This paper analyses the changes in the higher education funding policies and resource allocation models of the Jamaican government in the period 1962-2003. Throughout these four decades, four different systems were in force. This paper focuses particularly on the arguments for the funding policies and models and the impact of the models on the…

The numbers of children with access to basic education in sub-Saharan Africa have increased substantially over the last two decades but many still remain out of school. Some fail to enrol at all, especially in fragile states, and many more start school but do not complete the basic cycle. Education for All (EFA) and the Millennium Development…

When Ghana became independent in 1957 it had one of the most developed education systems in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Over the next forty years its education system expanded to provide places for most, but not all, of its children. Since the education reforms of the late 1980s enrolments have grown steadily; this contrasts with some SSA countries…

This article examines access to and exclusion from basic education in Ghana over the period 1991-2006, using data derived from the Ghana Living Standards Surveys. It uses the CREATE "zones of exclusion" model to explore schooling access outcomes within the framework of the household production function. Empirical findings indicate that…

Silent exclusion, when children register and attend school but learn little, is a critical feature of educational access in South Africa. Several international studies (e.g. TIMMS, SACMEQ) have shown that despite high levels of investment, South African schools perform poorly in relation to other countries at similar levels of income. Equitable…

The goal of Education for All (EFA) is in jeopardy, and the cause is widely perceived to be a lack of political will. But we lack an accurate definition of political will. In this article, I offer a definition that determines beforehand whether a government will have political will. In contrast to current academic work and popular discourse, which…

The Education for All and Millennium Development Goals commit national governments, international agencies and civil society to ensure that all children are provided with basic education. In South Africa this would mean full attendance in Grades (1-9). The achievement of universal primary education and gender equity across low-income countries are…

Commentary on gender equality in education as a global issue often assesses what makes policy work or why certain emphases in policy are selected. The article recasts this division by looking not so much at the separation between policy and its enactment, but at the forms of mobility entailed in the movement between these different poles. It…

This article addresses the context and challenges of small island developing states, focusing particularly on Cape Verde. After a general discussion of the characteristics of small island developing states, several development challenges such as poverty, unemployment and migratory issues specific to Cape Verde are evoked. Despite a period of…

Since Independence in 1963, Kenya has launched three Free Primary Education programmes: the first in 1974, the second in 1979 and the most recent in 2003. Using historical data, this paper first outlines each initiative in turn, and discusses why, in the case of the earlier initiatives, impressive initial gains in improved access proved difficult…

In this article I describe a number of ways in which non-western cultures have adopted and used western educational approaches, forming an illustrative typology of these adaptations. I provide an illustration(s) of each category in the typology, briefly presenting the history of the category, detailing its modern state, and discussing selected…

In this study the authors start from the observed fact that equality of opportunities of educational achievement is higher in integrated school systems than in differentiated school systems. In other words, in integrated school systems, a pupil's school achievement depends less than elsewhere on the social and cultural resources of his or her…

Discusses critically some current policies and practices designed to promote equality of educational opportunity in India, the problems arising in connection with the relationship between education and society, the meaning of equality of educational opportunity, expansion of secondary and higher educational opportunities, and the implementation of…

This paper uses pupil responses to the PISA study in 2000 for all EU countries. Using indicators of the pupil intakes to schools and their outcomes it computes segregation indices for 15 countries, and then tries to explain the resulting patterns in terms of the characteristics of national school systems. Segregation by sex in each country is…

Author described four schools he observed in Sri Lanka in 1971-72 in an attempt to determine the extent to which rural children are disadvantaged in terms of social mobility through educational achievement. (Author/RK)