Headteachers working under conditions of severe hardship in Africa face tremendous challenges, often exacerbated by a sense of hopelessness and lack of agency to effect improvements within their school. This paper focuses on notions of leadership agency and "social justice" within an African educational context, with a specific focus on…

This paper considers issues concerning the quality of education in Eritrea using the Education for All (EFA) Global Monitoring Report's (GMR) framework for quality education. Drawing on 2 years school-based professional experience in the country, the multiple factors affecting quality in schooling are discussed. The applicability of the GMR…

The reduction of transaction costs is a commonly mentioned yet rarely elaborated goal for aid effectiveness in educational development. The casual use of the concept of transaction costs conceals which costs may be reduced, which costs are required and, indeed, what transaction costs actually are. Examining issues related to harmonizing the…

Who educates teacher educators? How are teacher educators educated and prepared for their roles and tasks? This article uses a review of a two-year full-time Diploma in Teacher Education (DTE) for teacher educators in Uganda to engage with these questions. The article begins with a presentation of the Ugandan teacher education context and a…

The level of educational development in Pakistan is low. A decentralisation reform was introduced in 2000 to improve the delivery of basic education by designating the local government body with primary responsibility for administering it. A qualitative field study on local education administration at the North West Frontier Province found…

Much progress has been made in improving access to basic education in recent years, but international support has been less than promised and the "funding gap" to achieve universal primary education remains stubbornly present. This article identifies six interrelated factors that constrain such donor financing. Prioritization of basic education,…

With the onset of the Education for All (EFA) agenda in 1990, the international development community has seen new forms of international cooperation forming around the pledge for EFA. This paper analyzes a case study of activities and challenges of a civil society coalition, the Ghana National Education Campaign Coalition (GNECC), in pursuing the…

Since 1995 I have been engaged in consultancies and since 2001 in research dealing with the language of instruction policies in Africa. To what extent are the policies being implemented? What is the role of research and consultancy when it comes to language policy? What happens when researchers or consultants come up with recommendations which do…

Debates about decentralisation, involving questions such as who should make decisions about public schooling and who should pay for it [Caillods, F., 1999. Preface. In: McGinn, N., Welsh, T. (Eds.), Decentralization of Education: Why, When, What and How? UNESCO, Paris] have permeated and affected educational planning in the last 20 or so years.…

The study examined variations in district performance in KCPE national examination in Kenya between 2001 and 2007. The individual change model revealed that district poverty rate was not a significant predictor of either the initial district performance (2001) or the rate of change over the seven-year period. The regional context of North Eastern…

This article extends understanding of the connections between education, social capital, and development through a mixed-methods case study of the Sistema de Aprendizaje Tutorial, or SAT, an innovative secondary-level education system. The quantitative dimension of the research used survey measures of social responsibility to compare 93 SAT…

The current dominant account of aid to education focuses on schooling and official development assistance and talks in terms of policy work, donor harmonisation and, increasingly, budgetary support. However, this approach is limited in a number of ways. The return of international policy interest in vocational education provides an opportunity to…

Access to higher education is a key challenge of the 21st century state. The link between higher education and personal and socio-economic development has intensified the need for ensuring that greater numbers of citizens have expanded access to and have been provided with quality higher education. The article seeks to explore how initiatives for…

This study examined the extent that a scholarship program operating in Sierra Leone and Djibouti was successful in increasing girls' persistence in basic education. Results of field studies indicated that scholarships could be appropriately targeted and delivered in ways that appear to minimize misappropriation of funds. However, the scholarships…

This paper argues that many internationally financed literacy programs do not sufficiently take into consideration important daily life issues of the learners, including nutritional deficiencies that may hinder learning, or of children-parent-society interactions that may improve learning. As a result, many programs have become synonymous with…