Under the Florida A+ Accountability Program, Florida's schools are graded based on student performance on the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test. Previously, when schools would earn their second failing grade within four years, students assigned to these schools were offered school vouchers which parents and guardians could use to transfer…

The Hungarian government has recently been focusing on innovation policy as part of a wider campaign to improve the business environment. This paper first underscores the importance of a good general business climate in encouraging both formal and informal R&D activity as well as ensuring Hungary benefits from the international diffusion of…

This paper situates recent school-to-work transition policy in Ontario, Canada, within the historical context of secondary school reform in the past 50 years. This understanding informs our analysis of interviews with representatives from government, business, organised labour, education and partnership brokers. Data suggest tensions between the…

Parents know adolescents can be cruel. They do not want their child rejected by peers. What is it like to be denigrated by one's middle school classmates? How common is a predatory anti-teacher peer culture in junior high school? Does it typically last into high school? How do peer norms of different crowds in a school get established? Who sets…

Over the past two decades, science has become established as a core school subject in schools in England and Wales, taken by all students aged 5 to 16. But increasingly questions have been raised about the suitability for many students of the curriculum they are required to follow (Murray and Reiss, 2005). From September 2006, schools in England…

The Education Action Zone programme in Gauteng province, South Africa, has been widely seen as a very successful school improvement initiative, with particular significance as it represents a unique model of top-down, bureaucratic accountability as a vehicle for turning- around dysfunctional secondary schools. In this article I evaluate the impact…

The Education Working Paper Series is produced by the Education Unit at the World Bank (HDNED). It provides an avenue for World Bank staff to publish and disseminate preliminary education findings to encourage discussion and exchange ideas within the World Bank and among the broader development community. Throughout the 1990s and into the…

The paper provides a comprehensive review of the major obstacles that hinder the participation of girls and women in higher education in Kenya. This is on the basis that their low participation in this level of education is a key constraint to the development of the country. While it is reckoned that girls' and women's education is inextricably…

One of the most frequently studied factors relating to the rise of educational inequalities is the selectivity of the education system. Selectivity often gives rise to inequalities in educational opportunities. The Czech Republic exhibits large inequalities in educational achievement and relatively steep socio-economic gradients in all…

Challenge to Lead sets ambitious goals to help states ask the right questions to improve student access to college through better alignment of the policies that govern the transition from high school to college and careers. To help answer them, this special report provides a one-page summary of each SREB state's policies, programs and requirements…

This report uses the phrase, "College Readiness" to refer in a general sense to the level of preparation a student needs to be ready to enroll and succeed--without remediation--in a credit-bearing course at a two-year or four-year institution, trade school, or technical school. Increasingly, however, college readiness also means "workplace"…

The Office of Community College Research and Leadership (OCCRL) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) conducted a study that captures current institutional policies and practices from the perspective of admissions officers in Illinois' public and private 4-year colleges and universities. The study explored acceptance and…

An original study of the Ramsay Committee report entitled "Future Directions for Secondary Education in the Northern Territory" (the "Secondary Review") was presented in December 2004 at the ANZCIES National Conference in Melbourne. This was prior to the Northern Territory Government deciding how many of the recommendations of…

School diversity in the UK is not a new phenomenon. However, recent reforms to "modernise" the secondary school system towards greater diversity of provision, primarily in England, needs to be explored in more detail. The article begins by proposing three phases in the development of state-funded school diversity and provision between…

Against the background of several large-scale innovations in secondary agricultural education, this study explores the relation between teachers' professionality and their participation in school policy. For the research into this, 1,030 teachers of 98 schools for preparatory and secondary agricultural education have filled in two questionnaires.…