Since 2018, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has worked in more than 80 countries to ensure that children and youth have access to the education and skills they need to be productive members of society. The launch of USAID's Education Policy in 2018 encouraged USAID Missions to be as adaptive, flexible, and responsive…

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,…

Over the past decade, international and national education agencies have begun to emphasize the improvement of the quality (rather than quantity) of education in developing countries. This trend has been paralleled by a significant increase in the use of educational assessments as a way to measure gains and losses in quality of learning. As…

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…

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 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…

At the time of writing, it is not possible to measure progress accurately, or even assess the baseline status of aid effectiveness in the education sector. Twelve targets en route to the five objectives of the Paris Declaration were set and agreed by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD); they were to be measured…

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 advantages and disadvantages of study abroad for students from developing nations are discussed. Emphasis is placed on the need for cooperation between educational institutions, rather than isolated efforts of individuals, to ensure quality and continuity in technical assistance programs. (RW)

Norwegian official development assistance to education has been profoundly shaped by the political and ideological attitudes of successive national governments. Yet successive coalition governments of highly-contrastive kinds can alike be seen to have been strongly influenced by the policy content, language and underlying assumptions of World Bank…

Article outlines aims of Fellowship program and criteria by which applications are judged. The importance of improving educational facilities within the developing nations themselves, as an alternative to study abroad, is stressed. (RW)

Given that education is a highly politicized institution whose benefits are shared inequitably among its supporters, it should be evident that educational reforms fail (or succeed) more often for political reasons than because of technical or programmatic differences. To illustrate, this article examines a large international assistance project,…

This two year report for 1988-1989 provides a summary of all program activities carried out by the UNESCO Principal Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific (PROAP) during this period. Separate reports for 1988 and 1989 are included, and each contains the same three parts. Part 1 discusses the major programs undertaken by PROAP; these include…