Planning Education Reforms In Developing Countries

This work, the first to apply contingency theory to education reform planning, is particularly useful in that it has applications to planning both in developing countries and in the United States and Europe. The basic approach applies to a wide variety of development programs and will influence project management and policy administration.

Globalisation puts most governments under pressure to reduce the growth of public spending on education and to find other sources of income for the expected expansion of education systems. In conflict with this is the shift of economic production to knowledge-based intensive products and processes, meaning that the demand for higher education is rising worldwide. In addition, the need for more highly educated low cost labour tends to expand women's educational opportunities, especially in countries where there was resistance to equal access to education for them. Globalised information networks mean the transformation of world culture, but many groups feel marginalised by the market values of this new culture.

Policy-Making for Education Reform in Developing Countries aims at helping policymakers in developing countries better understand the processes and strategies for education reform, and the policy options available to them. This text focuses on the content of reform-options and strategies for achieving educational improvement at different levels of the system, e.g., primary, secondary, tertiary; for different sub-sectors, e.g., management, teachers; and for different purposes with which education systems are tasked, e.g., reaching peripheral groups of students, linking youth and employment. A holistic approach is increasingly recognized as essential to realizing the promises of education for the development of social and human capital-innovation in a global economy, sustained economic growth, social harmony and greater civic participation, decreased achievement gaps, and increased equity.

It was in a context of unprecedented economic growth that educational planning developed in the 1960s. At the time, educational planners were entrusted with orchestrating the tremendous expansion of schooling, with the aim of both universalizing education and providing national economies with the qualified manpower needed. Such rigid mandatory planning is not suited to today's world, but other forms of planning such as policy analysis, policy dialog, labor market analysis, and strategic management are still valid. The following is a complete list of reprinted essays collected for this book.

Some of the assumptions on which earlier models and approaches in educational planning were predicated have turned out to be over-simplistic, limited, or altogether not appropriate for the complex nature of the development process in many developed and, especially, underdeveloped societies. Recognizing these problems, the International Institute for Educational Planning (IIEP) brought together a number of researchers, policy-makers, and planners from all parts of the world for a week of reflection and discussion on the past, present, and future of educational planning. This volume is a synthesis of the main results of this international forum, and it attempts to delineate the tasks for educational planning in the coming years. Chapters contain the texts of five background papers, with comments by IIEP staff members; the edited versions of the reports of the three working groups; and a synthesis of the seminar discussions divided into five broad topics that reflect the convergence of discussion. The last chapter reviews some of the observations made at the seminar on research and training needs in educational planning. A paper, "Schooling and Future Society" by Johan Galtung, is included as an appendix. Seminar participants are listed. (Author/MLF)

Quality and Qualities: Tensions in Education Reforms is a provocative call for understanding and further exploring the elusive concept of quality in education. Although education quality has acquired high priority in the past few decades, the multiplicity of conceptualizations of quality also reflects the concerns and foci of multiple stakeholders. Coming to an understanding of quality education involves careful analysis of the context from which any particular reform or program emerges and of the continuing struggle to define and achieve it. Two main questions persist: who benefits from particular policies focused on quality? And what are the potential tradeoffs between a focus on quality, equitable distribution of education, and inclusion of various traditional expectations? This book explores notions of quality as understood within various systems of national, formal, and nonformal education. Also it considers the tensions that arise with the introduction of new standardized notions of quality in relation to international measures and educational reforms in developing countries. In all cases, specific national issues and concerns compete with global agendas.Challenges to quality that are given particular attention in the book chapters include changing definitions of quality, high expectations for education and issues with implementation, and the introduction of English as a means to achieve quality in a globalizing world. Special attention is also given to possible actions that support a more equitable education without ignoring the requisite of quality. The final chapter suggests three models/choices for seeking higher quality and guiding the educational future of nations.

This book explores the issues raised by the changing climate within which educational planning will take place in the final years of the 20th century. The volume focuses on the problems faced by countries hardest hit by economic recession and the need for adjustment to a changing economic environment. Organized into six chapters, the book addresses specific concerns following an introduction. The first concern, explored in chapters 2 and 3, charts recent trends in educational financing in developing countries, emphasizing the important differences that have emerged in the ability and willingness to allocate resources to education in different countries. Chapter 4 discusses the consequences that are likely to follow from level funding and diminished resources for education and develops eight propositions that illustrate the consequences. Austerity may bring with it unexpected changes. The changes are not simply those that might be anticipated from a reversal of growth patterns, and they have qualitatively different characteristics. Chapter 5 looks at themes that provide the basis for planning educational provision in austerity. It includes a discussion of changes in organizational climate in conditions of meagerness and contraction; proposals for assessment of the room to maneuver that exists in educational policy; suggestions for the development of monitoring systems that can indicate the sensitivity of educational quality to changes in inputs; and a review of the options open to resist contraction in resources, increase the efficiency of delivery, and refinance provision from sources other than public expenditure. Chapter 6 presents concluding remarks that synthesize the main findings and emphasize the central theme of protecting educational provision for the most vulnerable groups in developing countries that are most at risk for reductions in expenditures. A bibliography of more than 100 citations is included. (DB)

Yasushi Hirosato and Yuto Kitamura Developing countries, including Southeast Asian countries, face an enormous challenge in ensuring equitable access to quality education in the context of deepening globalization and increasing international competition. They must simultaneously meet the goals of Education for All (EFA) at the basic education level and of developing a more sophisticated workforce required by the knowledge-based economy at the post-basic, especially tertiary, education level. To meet this challenge, developing countries need to reform/renovate their education systems and service deliveries as an integral part of national development. However, most of them have not yet fully developed the individual, institutional, and system capacities in undertaking necessary education reforms, especially under decentralization and privatization requiring new roles at various (central and local, or public and private) levels of administration and stakeholders. Provided that an ultimate vision of educational development and cooperation in the twenty-first century would be to develop indigenous capacity in engineering education reforms, this book analyzes the overall education reform context and capacity, including the status of sector program support using the sector-wide approach (SWAp)/program-based approach (PBA) in developing countries. We also address how different stakeholders have been interacting in order to promote equitable access to quality education, particularly from the perspectives of capacity development under the system of decentralization.