Education within capitalism too often reproduces social and economic inequalities. Schools are depicted as failing and teachers are blamed. In this paper, I examine the discourses underlying this situation and the role of foundations in the US and the World Bank in developing countries in maintaining it. I look at the neoliberal remedy of…

Piketty's "Capitalism in the twenty-first century" provides a superb, detailed historical analysis of the evolution of income and wealth inequality. Piketty demonstrates vast and increasing inequality that he argues might possibly be tempered in the future by economic growth and educational expansion supplemented by government…

The World Bank's Systems Approach for Better Education Results (SABER) purports to benchmark developing country education systems against global best practices. SABER covers 13 topics, called "domains," and has produced over 16,000 indicators of what the Bank considers best practice and applied them in over 130 countries. Yet this…

This forum seeks to problematise issues related to the lack of resources to adequately finance public education systems. It explores potential solutions based on increased domestic resource mobilisation through progressive taxation in order to meet the growing financing gap needed to achieve Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 4. While many…

Background/Context: The UN Sustainable Development Goals include a renewed commitment to inclusive and equitable education for all and will maintain pressure on governments in low-income countries to ensure this provision. A range of prominent researchers and institutional actors continue to explore and to promote low-fee private schools (LFPSs)…

The world faces pervasive poverty and inequality. Hundreds of billions of dollars in international aid have been given or loaned to developing countries though bilateral and multilateral mechanisms, at least, ostensibly, in order to do something about these problems. Has such aid helped? Debates around this question have been ongoing for decades,…

With some exceptions, a liberal version of neoclassical economics dominated public policy in the United States from the New Deal through the 1970s; and in many other countries as well. However, beginning in 1980, there was a visible sea change that brought conservatives and public choice economists to power. Ronald Reagan was elected President of…