18 Mar 2013
The 2013 Human Development Report: education, skills and decent work matter; just don’t ask us what any of these mean!
By Simon McGrath, University of Nottingham. I always read the UNDP Human Development Reports with interest, finding that they combine grand narrative and detailed statistical tables with some innovative theoretical thinking. In the latest report, the grand narrative is one of progress – all countries have improved HDI in the past decade – and a... Read More
14 Mar 2013
Brookings, UNESCO and the Post-2015 Metrics Steamboat
By Alexandra Draxler, former UNESCO education specialist. This blog is a reflection on some of the discussion on educational quality post-2015 that are taking place all week at the Comparative and International Education Society (CIES) 2013 Conference in New Orleans. The predictable trade-off between quality and quantity The last few years of the Education for... Read More
06 Mar 2013
Skills Development: Mantra for Many Objectives?
By Shanti Jagannathan, Asian Development Bank. This ADB-Springer book on Skills Development for Inclusive and Sustainable Growth in Developing Asia-Pacific complemented the plethora of reports that were released in 2012 on Technical Vocational Education and Training (TVET), Skills and Jobs (see NORRAG NEWS 48, forthcoming). Such widespread interest in skills development is a reflection of the prominence... Read More
01 Mar 2013
What Room for Education (and Training) in the Sustainable Development Goals?
By Robert Palmer. It’s great news that the early results of MyWorld indicate that ‘a good education’ is the number one priority of the 54,000 global citizens who have responded so far. But what about their governments? And… so what/what next? Following the Rio+20 Conference in mid-2012, the UN sent Member States a questionnaire related... Read More
26 Feb 2013
Private TVET in Africa: Preserving Traditional Forms Differently - Managing Novel Ones Creatively
By Salim Akoojee. Since the beginning of the 1990s, there has been a growing sense from both national policymakers and international agencies of the importance of private skills provision in all regions. In Africa, this has resulted in greater official acceptance of the important role of private provision of skills via private Technical and Vocational... Read More
25 Feb 2013
Recommendations of the Commonwealth Ministerial Working Group on the Post-2015 Development Framework for Education
By Jonathan Penson, Commonwealth Secretariat. Commonwealth Ministers of education recently outlined their vision for education in the new global goals for development, emphasising education’s catalytic power and stressing the need for equity and quality in addition to access. Commonwealth Ministers of Education met in London in December 2012 and developed recommendations for post-2015 which are... Read More
20 Feb 2013
TVE(T?) and the GMR: Counting and Comparing Apples and Oranges
By Robert Palmer, NORRAG, Amman. Low-hanging fruits in the GMR’s TVE indicators Two years ago, in an article in NORRAG News, I noted (with Kenneth King) that the data on school- and college-based technical and vocational education (TVE) as reported and analysed in the GMRs could certainly be improved on in the GMR 2012. (Of... Read More
14 Feb 2013
A Fair Shot at Meeting an Education MDG: Learning Goals for a Post-2015 Agenda
By Amanda Beatty and Lant Pritchett. The UN’s high-level panel on the post-2015 development agenda that met recently in Monrovia has much to be proud of. Millions more children are in school than were in 1990. Between 1950 and 2010, average years of schooling for the developing world labor force more than tripled from 2.0... Read More
12 Feb 2013
Five Questions about Education and Development post-2015
By Simon McGrath. Following on from earlier posts reflecting on the UKFIET-DfID event in December, I’d like to share five questions that I left that discussion with. 1. What is our model of development? Angela Little has already asked what should be the supergoal for development and I want to stress this point in a... Read More
06 Feb 2013
Beyond Informal and Towards a Science of Learning through Practice
By Stephen Billett. It’s time to reassert the legitimacy and worth of learning through practice. The learning of occupations that serve the social and economic needs of individuals, communities and countries is an important project. Across human history, the initial and ongoing learning of those occupations has largely occurred through the circumstances of their practice... Read More