31 Aug 2015
Technology for Sustainable Development: Towards Innovative Value Driven Solutions By Joost Monks
By Joost Monks, NORRAG, Geneva. On 8 July 2015, at the United Nations Headquarters, the UN Academic Impact Initiative (UNAI)[1] and Amrita University[2] (India) co-hosted a one-day conference on Technology for Sustainable Development. NORRAG was invited to participate and joined over 700 participants in the event. In the opening address, Helen Clark, the Administrator of the UN Development... Read More
27 Aug 2015
The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), Education and Decent Work By Myles A Wickstead
By Myles A Wickstead, the Open University and King’s College London, advisor to Hand in Hand International and Honorary Vice-President of VSO. On 2 August, Transforming Our World: The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development was agreed by UN member-states and will be ratified by a meeting of Heads of Government in New York at the... Read More
25 Aug 2015
Skills Development vs. TVET vs. Education vs. Work: Who is the Winner after Shanghai, Incheon and Kuala Lumpur Conferences? By Michel Carton
By Michel Carton, NORRAG. The participants[1] at the 3rd International Congress on Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) (May 2012) adopted the Shanghai Consensus: Transforming TVET, Building Skills for Work and the Future, where they note “the ongoing conceptual debate around the definition of TVET,” including the use of other terms such as “technical... Read More
12 Aug 2015
NORRAG NEWS 52: Reflections on the World Education Forum / Financing Education and Skills By NORRAG
By NORRAG. The August 2015 issue of NORRAG News (NN) – NN52 – covers two topics: It contains 13 articles that reflect critically on the World Education Forum (WEF), just held in Incheon, South Korea during 18-22 May 2015. It also contains 36 articles that look at the place of education and skills financing against... Read More
06 Aug 2015
Drifting Basis for International Norms in the 3rd Financing for Development Conference By Zhang Chun
By Zhang Chun, Shanghai Institutes for International Studies. The 3rd Financing for Development (FfD) conference has just concluded (July 16th 2015) and agreed an action plan. While there is much criticism on the hallmark failure of the conference to agree on the creation of a global tax body, there were under-reported, yet historic, changes regarding... Read More
03 Aug 2015
Quality Education – at all Levels – for Everyone? Education in the Outcome Document on Post-2015 Development Goals By NORRAG
By NORRAG. Yesterday the Outcome Document of the September 2015 UN Summit to adopt the post-2015 development agenda, Transforming Our World: The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, was adopted by consensus (and much applause) at the UN in New York. This post is just a quick review of what the outcome document says on education.... Read More
30 Jul 2015
Do Teacher Incentives Improve Learning Outcomes? By Silvia Montoya
By Silvia Montoya, UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) and Jordan Naidoo, UNESCO Over the past decade, many countries have increased their spending on education as a share of gross domestic product. Between 1999 and 2012, public expenditure on education grew by 2 to 3 percentage points in such diverse countries as: Benin, Brazil, Kyrgyzstan and... Read More
27 Jul 2015
Measurement Fetishism By Steven Klees
By Steven Klees, University of Maryland. At my first university job, in the early 1970s, a professor whose expertise was statistics and research methods said, “If you can’t measure it, it doesn’t exist.” I thought, then and now, that that statement is both extreme and absurd. More recently, in a World Bank blog, Harry Patrinos... Read More
23 Jul 2015
What Happened to Education in the Financing for Development Conference, 13-16 July 2015, Addis Ababa? By Kenneth King
By Kenneth King, Editor NORRAG News. What was the Education angle in the Financing for Development (FFD) Conference? Did the FFD Conference confirm the Education Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) and Targets? How did the approach of the Outcome document of the FFD differ from the Incheon Declaration? In the approximately 200 side events attached to... Read More
09 Jul 2015
The Politics of Indicator Development in the Education 2030 Framework for Action By Tore Bernt Sørensen
By Tore Bernt Sørensen, University of Bristol. As the process of defining the Education 2030 Framework for Action becomes nearer to completion, this post takes a critical look at one prominent submission to the post-2015 education debate: the OECD Universal Basic Skills report. In the report, the OECD effectively proposes that PISA should be extended... Read More