13 Mar 2017
Unfinished Business in Global Education by Nicholas Burnett
By Nicholas Burnett, senior fellow, Results for Development Global education is not in good shape. There is too much unfinished business. I draw attention to four such areas, making no attempt to be comprehensive but rather focusing on topics of personal importance to me: Sterile debates continue to dominate. Our field remains excessively concerned... Read More
03 Mar 2017
Taming Educational Privatization by Fazal Rizvi
By Fazal Rizvi, the University of Melbourne, Australia. Over the past three decades, the idea of privatization in education has been widely embraced by countries around the world. Of course the ways in which they have translated it into policies and programs have varied greatly,[1] as indeed have been the reasons given in support of... Read More
21 Feb 2017
Outsourcing Liberia’s Education System: A New level of Absurdity in Education Provisioning by Salim Akoojee
By Salim Akoojee, Independent Education and Training Analyst, South Africa and Hong Kong. The recent move to outsource Liberia’s education system in what has been referred to as a Public-Private Partnership (PPP) is a tragedy that belies credulity. This was made all the more stark with the court judgement in Uganda (upheld by the high... Read More
08 Feb 2017
The Education Commission Report: Will We Achieve EFA and the Education SDG? By Steven J. Klees
By Steven J. Klees, University of Maryland[1] The International Commission on Financing Global Education Opportunity, aka the Education Commission, recently engaged in an extraordinary process to produce an unusual report entitled The Learning Generation: Investing in Education for a Changing World. The Education Commission Report (ECR) is the product of a year-long intensive team effort,... Read More
31 Jan 2017
Transversal Competencies and their Assessment: Perspectives from the Asia-Pacific by Ramya Vivekanandan
By Ramya Vivekanandan, UNESCO Bangkok. In today’s world, there is a growing sense that the real purpose of education is not only to produce learners who are literate and numerate. Instead, the complex times in which we live make additional, more crucial demands on our education systems: that they facilitate the holistic development of our... Read More
26 Jan 2017
Financing Education and All the Other SDGs: Global Taxation is Needed by Steven J. Klees
By Steven J. Klees, University of Maryland. The failure to achieve Education for All and the Millennium Development Goals is liable to be repeated with the Sustainable Development Goals. At present, we rely on the vagaries of self-interest in the Global North to finance the development gap in the Global South. This charity model must... Read More
24 Jan 2017
Agenda 2030 - SDG4 Education 2030 - One Year On: Challenges and Opportunities by Jordan Naidoo
By Jordan Naidoo, UNESCO, Paris. It is just over a year ago on September 25, 2015 when global leaders adopted Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, in the 70th Session of the United Nations General Assembly. Some may argue that little has changed in the global landscape since then, as war and... Read More
23 Jan 2017
Do the SDGs Matter? A Teacher’s View By Desmond Bermingham
By Desmond Bermingham, Varkey Foundation, London. While the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) may be important for global policy makers, the real change makers are the teachers in the classroom. Finding new ways to train and motivate these teachers will be key to reaching SDG4 in all developing countries. One of my most enjoyable tasks since... Read More
17 Jan 2017
For Global Learning Metrics, Ask Cognitive Scientists by Helen Abadzi
By Helen Abadzi, College of Education, University of Texas at Arlington. The December of 2016 brought worrisome messages to many Ministries of Education. The 2015 PISA and TIMSS[1] scores were publicized. Despite efforts, Latin American countries have low scores, as do the wealthy Gulf States. Policymakers are unsure how to improve instruction for better outcomes.... Read More
09 Jan 2017
2017: Reshaping the Landscape for International Policies and Cooperation in Education and Training by Kenneth King
Kenneth King, NORRAG News editor, and University of Edinburgh In our first blog of January 2016, we celebrated the end of post-2015 and the beginning of Agenda 2030. A huge amount has happened on this new Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) agenda since then, and some of the diversity of that is captured critically in a... Read More