The Political Economy Of Educational Reforms And Capacity Development In Southeast Asia

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.

This book, drawing on a political economic perspective of education development, is a comprehensive account of the question "why some education systems flourish while others falter." It provides a state-of-the-art review of the Vietnamese way of education development, figuring out the pitfalls, challenges and opportunities of neoliberal reform. It also sheds new light on the rise of neoliberal capitalism in contemporary Vietnam as the country intensifies its market-oriented economic transition. Starting from educational development concerns, this book differentiates the growth and development concepts in education. While "growth with limited development" is well reflected in many developing education systems, the Vietnamese experience of education development stands to provide readers with unique insights about education in developing economies, especially in understanding how a socialist-oriented education system is struggling to thrive in the times of neoliberal capitalism. Authored by scholars specialising in Vietnamese education and politics, the chapters address key issues pertaining to the political economy of education reform in Vietnam and the government’s enduring efforts to drive education toward international standards through its costly market-infused education reforms. This book will appeal to postgraduate students, educators, educational policy-makers and scholars interested in Vietnamese studies, Vietnam education reforms, education governance, education for sustainability, internationalisation of education and the politics of education reforms.

Until now, most socially responsible and impact investments have centred on developed markets, with growth potential and investment opportunities in the frontier economies of countries such as Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, and Vietnam being mostly overlooked. While some individuals and organizations have begun to develop responsible investment opportunities with these countries in mind, large new sources of capital for development could still emerge. This book explores the greater potential for global investment in Southeast Asia, and the ways in which socially responsible investment styles can be used in their developing economies. It demonstrates how the benefits of investment could create a robust platform for separate stakeholders, including governments, non-governmental organizations, development banks, the financial sector, and small and medium sized enterprises. The author explores how shaping collaborative sustainable investment policies could speed up inclusive development, address the needs of those at the bottom of the pyramid, and ensure sustainable future growth.

In the most in-depth look at education in Cambodia to date, scholars long engaged in research on Cambodia provide historical context and unpack key issues of high relevance to Cambodia and other developing countries as they expand and modernize their education systems and grapple with challenges to providing a quality and equitable education.

This volume studies the governance and implementation of the sustainable development goals in Southeast Asia, in particular the difficulties in the shift from the international to the national, the multi-level challenges of implementation, and the involvement of stakeholders, civil society, and citizens in the process.

World Education Patterns in the Global South surveys the educational responses and new educational landscapes being developed as a consequence of the powerful global forces that are demanding change within the Global South’s educational contexts, including Central and South-East Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean.

This book started with an objective to understand the impact of high inflation on poverty and food security in Southeast Asia. However, the global economy moved quickly into recession in 2008. Anticipating that the impact of global recession would be more severe than that of high inflation in Southeast Asia, we re-focused the title of the book to Poverty, Food, and Global Recession in Southeast Asia. By early 2010, people were already optimistic that the global recession was over or would be over soon. However, the evidence was mounting that the poor had suffered and were still suffering from the current global crisis, even if the richer individuals may have recovered. Therefore, an important question arises, Is the crisis really over for the poor? This then became the sub-title of this book. This book aims to contribute a better understanding on poverty and food security in Southeast Asia during the recent global recession considering both recent developments and the previous major crisis of 1997-98.

This book provides a comprehensive and in-depth description of the education system in Lao PDR. It covers pre-school, primary, secondary general, secondary technical and vocational, post-secondary non-higher education, and adult non-formal education and training. In addition to the main content, the book includes a glossary of terms and abbreviations used; and an appendix on the organizational structure of the Ministry of Education and Sports, including the linkages between the national, provincial and district level. The content covers public and private sector education provision alike.