The second edition of the Global Education Monitoring Report (GEM Report) presents the latest evidence on global progress towards the education targets of the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
With hundreds of millions of people still not going to school, and many not achieving minimum skills at school, it is clear education systems are off track to achieve global goals. The marginalised currently bear the most consequences but also stand to benefit the most if policy-makers pay sufficient attention to their needs. Faced with these challenges, along with tight budgets and increased emphasis on results-oriented value for money, countries are searching for solutions. Increased accountability often tops the list.
The 2017/8 GEM Report shows the entire array of approaches to accountability in education. It ranges from countries unused to the concept, where violations of the right to education go unchallenged, to countries where accountability has become an end in itself instead of a means to inclusive, equitable and high-quality education and lifelong learning for all.
The report emphasises that education is a shared responsibility. While governments have primary responsibility, all actors – schools, teachers, parents, students, international organizations, private sector providers, civil society and the media – have a role in improving education systems. The report emphasises the importance of transparency and availability of information but urges caution in how data are used. It makes the case for avoiding accountability systems with a disproportionate focus on narrowly defined results and punitive sanctions. In an era of multiple accountability tools, the report provides clear evidence on those that are working and those that are not.
This research provides an overview of the trajectories and forms of education privatisation in Nepal, with a special focus on low-fee and chain schools. In doing so, it seeks to contribute to the ongoing, critical debate about the relationships between students’ rights to quality education, teachers’ rights to quality working conditions, equitable access to schools and the regulation of private actors in education. It used a mixed methodology, comprising desk research, and field work (survey and interviews). The major focus of the desk research was on: (i) identifying and analysing the growth trajectory of privatisation; (ii) examining the overall policy, practice and legislative environment in which the private sector has proliferated; and, (iii) identifying prominent private actors and issues related to equity and social justice in Nepal’s education sector. The fieldwork was comprised of case studies of two types of private schools – (i) the Samata Shiksha Niketan Schools (a low-fee private school chain), and (ii) the schools operated by Chaudhary Group (CG). For the purpose of case studies, five Samata and three CG schools were selected. The case studies were conducted using a survey questionnaire and semi-structured interviews amongst teachers, students, school principals, and promoters/owners. Throughout the process of data collection, interpretation and analysis, special emphasis was given to gender as a cross-cutting perspective.
A lo largo de las últimas décadas, las políticas pro privatización han cobrado un lugar central en muchos procesos de reforma educativa a escala global (Burch, 2009). El avance de estas políticas se explica parcialmente por el impacto de una serie de factores comunes de carácter externo –incluyendo presiones derivadas de la globalización económica o el rol de organizaciones internacionales con una preferencia por las soluciones de mercado. Sin embargo, en su implementación, estas políticas no responden a un modelo homogéneo en cuanto a sus fines, sentidos, diseños y temporalidades. Por el contrario, diversos condicionantes de carácter interno, sociopolíticos, institucionales, demográficos e históricos propios de cada contexto nacional y/o subnacional han dado como resultado distintas trayectorias de privatización educativa con características específicas (Verger, Fontdevila, & Zancajo, 2016).
En América Latina, las políticas pro privatización han asumido un rol protagónico singular en los procesos de reforma educativa, especialmente a partir de la década de 1990 (Bellei & Orellana, 2014). La consecuencia más evidente –aunque no exclusiva– de estos procesos ha sido la creciente participación de agentes privados en la provisión educativa bajo diversos arreglos institucionales. En las últimas décadas, de hecho, América Latina ha sido la región del mundo en la que la privatización de la provisión educativa ha crecido de forma más acusada y constante (Verger, Moschetti, & Fontdevila, 2017). A su vez, como rasgo particular y paradójico, los procesos de privatización en la región corrieron en paralelo al creciente ingreso a la educación pública de sectores sociales largamente excluidos del acceso a este derecho (Bordoli & Conde, 2016). El interjuego de ambos procesos no ha hecho más que poner de manifiesto las contradicciones y desafíos que enfrentan los estados de la región en materia de integración e igualdad.
The Oxford Human Rights Hub in partnership with the Open Society Foundations has created a free online resource Learning lessons from litigators: Realising the right to education through public interest lawyering for anyone engaged in campaigning, advocating or litigating for the right to education, especially in the context of privatisation of education, on the potential and risks of litigation and how it can complement other forms of activism.
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This report, Charters and Consequences, is the result of a year-long exploration of the effects of charter schools and the issues that surround them. Each of its eleven issues-based stories tells what the Network for Public Education (NPE) have learned not only from research, but also from talking with parents, community members, teachers, and school leaders around the nation who have observed the effects of charters on their communities and neighborhood schools.
While stories of individual charter successes are well covered by the media, substantive issues surrounding the explosion of charter school growth are too often brushed aside. The purpose of this report is to bring those issues to light.
The report focuses on the legal obligations of states and private entities to mobilise all resources at their disposal, including those that could be collected through taxation or prevention of illicit financial flows, to satisfy minimum essential levels of human rights and finds that states who facilitate or actively promote tax abuses, at the domestic or cross-border level, may be in violation of international human rights law.
The report is based on a detailed examination of UN treaty bodies and special procedures’ views on the current interpretation of the scope and content of this obligation to mobilise resources. Further, it is published against the backdrop of increased awareness of the relationship between economic policies and human rights and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development which committed all UN member states to ‘strengthen domestic resource mobilization, including through international support to developing countries, to improve domestic capacity for tax and other revenue collection’ and ‘significantly reduce illicit financial flows’.
According to UNESCO, 264 million children and youth are still out of school around the world, and this is only accounting for the primary (61 million) and secondary school (203 million) age population. In particular, the poorest and most marginalised, including ethnic and religious minorities, persons with disabilities, girls, and populations experiencing conflict, are often systematically unable to access and complete a full cycle of quality education. The first volume of NORRAG Special Issue (NSI) is dedicated to examining international frameworks and national policy as well as the challenges of fulfilling the right to education in practice.
The inaugural issue of NSI on the Right to Education Movements and Policies: Promises and Realities aims to highlight the global and national level experience and perspective on guaranteeing the right to education, as outlined in international frameworks, national constitutions, legislation, and policy, when creating the required administrative structures to ensure that the right is respected, protected, and fulfilled for all.
The Issue is divided into six parts, each focusing on a specific theme of right to education policy and practice. The first part includes an article written by RTE staff on The Role of Court Decisions in the Realisation of the Right to Education, which draws on RTE's background paper on accountability for the GEM Report 2017-8.
El informe "Educación privada de bajo coste en el Perú: un enfoque desde la calidad" ha sido realizado conjuntamente por un equipo de investigación de la Universitat
Autònoma de Barcelona y del Grupo de Análisis para el Desarrollo de Lima y ofrece un panorama actual de la distribución de la oferta privada en el Perú, con especial atención a Lima Metropolitana y, en particular, al distrito de San Juan de Lurigancho.
Of the 57 million children worldwide without access to education, over one third lives in settings of conflict and fragility (UNESCO, 2015). The escalating crisis in Syria has contributed significantly to this out-of-school population, with well over half of 1.4 million Syrian refugee children and adolescents not in school (UNICEF, 2016). While education in emergencies has risen as a policy priority in the mandates of international organizations (Menashy and Dryden-Peterson, 2015), the share of total overseas development assistance to education has declined sharply in recent years, with funding persistently low in conflict-affected states (UNESCO, 2015; 2016). Within this context, private sector engagement in education has become increasingly appealing to a growing portion of the international community. Private actors have responded in turn, spurring new initiatives, funding commitments and partnership arrangements to advance the cause of educating refugee children. Such commitments are indicative of the growing role of private entities as both educational funders and providers in contexts of crisis. This study explores the complex interrelationship between conflict and private sector participation through a case study of the education of Syrian refugees. It is estimated that 900,000 Syrian refugee children and adolescents are not enrolled in school, with enrolment rates for Syrian refugees at only 70% in Jordan, 40% in Lebanon, and 39% in Turkey (UNHCR, 2016b). Although private engagement in this context is evidently expanding, the exact nature and scale of this involvement has been unclear. This research seeks to better understand which private entities are engaging in the sector, the activities through which private companies and foundations support education, and the rationales and motivations that drive their involvement.