Reported here is one part of the nationally representative, "Schools and Continuing Professional Development in England--State of the Nation" research study which was funded by the Training and Development Agency for Schools (TDA). This paper sets out to understand how teachers and school leaders in England perceive the benefits and…

In fall 2006, the deputy superintendent of Howard County Schools in Maryland asked a small leadership team to rethink leadership support for central office leaders and to come up with an aligned three-point plan that would meet their unique needs. The leadership support system needed to take into account: (1) Leadership standards and indicators of…

Tooley, Dixon and Gomathi maintain that private unrecognised unaided schools in Hyderabad, India, catering for children of the poor, provide a better level of education than do their government counterparts. We examine this contention and argue first that Tooley et al.'s conceptualisation of education and its benefits is flawed and second that the…

Further education (FE) colleges in England were statutorily "cut free" from local education authority (LEA) control in 1992. This article, however, primarily considers changes within FE in the 30 years before this "incorporation" of FE colleges, as well as debates that followed. It argues that the post-1992 changes were…

How schools are organized and interact with the local community can dramatically alter the odds for improving student achievement. There are five essential supports for school improvement: a coherent instructional guidance system, the professional capacity of its faculty, strong parent-community-school ties, a student-centered learning climate,…

This paper uses a new data-set for cumulative national investment in formal schooling and a new instrument for schooling to estimate the national return on investment in 61 countries. These estimates are combined with data on the private rate of return on investment in schooling to estimate the external rate of return. In 1990 the external rate of…

Italy's poor performance in various indicators of educational achievement, such as the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), has featured strongly in analyses of Italian education policy, and its progress towards the Lisbon objectives has been slow. With weak outcomes often linked to a highly stratified system of upper secondary…

The traditional high school model derived from the factory deficit model of the early 1900s has left many students, mainly minorities and/or low socioeconomic students, disenfranchised. This is evident in the poor school performance and high dropout rates of such students. Whereas the factory deficit model was created to promote only a few high…

Many policymakers suggest that school-based reading coaches can improve teachers' practice, which consequently will improve students' literacy skills. Although reading coaches are increasingly prevalent in schools nationwide, empirical evidence for their effects on student achievement is scarce. This article helps to address this gap by conducting…

Evaluating the impacts of public school funding on student achievement has been an important objective for informing education policymaking but fraught with data and methodological limitations. Findings from prior research have been mixed at best, leaving policymakers with little advice about the benefits of allocating public resources to schools…

Postsecondary dance education is at a crucial juncture in its history in academe. Emerging from women's physical education programs in the 1930s, the profession's realignment with the arts broadly and arts-based education specifically has been characterized by ambitious goals and steady growth through the 1990s. However, a number of critical…

This profile explains the assessment system in England, concentrating on those aspects that are related to government policy. It begins by putting the system in context; it then describes the national educational structure, curriculum and assessment arrangements. The government agencies responsible for carrying out education policies are…

Following the adoption of gender mainstreaming at the Beijing Conference for Women in 1995 as a major strategy to promote gender equality and the recognition of gender analysis as central to this process, Gender and Development (GAD) frameworks have provided tools for gender analysis in various sectors. Gender mainstreaming in basic education has…

This study seeks to examine variation in the study support experiences of a group of students on a taught master's programme in the United Kingdom. Whilst this offers a very specific UK focus, the article draws upon related work in Australian, American and African contexts on study support, academic development and academic literacy. A…

Worldwide, economic and other factors are pressing institutions of higher education to assess student learning to insure that graduates acquire the skills and competencies demanded in the 21st century. This paper summarises the status of undergraduate student learning outcomes assessment at accredited colleges and universities in the United…