Why do so many well-intentioned efforts to improve education in developing countries fall short? Despite decades of donor-driven initiatives, millions of children remain out of school, and even those who attend often struggle to learn. In "Fixing Governance from Below," Masooda Bano critically examines the repeated failures of…

This article delves into the controversies of student volunteers working around children in developing world contexts, by proposing a model where the organisations that send and those that receive volunteers can collaborate to ensure volunteers' purposeful involvement. The article is based on the results of a collaborative initiative between an…

Over the past three decades, the number of developing countries participating in International Large-Scale Assessments (ILSAs) has increased dramatically, while developing countries' usage of data from ILSAs for informing educational policy has not been fully realised. In this paper the authors argue that for ILSAs to be useful policy tools,…

The McGovern-Dole International Food for Education and Child Nutrition Program (MGD Program) provides donations of U.S. agricultural products and financial and technical assistance for school feeding programs in the developing world. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), with about $200 million in funding in fiscal year 2010, the…

A decade has passed since participants in the World Education Forum committed themselves to achieve, by 2015, the six Education for All (EFA) goals under the Dakar Framework for Action. Despite significant progress, some of the goals are likely to be missed by a large margin. Besides the absence of a well co-ordinated multi-donor approach in…

After some 65 years of international development assistance, it is still difficult to show the effectiveness of aid in ways that are fully convincing. In part, this reflects inadequacies in the evaluation systems of the bilateral, multilateral, and global organizations that provide official development aid. Underlying these weaknesses often are a…

The Education for All Fast Track Initiative (FTI) was launched by the World Bank in 2002 as a global initiative to help low income countries accelerate progress towards the MDG target of universal primary education by 2015. Over the past decade, the FTI has expanded to become one of the most important initiatives to emerge out of the Dakar World…

This paper documents the experience and lessons from implementing an e-learning program aimed at creating research capacity for gender, crisis prevention, and recovery. It presents a case study of bringing together a multidisciplinary group of women professionals through both online and face-to-face interactions to learn the skills needed to be a…

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…

Since 2001 the government of Cambodia has striven to advance policy-led education reform based on a sector-wide approach. This paper critically reviews the status and progress of Cambodia's education reform from the perspective of the aid's effectiveness. The paper looks at the performance of the sector reform in the three priority areas…

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…

The object of this article is to analyse the possible viability of the global education project One Laptop per Child (OLPC), and to trace some of the recent events impacting the project. The XO laptop, a unique machine, has itself become an iconic symbol. Its impact as a cultural product in a global market that targets the transformation of…

The report reviews obstacles to meeting the needs of disabled and nondisabled children throughout the world. Health, nutrition, and education crises affecting children, especially in developing countries, are reviewed. Practices which promise greater return for each dollar are cited, including using paraprofessionals, building on community…

It is the responsibility of adult education to train and retrain manpower to translate political, economic, and social objectives into action plans and programs, and to diffuse values, orientation, attitudes, and perspectives among the people in order to reduce social inequality. (CT)

Includes four articles that focus on networking in developing nations: "The Reconfiguration of International Information Infrastructure Assistance Since 1991"; "International Assistance for Networking in Less-Developed Countries: The IDRC Example"; "International Assistance for Internet Growth in Sub-Saharan Africa";…