11 Feb 2016
Syria Donors Conference: A ‘Vision of Hope’ for the Next School Year? By Hiba Salem
By Hiba Salem, University of Cambridge. “Never has the global community raised so much money in a day”, states Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, referring to the $10bn pledgeduring the Syria Donors Conference, which took place in London a week ago today on the 4th of February, 2016. The one-day conference I previously discussed invited world leaders... Read More
08 Feb 2016
Measuring Learning: the Cost of Ignorance By Silvia Montoya
Silvia Montoya, Director of the UNESCO Institute for Statistics Let’s be honest. For the past few months, we – the international education community – have been celebrating the victory in getting governments to adopt the ambitious Sustainable Development Goal 4 to provide inclusive and equitable quality education for all. But the party is over and now we face... Read More
02 Feb 2016
Why the Syria Donors Conference Matters Globally By Hiba Salem
By Hiba Salem, University of Cambridge. With Syria entering its sixth year of conflict, the Syria Donors Conference – scheduled for 4th February in London – has never been more important. A few days are left before the conference tackles the challenging statistics of the millions of Syrians living in dire conditions and the vastly... Read More
29 Jan 2016
Refugees, Displaced Persons and Education: New Challenges for Development and for Policy
When the Education for All Global Monitoring Report (GMR) of 2011 focused on The Hidden Crisis: Armed Conflict and Education, its focus was not principally with refugees at all, but with the massively deleterious effect of conflict on education. Arguably, the refugee crisis now affecting Europe has made this hidden crisis dramatically more open for... Read More
18 Jan 2016
What does the UK Aid Strategy mean for Education and Development? By Simon McGrath
By Simon McGrath, University of Nottingham. The UK Government has released a new aid strategy. That is, a government-wide strategy for aid, not a DFID strategy. The potential advantages and disadvantages of this have been raised elsewhere, as has the stress on “the national interest” throughout the document. However, here the focus is on what... Read More
08 Jan 2016
NEET: “Time to Look at the Whole Picture of Youth” By Ummuhan Bardak
By Ummuhan Bardak, European Training Foundation. ‘Unemployed youth’ has typically been the focus of youth-related discussions, in both developing and transition countries (and indeed in the so-called developed countries). Looking at the whole picture, however, there are many more young people who are ‘at risk’ than only the unemployed; e.g. youth who lack access to... Read More
04 Jan 2016
Education and Work’s New Lease of Life: The End of Post-2015 and the Start of 2030? By Kenneth King
By Kenneth King, Editor NORRAG News. Almost exactly a year ago, we told readers of the NORRAG Blog: ‘We [in NORRAG] are looking critically across this whole extraordinary process [of post-2015], and trying to capture and summarise some of the key directions – for the benefit of the many readers who just can’t keep up... Read More
29 Dec 2015
Disadvantage at the Starting Gate: Early Childhood Education in Pakistan By Huma Zia Faran
By Huma Zia Faran, Annual Status of Education Report (ASER), Pakistan. The recent upsurge in research on the development of a child’s brain underscores the need for greater attention to early childhood care and education, especially in developing countries. Studies (Cunha et al., 2006, and Heckman et al., 2010) reveal how a child’s brain develops... Read More
23 Dec 2015
Rethinking Education: Towards a Global Common Good? UNESCO’s New Humanistic Manifesto? By Maren Elfert
By Maren Elfert, University of British Columbia, Canada. UNESCO’s Education Sector launched Rethinking Education: Towards a Global Common Good? on 4th November 2015 during the 38th session of UNESCO’s General Conference. The report represents the outcome of the deliberations of a Senior Experts’ Group, coordinated by the head of the Education Research and Foresight Unit,... Read More
21 Dec 2015
Rebranding TVET to Attract Youth in Ghana: The Use of Competency-Based Training and the National TVET Qualification Framework By Sebastian Deh
By Sebastian Deh, Council for Technical and Vocational Education and Training, Ghana. Rebranding Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) to make it attractive to the youth is a topical, though not new, issue in Ghana. This is necessary because of the role technical and vocational skills is expected to play in reducing the increasing... Read More