The COVID-19 pandemic prompted unprecedented school closures in England, which quickly generated widespread concern at the impacts of missed schooling: 'lost learning' became the dominant motif of these concerns and 'catch-up' emerged as the received solution. This article focuses on the central pillar of the government's post-pandemic response:…

This study aims to explore in greater depth the role of implementing child-friendly schools, parental involvement in enhancing the effectiveness of child-friendly school policies and practices, and evaluating the challenges that arise in the implementation of child-friendly schools. This qualitative descriptive exploratory research utilizes the…

Models of research use in education tend to focus on specific elements of education systems or underplay the complexity of system change. Within other public policy areas, notably health, more work has been undertaken to integrate systems thinking when considering knowledge mobilisation and research use. In this paper, we survey public policy…

This dissertation presents two essays on econometric methods for program evaluation and policy choice. In Chapter 1, I develop a statistically optimal way of using data to make policy decisions when the performance of counterfactual policies is only partially identified. Specifically, I consider a class of statistical decision problems in which…

Early childhood education (ECE) in Ghana has grown from a traditional approach to a more formalised and modernised system of care and education services for young children. As a valued practice, ECE reflects a distributive, regulatory or redistributive policy. The paper analyses Ghana's ECE policy implementation using McDonnell and Elmore's…

Participatory monitoring and evaluation (PME) is an approach that higher education institutions should use to ensure achievement of objectives especially quality academic programs, research, consultancies, outreach services and administrative functions. Indeed, over the past 10 years PME has gained increased prominence over more conventional…

The National Secretary for Higher Education, Science, Technology and Innovation in Ecuador (locally SENESCYT) started an ambitious grants program in 2011. The main objective of the program was to send Ecuadorian students to undertake postgraduate studies at universities overseas. This article evaluates the impact of this grant policy on the labor…

Responding to student diversity has become a key policy priority in education systems around the world. In addition to international and national institutional policies, major changes are underway in instructional practices and pedagogy in many national contexts. Universal Design for Learning (UDL) has become a key pedagogical approach used in…

Based on a research project comprising data from an interview study and a survey with teachers and school principals in four German federal states ("Bundesländer"), this paper questions the claim that the side effects of accountability in education are bound to high-stakes contexts, and also provides evidence of side effects occurring in…

Among the major policies that have been implemented to ensure its continued success, "Thinking Schools, Learning Nation" (TSLN) has been described as the "big bang of educational reforms" in Singapore. However, while the policy aims to develop critical thinkers in school leavers, the corporatisation of education in the shape of…

Governments all over the world have been improving their educational sector through funding programs aimed at reducing the financial burden on parents, increasing access and quality to education. The government of Ghana in 2017 switched policy to a free senior high school policy to reduce poverty by finally eliminating the financial burdens…

To raise university research productivity, the government of Kazakhstan introduced a requirement for university faculty members to publish in journals with a nonzero impact factor in order to qualify for promotion. A survey of faculty members at six universities was conducted to explore their response to the policy. The results suggest that a…

This study sought to examine the extent of contribution of school feeding programmes towards the achievement of the Free Compulsory Universal Basic Education (FCUBE) policy in countries. Based on a purposive sampling of a deprived rural community in northern Ghana, the study utilised the concurrent mixed method design relying mainly on documentary…

Information systems of today face more potential security infringement than ever before. The regular susceptibility of data to breaches is a function of systems users' disinclination to follow appropriate security measures. A well-secured system maintains integrity, confidentiality, and availability, while providing appropriate and consistent…

The effectiveness of the higher education quality assessment system is essentially a matter of policy evaluation. On the macro level, such a system refers to external quality assessment, which includes government evaluation, quality certification, and university rankings. Depending on the degree of government intervention, the external quality…