World Bank in Nepal’s education: three decades of neoliberal reform

This paper critically analyses key educational policy documents produced by the World Bank mainly from the mid-1980s to 2010 with regard to implementing major educational projects in Nepal. Using critical policy sociology as a methodological tool, the paper explores how a small Himalayan nation with per capita income of about US$730 (2014) plunged into neoliberal world order during the early 1980s. The paper argues that Bank’s educational policy recommendations are guided by some underlying assumptions of neoliberalism mainly marketisation, privatisation, and decentralisation. The paper concludes that neoliberal orientation in education has almost no potential in addressing Nepal’s development challenges.     

The recruitment of VET teachers and the failure of policy in England’s further education sector

England’s further education (FE) sector has been characterised by instability and policy churn for at least three decades during which time reform of vocational education and training (VET) has been piled on top of reform, with few resulting in lasting change. In the context of another ambitious new reform of VET in England, this article reports on a study that examined the chronic difficulties in recruiting teachers of vocational science, engineering and technology (SET) to FE colleges. We argue that these difficulties in recruiting SET teachers reveal persistent weaknesses in policy planning for the English VET sector and help to explain the serial failure of VET policy in England.     

The World Bank’s position on early child education in Brazil: a critical assessment of contributions and shortcomings

In 2010, the World Bank published a policy study on early child education (ECE) developments in Brazil, entitled Early Child Education: Making Programs Work for Brazil’s Most Important Generation. Development. This paper analyses the report’s assessment of ECE policy in Brazil as well as the recommendations it provides. A critical analysis of ECE shows that the report’s insistence that financial constraints necessitate a trade-off between coverage and quality privileges the influence and position of the private sector and urges public–private partnerships as a cost-saving strategy. While it commends the Brazilian Government for its commitment to universal access to preschool, it argues for more targeted investment in quality rather than access. This paper argues that the quality-coverage debate should be set aside and overall investment in ECE should be increased. It also argues that issues excluded from the report such as disability, race and rural access to ECE must be considered in the development of sound social policy.     

Education for economic growth or human development? The capabilities approach and the World Bank’s Basic Education Project in Turkey

Turkey’s recent development plans suggest that, according to state planners, development is no longer identified with, achieved through or measured by economic growth. These documents evince that Turkey has embraced what is referred to as the capability approach. What remains unclear is whether this embrace is substantive or rhetorical. This paper is designed to analyse the extent to which Turkey has operationalised the capability approach in its planning and implementation of education for development projects. I argue that sections of development plans devoted to social policies reflect several themes of the capability approach. However, analysis of an education for development project in Turkey demonstrates that the capability approach has gained limited traction in practice. Equity, inclusion, participation and critical thinking in the World Bank’s Basic Education Project are either insufficiently realised or subordinated to productivity and competition within the global market.     

Learning from all? The World Bank,aid agencies and the construction of hegemony in education for development

This paper explores the nature and quality of the participation that characterises the Bank's consultations with external actors and examines the extent to which the Bank is responsive to such feedback when it comes to defining its policy preferences and strategies in the education domain. It draws on a case study of the participatory process that was organised around the definition of the last World Bank Education Strategy (WBES2020) and focuses on the participation of three European aid agencies, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands, Germany's Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development and the Department for International Development of the UK. This paper acknowledges that a significant effort was made to promote the inclusiveness and transparency of the participatory process, yet it concludes that the conditions for promoting quality participation and substantive policy change were not provided. Furthermore, the way international aid agencies produce and use knowledge limits their role and influence in the context of the Bank's consultations. Hence, by not contesting the Bank's policy ideas substantially, the agencies contribute inadvertently to reproducing the Bank's predominance in the education for development field.     

Higher education in Turkey: Subsidizing the rich or the poor?

We investigate how the benefits of publicly financed higher education in Turkey are distributed among students with different socioeconomic backgrounds. We use a dataset from a nationally representative sample of university entrance exam takers together with data on government subsidies to public universities. We compare the characteristics of students who succeed in the exam to those who do not and those who enter public universities to those who go to private ones. Our econometric analyses based on a three-stage selection model reveal that students from wealthier and more educated families are more likely to be successful at university entrance. Unlike the findings in other countries, students who enroll in private universities come from higher income and more educated families. Among those who enter public universities, students from higher income and better educated families are more likely to go to universities that receive larger subsidies from the government.     

The Disillusion of Laura’s Illusory World

The Glass Menagerie depicts the disillusion of Laura’s illusory world with the technique of symbolism. With the analy-sis of the symbolic meanings of“the glass animals”, this thesis attempts to analyze...     

Explaining the Success of the World’s Leading Education Systems: The Case of Singapore

International comparative data on student performance has led McKinsey&Company, among others, to suggest that education systems will inexorably converge in their developmental trajectories with principals and schools enjoying more autonomy. This article challenges these assumptions through referencing Singapore where schools and professionals are still tightly controlled in key resources, curricula and assessment, and where other key factors contribute to its success – thereby evidencing multiple pathways to success.     

A sociology ‘of’ or a sociology ‘for’ education? The New Zealand experience of the dilemma

The sociology of education in New Zealand, as in other countries, is affected by the dilemma inherent to the discipline, namely: is it a sociology of education or a sociology for education? In this article I analyse three factors in which the dilemma is played out: ‘cultural oppositionism’ in the indigenous (kaupapa Maori) approach, critical policy research and the role of empirical research. I argue that a sociology for education is fundamentally weakened by its politicisation, a flaw not helped by the difficulties in drawing political goals from moral imperatives. In contrast a sociology of education, which uses the strengths of empirical research and theoretical analysis, offers the better hope of renewal for, what is, in New Zealand, a moribund discipline.     

The under-recognition of the significance of social class conceptions of education in Piketty’s Capital

Abstract

Piketty’s Capital has created enormous interest around the world, not least in educational circles. One reason for this may be his readiness to refer, in a book largely focused on economic history, to the ways that education has, and might, contribute to better and more equal social outcomes. This article welcomes this approach, but argues that Piketty’s suggestions remain somewhat limited due to his adherence to a more or less distributional, rather than relational, approach, and then sets out to address this issue by arguing that the assumption that it is the distribution of credentials which accounts for their contribution is mistaken. Instead, the article advances arguments which recognize the separate contributions of the content of credentials, and their valorization. The main focus of this article is thus on the different ways educational credentials are realized, which, it is argued, is a major basis for the maintenance of educational inequality.     

The role of education in Sudan’s civil war

This article addresses the role that education plays in conflict, with specific reference to the civil war in Sudan. It analyses the ideological basis of the Sudanese government (GoS) during the civil war, with special reference to the role of religion and ethnicity. It shows how the primary education system was based on the Islamist ideology of the GoS, with limited consideration of the country’s various cultural and religious groups. It then discusses the political discourse of the Sudan Peoples’ Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A) and the secular curriculum that SPLM’s Secretariat of Education produced during the war. It identifies differences between the Islamist and the secular educational discourses as one reason why many young people in the South took up arms against the Islamist government. With South Sudan now emerging as an independent nation, a dramatic improvement in the education sector is needed both to heal conflicts in South Sudan and to provide hope for the future to people in the South.     

Negative effect of the British poor vocational education on its economic development after the Second World War

England is the oldest nation of industry revolution and the earliest industrialization country in the world. With colonization system breakdown and economic giant, the United States, Germany, Japan etc. rising, today of England had already lost former days of elegant appearance. The disadvantageous vocational education is one of essential factor for England economy decline post-war. After the Second War, the student source of vocational education in England is shortage and its quality is not high; ＂The comprehensive high school exercises＂ make the vocational education almost lost exhaustively. The reform measure of variety vocational education in the recent years also did not receive the obvious result. The fall behind and dilatoriness of vocational education make engineering technician and technique worker who are on-the-job near the machine seriously missing, ultimately lead to economic comedown in England. England emphasized literacy education and neglected the occupation education. This is an important reason that resulted in this kind of condition. Under this situation, it caused directly its economy develooment dilatoriness.     

The Getty Conservation Institute Serving the World’s Cultural Heritage

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Fourth Way in action? the evolution of Singapore’s education system

Hargreaves and Shirley’s The Fourth Way offers a valuable framework for considering the challenges and dilemmas that confront education change practitioners. In this article, I consider how well their framework fits the evolution and more recent changes in Singapore education. History, context culture and aspirations are seen as providing for significant differences in the Singapore education story.     

‘What’s in a name? The power of the English language in secondary school science education’

Cultural Studies of Science Education - The global dominance of the English language has led to intense debates with the emergence of studies of English as a lingua franca. These debates can be...