Early childhood education and care (ECEC) is changing across Europe, reflecting multiple-policy intentions and assumptions about education in early years, and the role of the state in supporting, funding and regulating its institutions. In this article, we examine the evolution of ECEC comparatively in Finland and Sweden, and we explore the shifts…

In this Forum the authors suggest that a growing intensity of contradictory public and private interests in education is a persistent force in education development stemming from the increasing centrality of education in contemporary society. Contrasting South Korea's effective policies ensuring equality of educational opportunity with its…

The study was concerned with the range of public and private provision of secondary education and how it is configured in terms of key dimensions of participation, staffing, curriculum, management and costs. It sought to explore how private schools have been developing to meet rapidly growing demand for secondary education of different types in…

This paper views seeking the optimal balance between state strengths and the scope of state functions for "good governance" as the formation of a homogenization-heterogenization matrix of policy initiatives in different social settings. Homogenization refers to a global tendency for institutional changes and governance framework to…

This article critically reflects upon the "divides" among actors within two currently popular education policies in low-income countries: decentralisation and Universal Primary Education (UPE). Current literatures suggest that the existing decentralisation framework tends to overlook the "divides" among actors that often impede…

This article explores cultural factors impeding members of the school community from engaging in shared decision-making (SDM) processes. It reports on findings from a larger qualitative research study of SDM in Egypt's secondary schools. The purpose of the study was to identify barriers to SDM, using data collected from nine general secondary…