This article argues that, if a global development aim is to address educational inequalities, the post-2015 agenda needs to conceptually and practically broaden the focus of learning to include social relations as important processes and outcomes for achieving educational equity. We draw on Sen's capability approach and Bourdieu's forms of capital…

This article examines the relationship between inequality and education through the lens of colonial language education policies in African primary and secondary school curricula. The languages of former colonizers almost always occupy important places in society, yet they are not widely spoken as first languages, meaning that most people depend…

This article examines cross-country variations in adult skills inequality and asks why skills in Anglophone countries are so unequal. Drawing on the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development's recent Survey of Adult Skills and other surveys, it investigates the differences across countries and country groups in inequality in both…

Access to higher education in Egypt is expanding in both the public and private sectors. Using a nationally representative sample from the Survey of Young People in Egypt, this article is able to disaggregate patterns of access by both demographic group and university sector. Findings suggest that access in the public sector is governed strongly…

This special issue introduces a set of article addressing the question of what "fairness" means with respect to the distribution of access to higher education. Articles herein address the criteria that "should" be used to allocate funding, offers of admission at selective institutions, and conceiving and assessing …

Since the 1940s, the concept of community participation has framed, mobilized, and legitimated national development agendas in the Singida Region of rural central Tanzania. Based on 19 months of ethnographic and archival research, this study examines the forms of community participation elicited through state and international development…

In her teaching, research, and community activities in Canada, the author has repeatedly confronted questions regarding equality, diversity, and power. In this article, the author discusses diversity and equal opportunity to achieve excellence in education. Reflecting on these issues should help everyone to understand the complexities involved in…

Many nations make use of a "personal statement" (or equivalent) in their higher education admissions system. This article examines how statements differ according to applicants' educational background. Among the indicators used are fluency of expression, quantity and quality of workplace experience, and extracurricular activity. Findings…

In Uganda, the implementation of universal primary education (UPE) in 1997 and universal secondary education (USE) in 2005 have led educational policy makers, teachers, parents, and students to seek creative solutions to the problem of ensuring educational quality as schools incorporate 4 million more students. Some Ugandans worry about…

The presence of a teacher in the classroom is central to the provision of schooling, with accumulating evidence showing that teacher absence compromises student learning. Teacher absence is common in schools in low- and middle-income countries. With much of the developing world making rapid progress in achieving universal primary school enrollment…

This article compares the changes in the determination of educational aspirations from the end of the communist period in 1989 to 2003, focusing on a single postcommunist country, the Czech Republic. The Czech case is particularly relevant for comparative research on educational inequality and aspirations, as previous studies have shown…

The purpose of this article is to analyze a number of Greek higher education reforms in comparative perspective. Emphasis will be placed on the rationale of the state's policies in creating the nonuniversity sector within higher education. The case of Greece will be compared to the cases of France and Germany because approximately the same reforms…

In this article, the authors focus on a poor rural area in northwestern China and investigates whether the gender attitudes of mothers can be linked to their plans for educating their own children in the future. Using recent longitudinal data from the Gansu Survey of Children and Families (GSCF), a survey of rural 9-12-year-old children, families,…

In egalitarian societies, the allocation of employment positions should approach random probability. It is from this perspective that the relationship between education and mobility is examined in this paper. (Author/RK)

Author evaluated Jencks' book while focusing his comments on schooling as an instrument for eliminating social and economic inequalities. (Author/RK)