Rural education and its policy agenda has for many decades primarily focussed upon responding to decline to "keep things going; keep things open". While this has been understandable and much has been achieved, it is now opportune--essential?--that rural education and its leaders embrace a new challenge, sustainability, and use it to…

This article deals with the challenges in the implementation of education for all as experienced by principals in rural secondary schools in Mpumalanga. Interventions which have been implemented on national and provincial level to improve teaching and learning are not equally successful in schools countrywide. The central phenomenon of interest…

In order to sustain the rural education community, access to high quality professional development opportunities must become a priority. Teachers in rural areas face many challenges in order to access professional learning equitable to their city counterparts. In the current climate, the Federal government of Australia is committed to initiatives…

Despite the fact that rural education has always been one of the most important means of rural development, it has been ignored in many developing countries, with the result that rural development has not achieved great success. The problems of education in rural areas are not only related to the amount the country spends on education or to the…

This article is essentially written as two linked parts. The first part considers how space, spatiality and history can contribute to understanding and "doing something about" the sustainability of rural communities. This is done by extensive reference to Soja's (1989 & 1996) space and spatial theorising and selective perspectives of…

The Distance Education Project for Rural Schools (DEPRS) was implemented by the Chinese government between 2003 and 2007 to improve the quality of basic education in rural areas of China, especially in the poorer western provinces. It has been referred to as "the largest ICT project in the world up to now" because "it serves a…

The aim of this article is to investigate the rural educators' understanding of the legislations that impact on school practice. An argument is presented that the understanding of the legal frameworks that govern school practice begins with the educators' understanding of the Bill of Rights and the South African Schools Act. The article reports on…

China has made remarkable progress along the path of economic transformation over the past three decades. To continue its rapid growth in an economy with increasingly higher wages, China's key challenge is whether it can become competitive enough in quasi-skilled and skilled sectors so that more technologically advanced industries and service…

In China, the access to education is determined by not only student's demand for schooling, but also the allocation of educational resources and the schools' selection of candidate students. Based on the data obtained from the rural life level and rural social assistance household surveys in four provinces in 2005, the demand-identified bivariate…

How has the new interactive distance education system facilitated by satellite technology been utilised and incorporated by teachers and learners? Has it changed the ways teachers deliver education to remote students? What have been the implications for the curriculum delivered via distance education? How has it affected the ways learners interact…

One of the first achievements of post-conflict Afghanistan was to bring almost 4 million children back to school. Issues remain daunting, however, with low primary enrollment especially for girls and in rural areas and very weak learning achievements. We review some key features of the education system in Afghanistan. By matching household and…

Educational centers serve a number of purposes. Foremost, they are a more cost-effective way of meeting increased student demand than building costly comprehensive full-service campuses. Educational centers also promote shared facility use and intersegmental collaboration, which enables higher education systems to use resources more efficiently.…

This article reports a study of parents' management of the education of primary school-aged children in their care in remote and rural locations of Western Australia. It presents a theory of the ways in which these parents, in the role of home tutors, "manage" the schooling of their children in a distance education regime in isolated…

At the Western Institute of Technical and Further Education (WITAFE) in New South Wales (NSW), vocational education and training (VET) courses are being delivered to students in isolated homesteads and remote Aboriginal communities by Interactive Distance eLearning (IDL). IDL provides satellite-supported two-way broadband voice, one-way video and…

The World Declaration on Education for All in 1990 and the World Education Forum in Dakar in 2000 reaffirmed the right to learn and a commitment to meet the basic learning needs of all people by expanding learning opportunities and working for a fully literate society. In the Indian context, especially in rural India, it is still a cherished…