This concluding article aims to pull together the analysis undertaken in the preceding articles in this special issue. By sketching an overview of the university reforms and developments revealed in the sectoral articles, it draws out the trends of university restructuring in East Asia. It then projects the significances of these trends in terms…

Purpose: This paper aims to trace the evolution of two initiatives--the direct subsidy scheme and independent schools initiative--their genesis, rationale, current form and take-up rate. It also analyses them as education reforms in terms of policymaking dynamics. The very notion of the term "privatization" will be examined.…

Under the New Policy Agenda, international development institutions have promoted non-profit organizations (NPOs) in developing countries, on a dual logic: firstly, they deliver social services more efficiently than the state; secondly, they mitigate equity concerns around privatization of basic social services by reaching out to the poor. Based…

To what degree are nations "rewriting" citizenship by expanding discussions of human rights, diversity and cultural pluralism in modern civic education, and what explains variation between countries? This study addresses these issues by analysing the intended content of civic education in Costa Rica and Argentina. Over time, civic…

Since the end of World War II and the beginning of the Cold War, public education has been high on the national agenda. The nation's need for human capital and the need to provide equality of educational opportunity to all children and youth without regard to their race, ethnicity, or social status are the two needs that then framed education…

The Sultanate of Oman recently investigated the viability of online teacher training through a joint project funded by the U.S. Middle East Partnership Initiative and the Oman Ministry of Education. One aspect of the project was to build sufficient capacity within the Ministry to enable Oman to produce online training in the future. This article…

In 1957, 12 years after the end of World War II, the Ministry of Education issued Circular 323 to promote the development of an element of "liberal studies" in courses offered by technical and further education (FE) colleges in England. This was perceived to be in some ways a peculiar or uncharacteristic development. However, it lasted…

This report describes Maryland's latest approaches to dealing with restructuring schools and other schools in NCLB improvement. Information for this report was obtained between September 2008 and January 2009 from interviews with Maryland State Department of Education officials and with administrators in three Maryland districts: Anne Arundel…

The purpose of this support document is to: (1) provide a fuller version of the literature review than in the report and issues paper; and (2) provide the interview schedules that were used to gather the data for this project. (Contains 7 footnotes.) [Funding for this report was provided through the Australian Department of Education, Science and…

Head Start, the federal program that provides preschool education, health, and social services for children from poor families, is one of the United States' most popular government programs. Created in 1965, it has endured as a symbol of commitment to children, serving just fewer than one million children a year in neighborhood sites across the…

I examine three main issues, which are directly linked to school management developments in South Africa since 1994: school leadership and management; professionalisation of principalship through the South African Standard for School Leadership (SASSL); and leading and managing the learning school. In exploring these issues I draw mainly on a…

Equal access to quality education forms a central principle in the South African Constitution. After South Africa's first democratic elections in 1994, the prevailing situation in many under-resourced schools was a lack of access to quality education. We outline six ethical issues in the decision to use radio to advance access and educational…

As one of the first countries in Europe to do so, The Netherlands moved towards a new relationship between the state and the higher education institutions in the mid-1980s. Autonomy, quality and accountability were key considerations in this move. In 2006 the Dutch government proposed another radical innovation in its approach to higher education…

A historical account is presented of adult education practice by exploring the lives of a few prominent men and women from the 19 century often not associated with the formal adult education 19th movement. These include Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Henry David Thoreau. This article seeks to provide a historical context for the adult education…

Although a great deal has been written about the need for more research in the HPT field, specific research questions have not recently been identified. This study used a three-round Delphi approach to identify research questions of interest to experts in the field, resulting in 100 questions that were classified under ten categories. Participants…