"Sony Music v. Easyinternetcafe" has introduced a new facet to the debate concerning the copyright legality of peer-to-peer file transfer. The judgment and subsequent settlement has highlighted that companies offering services that are used to infringe copyright may be held to account in the UK courts. Liability may extend from the…

This paper examines the legislative framework developed in New Zealand over the last 15 years to facilitate greater parental choice in education. The discussion is set within the context of changes to admission practices in a number of education systems to advance the privatisation agenda, and outlines the resurgence of interest in the development…

The Basque School, as well as a type of school, is an educational phenomenon that emerged and underwent most of its development during the twentieth century. Some initial confusion existed between the terms "Basque school," "bilingual school" and "ikastola," due to the undefined nature of the Basque model of schooling…

In New South Wales as for other Australian colonies, the achievement of mainly free, compulsory and secular public education systems in the 1870s was a cause of self- satisfaction and a belief that late nineteenth-century Australian public schools were among the best in the world. In this paper, the process by which this self-satisfaction was…

This study attempts to evaluate the impacts of macro-structural factors on political freedom in developing countries (DCs). Political freedom is conceptualized as civil liberty and political rights the general population of a society can enjoy in influencing public policy. The Freedom House indexes are used as measures of freedom. In explaining…

When Singapore underwent decolonization after World War II, its government--keen on constructing a Singapore-centered identity--sought to replace Chinese schools, which taught a China-centered worldview. This attempt provoked tough resistance from the local Chinese. Succumbing to this pressure, the ruling regime accommodated Chinese schools as…

This article investigates the contribution skills development can make in promoting South Africa's wider socio-economic development. It provides a broad overview of the emerging gap between those who are benefiting from South Africa's transition to democracy and those who are not. Overcoming these worsening social conditions has become a major…

Strong education and training systems are viewed as a route to increased labour market participation for groups that have traditionally been excluded from, or marginalised in, the labour market. Engagement in the labour force for such groups has both individual and societal benefits. However, while this emphasis on an increased role for the state…

Contemporary school administrators play a daunting array of roles. They must be educational visionaries and change agents, instructional leaders, curriculum and assessment experts, budget analysts, facility managers, special program administrators, and community builders. New expectations for schools--that they successfully teach a broad range of…

This book focuses on educational change processes in the context of larger scale educational reform. The first of 2 volumes, the book contains 11 chapters that examine the historical, social, and economic forces at work in the formulation and implementation of educational policy. The chapters present different cross-cultural experiences of…

This book consists of working papers presented at the national child care conference and is intended to rejuvenate interest in the child care agenda for the 1990s. The first paper addresses child care policy and its relationship to child and family poverty, and child care and its connection to economic and labor force strategies. The second paper…

This paper proposes a framework for developing a national rural development policy in Australia. Some common relevant misconceptions are that rural Australia and rural Australians are peripheral to the national economy and the nation's future, that farmers and farming communities are the alpha and omega of rural Australia, and that whatever is…

This paper examines the determinants of systemic education reform in the American states. Socioeconomic, political, and cultural variables are all found to affect the level of systemic education policy in each state. Unlike many studies of policy determinants, urbanization is negatively associated with this particular policy. The political factors…

In this policy analysis of affirmative action, four Asian Pacific American law professors make a case for affirmative action with a special focus on Asian Pacific Americans (APAs). It is asserted that affirmative action produces many benefits, such as reducing the harm of racism, promoting equal opportunity, and advancing racial justice. However,…

Reform of New Zealand schools has been ongoing since 1988, when the Task Force to Review Education Administration recommended devolution of managerial control, within national guidelines, for each of the country's 2,700 state school boards of trustees with a majority of elected parents' representatives. Reforms instituted since 1989 across all…