn From a Decade of European Reconstruction”

A new report written by Clifford Adelman at the Institute for Higher Education Policy indicates that the United States Higher Education System needs to adopt some of the features of the Bologna Process. Today, Scott Jaschik’s article at the Insider Higher Ed offers a compelling overview of the report and Adelman’s argument.

Adelman argues that Bologna may push colleges much further toward defining learning outcomes than the Spellings Commission ever tried. While the education secretary’s panel urged colleges to adopt systems to measure outcomes, the emphasis of Bologna — both in defining degrees and credits — is focused on specific outcomes. A bachelor’s degree in engineering should mean that a graduate possesses specific skills X, Y and Z, and so forth.

Link to report here

From the Chronicles of Higher Education News Blog, by Beth McMurtrie, Wed, May 21 2008:

A new report from the Institute for Higher Education Policy argues that the United States, in its quest for accountability in academe, could learn a lot from its neighbors in Europe.

The report, “The Bologna Club: What U.S. Higher Education Can Learn From a Decade of European Reconstruction,” examines in detail the efforts of 49 European nations to harmonize their higher-education systems. The report was written by Clifford Adelman, a former research analyst at the U.S. Department of Education who is now a senior associate at the institute.

Mr. Adelman argues that the Bologna Process, as this decade-long effort is known, offers some common-sense solutions to the struggle to define what students should be learning and to create a better pathway through the higher-education system.

 

Changing IMF Policies: Is the IMF responsible for the shortage of doctors, nurses and teachers in developing countries?

From Eldis:
Title: Changing IMF policies
Authors: R. Rowden
Publisher: IFIwatchnet, 2008

Full text of document

This paper highlights the shortage of doctors, nurses and teachers hired in developing countries. It critically addresses current International Monetary Fund (IMF) policies with a focus on the need to change its practices in order to improve the situation.

The authors argue that 57 countries, most of them in Africa and Asia, face a severe health workforce crisis. The World Health Organisation (WHO) estimates that at least 2.4 million health professionals and 1.9 million health workers, or a total of 4.3 million health workers, are needed to fill the gap. Without prompt action, the shortage will worsen. Mounting evidence suggests policies promoted and enforced by the IMF may be preventing developing countries from spending more in their national budgets. This has important consequences for health and education budgets being constrained at unnecessarily low levels when major increases are needed. Although rich countries have provided some debt cancellation, too little has been made available for too few countries in need.

The paper calls for four key courses of action:

• to demand that the IMF change and widely publicise revised macroeconomic restraint policies
• to demand that other policy options for increased public spending be fully vetted and explored
• to demand greater public stakeholder involvement in such explorations of alternative spending options
• to call on governments to raise this issue of changing IMF policies through the Executive Board of the IMF, which approves the IMF loan programs for borrowing countries.

 

Progress for children: a world fit for children statistical review

From Eldis:

An overview of progress made in attaining the millennium development goals with regard to children

Title:Progress for children: a world fit for children statistical review
Authors: ; UNICEF
Publisher: United Nations [UN] Children’s Fund , 2007

Full text of document

This paper provides an overview on progress made in attaining the millennium development goals (MDGs) with regard to children.

On the way towards the eradication of extreme poverty and hunger (MDG 1), underweight prevalence has declined even if low weight or height for children aged under 5 remains common in many developing regions.

With regard to MDG 2, universal enrollment in primary schools has been successfully promoted and more than 85 per cent of primary-school-age children attend school. However, the provision of secondary education lags behind.

 

Report: UK-China-Hong Kong Transnational Education Project (British Council, 2007)

From globalhighered :

Both China (PRC) and the Hong Kong SAR offer an expanding and highly competitive market opportunity for overseas higher education institutions (HEIs). As noted in a recent report commissioned by the British Council (UK-China-Hong Kong Transnational Education Project), a number of UK HEIs are providing hundreds of new ‘international’ degree programmes in Hong Kong and China.

According to the Hong Kong Education Bureau, in January 2008 there were over 400 degree programmes run by 36 different UK HEIs in Hong Kong. On the one hand, UK HEIs can be seen to work as independent operators, offering a number of courses to local students registered with the Hong Kong Education Bureau under the ‘Non-local Higher and Professional Education (Regulation) Ordinance’. At the same time, UK HEIs have also initiated a series of collaborations between UK and Hong Kong HEIs. These collaborations are exempted from registration under the Ordinance. In January 2008 there were over 150 registered- and 400 exempted-courses run by 36 different UK HEIs in Hong Kong.

 

Report: Graduate Education and the Public Good (CGS, 2008)

On April 24, 2008, CGS released a major new report, Graduate Education and the Public Good, at a legislative forum at the Library of Congress.

The report illustrates the value of graduate education to the U.S. economy and our quality of life by showcasing alumni of U.S. graduate schools and the significant contributions they have made to the nation and the world.

Excerpt and Executive Summary

Press Release

Full report available from the CGS Online Bookstore

From Chronicle of Higher Education News blog, April 24:

Universities may be labeled “ivory towers,” but many people find a master’s degree or a doctorate an important steppingstone to career advancement in the wider world as well. But how does all of that advanced education translate into the betterment of society at large? And, more important, do legislators, policy makers, and the average citizen know how much graduate education matters?

A new report released today by the Council of Graduate Schools argues that those advanced degrees not only make a tangible difference in people’s lives, but provide American society with a vital knowledge base, economic capital, and social cohesion.

The report, “Graduate Education and the Public Good,” cites knock-on effects from graduate education that extend past technological advances in medicine and other disciplines to include higher average salaries (which yield greater tax revenue) and replenishment of the nation’s teaching corps.

Furthermore, the report observes, “the new global competition for talent places increasing importance on maintaining a world-class graduate higher-education system.” —Richard Byrne

 

Report: “Democracy at Risk: The Need for a New Federal Role in Education”

Last week Forum for Education and Democracy released a report entitle Democracy at Risk: The Need for a New Federal Role in Education,”

You can obtain a copy of the full report here.

Craig A. Cunningham writes at the Educational Policy blog a concise review indicating that this report:

…argues strenuously for a new approach to education at the Federal level.

……The report specifically attacks the No Child Left Behind approach that uses “compliance checklists” instead of true reform initiatives. “Rather than providing access to new programs, technologies, and supports that could dramatically change schools and communities, the law has been managed in ways that push schools back to out-of-date notions of learning and stifle the use of new technologies.”

[One example of the ways that NCLB stifles the use of new technologies is the ways in which it forces many schools--particularly those with high numbers of poor and minority children--to focus the curriculum exclusively on "drill" in so-called "basic skills," rather than the type of higher-order thinking tasks and inquiry-based problem solving that new technologies foster.]

The report cites statistics showing that reading improvement under NCLB has been slower than before the law was enacted, that high school graduation rates have started to decline again, that pverty rates among children in the US are the highest in the industrialized world, that the US ranking on international tests has plummeted, that “trust” and “community involvement” among people in the US is in rapid decline, and that increased expenditures on the prison system have far out-paced increases in spending on education.

(read full here)

 

Literature review: School processes, local governance and community participation_ understanding access

Literature review on local governance, community participation, and school processes

From Eldis:

Title: School processes, local governance and community participation: understanding access
Authors: M. Dunne; K. Akyeampong; S. Humphreys
Publisher: Consortium for Research on Educational Access, Transitions and Equity , 2007

Full text of document

The main aim of this study is to provide an overview of the research that has explored aspects of access that surround formal state schooling. The specific focus of this review concerns research on the relations within and between schools, communities and local governance institutions and their combined influence on access within local contexts. Each of these three social sites individually could be the subject of a research review but in distinction from this, in this review the authors draw together literature that contributes to understandings of the local processes, that is, the ways in which schools, communities and school governance institutions inter-relate to produce particular access outcomes. The underlying assumption of this review is that it is these inter-connections are central to the local conditions of access and exclusion.

In order to understand what is happening in terms of access in local settings at the point of educational service provision, in this paper we have located schools in a network of relations: first with local systems of educational governance and administration and second with their communities (see Figure 2 below). So, while the key focus is upon access to schools, the authors’ assumption is that schools do not operate in isolation but that relations with the community and with local governance institutions shape what happens in schools and in the processes of educational inclusion. The document explores the literature provides information about these particular sets of inter-institutional (school – local government – community) relations and their influences on access.

The review identifies gaps in research on teacher management, school governance, decentralisation, processes of exclusion, characteristics of vulnerable communities, school processes, and progression through schooling. It invites research concerned with improved access to build on what is known and translate this to different contexts and the concerns of stakeholders at local levels.