The report highlights allocation for education sector of different fiscal years aiming to underline priority areas for realising National Education Policy-2010, explains the trends of education financing, analyses the allocation in development and non-development programmes and finds the challenges in implementing the strategic priorities of education sector in Bangladesh.
This report documents the struggles of children and young people with disabilities to be educated in mainstream schools in their communities.
It is based on more than 60 interviews, mostly with children and young people with disabilities, and their parents, and draws on government data and expert policy assessments. The Chinese government has adopted regulations and rules on the education of people with disabilities, promised to raise the enrolment rate of children with disabilities, and waived miscellaneous school fees for them. Yet the report details the ways schools deny these students admission, pressure them to leave, or fail to provide appropriate classroom accommodations to help them overcome barriers related to their disabilities.
The report provides a thorough analysis of why girls have limited access to education. Despite a firm legal framework, the implementation of the right to education remains problematic, especially for girls. Three main causes are indicated, including gender inequality in cultural practices, poverty and safety risks for girls. The report aims to give a better understanding of the challenges girls face in their struggle to get access to education. The situation in Pakistan serves as an example showing the complex problems surrounding the implementation of the right to education for girls. With 5.1 million children, the country has the second highest number of boys and girls who are not able to access education after Nigeria. In rural areas, widespread gender inequality remains, and the hurdles described above all apply. Furthermore, the conflict between the Pakistani Government and the Taliban often brings girls, teachers and school buildings in the direct line of fire.
The report concludes by highlighting what still needs to be done to improve the situation of access to education for girls globally and in Pakistan. By meeting these challenges worldwide, a true change can be achieved, enabling all girls to take school for granted because no-one is excluded.
This comparative report reviews and analyses a range of selected educational issues in Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)+6 countries, which include 10 ASEAN member countries plus Australia, China, India, Japan, New Zealand, and the Republic of Korea. In particular, it highlights the key issues, challenges and opportunities for improving system performance and reducing educational disparities across ASEAN+6 countries. It thus provides useful inputs for informing policy options for education development in these and other countries. The issues reviewed are grouped into three policy areas: 1) sector policy and management frameworks, 2) secondary education, and 3) technical and vocational education and training (TVET), all of which are of critical importance in the context of formulating and operationalizing education reform agendas in these countries. The reports informs about legislative and policy frameworks. The report focuses on quality, teachers and financing.
In 2009, India enacted the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, which provides for free and compulsory education to all children aged 6 to 14. However, the evidence presented in this report indicates that despite the 3 year deadline to implement the key provisions of the Act, it has yet to be adequately implemented.
This lack of implementation, enforcement and monitoring particularly affects children from marginalised groups, such as children with disabilities, girls, and Da lits. Children from these groups are excluded and discriminated against, affecting access, participation, retention, achievement, and completion of elementary education.
This report examines the obstacles preventing certain children from attending school and the government’s failure to take the steps necessary to address the problem.
In Asia, private supplementary tutoring consumes huge amounts of household finance, and has far-reaching implications for social inequalities, let alone the huge implications it has for school education services. Yet few governments have satisfactory regulations for the phenomenon.
The book Regulating Private Tutoring for Public Good: Policy Options for Supplementary Education in Asia focuses on the extensive scale of private tutoring in countries of the region, regardless of their development status. The work shows wide diversity in the regulations introduced by governments in the Asian region. It notes not only that these governments can learn much from each other, but also that policy makers in other parts of the world can usefully look at patterns in Asia. The book also stresses the value of partnerships between governments, tutoring providers, schools, teachers’ unions, and other bodies.
This report shows that the Philippines is neglecting its obligation to guarantee free public education for all. Since 2009 the government’s allocation of funds to private school chains has increased to more than PHP 31 Billion, nearly $700 million USD, which Riep points out could have paid for 60 thousand more classrooms and accommodated roughly 3 million students.
The report reveals how for-profit schools are using the education system, with the aid of public money, to produce a generation of young people programmed to work as “semi-skilled... cheap labour” for a plethora of corporations in the Philippines. At the same time, low-fee, for-profit schools are employing untrained teachers for low wages at the cost of quality education.
The main findings of the report are:
- Complicity and failure on the part of Filipino government to fulfil its obligations to provide quality free education for its citizens - this on the heels of the adoption of the SDGs and the FFA.
- It also reveals failure on the development, implementation and enforcement of legislative requirements that go to for-profit schooling - noting that APEC receives directly and indirectly government/tax payer funding.
- The report further highlights failure on enforcing a social contract / minimum standards regarding qualified teachers, curriculum and facilities. In fact, the government waived legislative requirements vis a vis school facilities.
- What is new here is the state sponsored / subsidised human resource factories directly advancing Ayala’s business interests. This is achieved by reverse engineering the curriculum to produce an army of labour for their businesses e.g. call centres. All in all, the research provides evidence why the profit motive has no place in dictating what is taught, how it’s taught nor how schools are organised.
The Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights considered the combined fifth and sixth periodic report of the Philippines on the implementation of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (E/C.12/PHL/5-6) at its 65th and 66th meetings (E/C.12/2016/SR.65 and 66) held on 28 and 29 September 2016, and adopted the following concluding observations at its 79th meeting, held on 7 October 2016.
This report summarises the Asia Pacific regional consultation on Human Rights Guiding Principles on State Obligations regarding Private Schools (hereafter ‘regional consultation') hosted by the Asia South Pacific Association for Basic and Adult Education (ASPBAE) in Bangkok on 30-31 August, 2016. The purpose of the regional consultation was to share the process for the development of, and for participants to input into, a set of Human Rights Guiding Principles on State obligations regarding private schools (‘Guiding Principles’). The Guiding Principles are a set of global guidelines that clarify human rights law related to private actors in education and are intended to be operational in and adaptable to different contexts.
A report summary for the eastern Africa regional consultation, held in Nairobi (September 2016) is available, here.
A report summary for the Europe and North America regional consultation, held in Paris (March 2017) is available, here.
Commercialisation is creeping into our public school system. A new report, Commercialisation in Public Schooling, reveals teachers are concerned about the influence commercialisation is having in schools; on everything from the provision of tests like NAPLAN, through to private providers offering classes in PE, Music, Drama and even professional development courses for teachers.
The report reveals schools are now forced to buy-in a substantial volume of educational products and services that were once provided by education departments.
These include:
- Lesson plans
- Reading programmes
- Curriculum content
- Assessment services
- Remedial instruction
- Online learning programmes
- Student data packages
- NAPLAN and exam preparation materials
- Professional development for staff
- School administration support
And, with public education and school budgets constantly under pressure, some schools are looking to pass on the costs for these commercial services to parents wherever they can.
Globally, the provision of education services is a massive business; worth an estimated $4.3 trillion annually.
The Commercialisation in Public Schooling report was commissioned by the NSW Teachers Federation and conducted by Professor Bob Lingard of the University of Queensland’s School of Education and a team which included Dr Sam Sellar (Manchester Metropolitan University), Dr Anna Hogan (University of Queensland) and Associate Professor Greg Thompson (Queensland University of Technology).
NSW Teachers Federation President Maurie Mulheron said the report sounded a warning for parents, teachers, governments and education administrators.