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Does the pursuit of equality in post-apartheid education require the removal of difference? This article examines the concepts of difference and equality by exploring two contemporary texts in political philosophy. It is argued that the pursuit of equality can and should, under certain circumstances, accommodate difference in the form of decentralisation and private schools.

AbstractUntil the 19th century, the UK state stayed out of education. Only in 1833 would Parliament first pass an act that subsidized education for the poor. By 1914, 160 education acts had been passed, consolidating into the state schooling system we recognize today. This paper seeks to explain this remarkable progression. I argue that the emergence of social-knowledge institutions across the West was a powerful force of cultural construction. What I term social scientization, this process was multidimensional and translocal, entailing the elaboration, reification, and diffusion of functionalist theories of the nation-state that centered national education as means to greater cultural rationalization. Longitudinal analyses on comprehensive population data comprising over 10,100 UK parliamentary acts support the core historical insight of this piece: increasingly routine and aggressive forms of state intervention in education were the progressive instantiation of the 19th-century nation-state model, which was fundamentally epistemic in character and inextricably linked to the expansive cultural content of the ascendant social sciences.

Prepared for the Subcommittee on Education of the Committee on Labor and Public Welfare, United States Senate, by the U.S. Commissioner of Education. ; Mode of access: Internet.

Corruption in the education sector is a big question considering enact-ing the education and anti-corruption laws. The substantial education fund in Indonesia is to increase human resources as the principal capi-tal in national development. It is necessary and urgent to answer why and how digitalization and Big Data can prevent corruption in the edu-cation sector from achieving inclusive and equitable quality education in Indonesia. This paper is a normative juridical study with an interdisciplinary approach. The ultimate goal is to apply digitalization and Big Data rules to narrow the space for corruption and predict and control social phenomena in the education sector. The existing regulations in the management of education funds are only repressive and not adequate in terms of prevention which will be effective and efficient when involving technology (especially digitalization and Big Data in the education sector). The burden of this paper lies in the study, which is still normative and qualitative. An empirical study with a quantitative approach is needed, but this study is sufficient to enrich the literature for future empirical studies. The existence of digitalization rules and Big Data in national education controlled by the Chief Digital Officer can prevent corruption in the education sector. It can be a means of checks and balances and succeed in the framework of every education policy carried out by the government, whose primary output and outcome is the use of funds targeted to education and the achievement of inclusive and equitable quality education in Indonesia by 2030.

Cover -- POTENTIAL GRIZZLIES -- Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data -- CONTENTS -- FOREWORD -- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS -- INTRODUCTION -- THE USE OF RESEARCH (OR NOT) BY POLICYMAKERS -- REFORMINESS -- SCHOOL CHOICE -- READING WARS -- BILLIONAIRES AND THEIR BUDDIES -- THOSE DREADFUL TEACHERS -- DEREGULATION, CRISIS, AND CLOSURE -- PARENT TRIGGER -- BUDGET REDUCTION -- CLASS SIZE -- STRATIFIED OPPORTUNITY -- GROWTH MINDSET -- SCREEN TIME -- MOOCs -- HIGHER ED GRADE INFLATION -- GUNS -- CHILDHOOD OBESITY AND MARKETING -- COVID-19 -- Photo Credits.

The international empirical evidence on the economics of education reveals one central insight and two puzzles, which are all relevant for the case of the Baltic States. The central insight is that social rates of return to education tend to be higher than the social opportunity costs of capital, except for the case of higher education. Based on this microeconomic evidence, the case for public investment in education is well founded, especially at the primary and the secondary levels. The first puzzle is that at the macroeconomic level, the presumed positive link between increases in educational attainment and income growth is difficult to detect. One reason is that a high rate of absorption of well-educated workers by the government sector, typical for many developing countries, is likely to reduce the long-run growth rate. The second puzzle is that there is no clear link between higher spending on educational inputs and higher educational output in the form of improved performance of pupils. As it seems, higher spending on education is not sufficient to improve performance as long as inefficiencies in the schooling system remain. For the Baltic States, three basic lessons emerge from the international evidence: First, public investment in higher education does not show up as a top priority from a social point of view; second, the macroeconomic return to education could turn out to be low if better educated workers predominantly end up in the relatively large government sectors typical for the Baltic States. Third, the productivity of schooling could probably be improved, for instance by a different allocation of resources within the education sector. Most likely, such an outcome would require a fundamental reform of the schooling system itself, not only in the Baltic States.

The subject of quality has been a pervasive issue on the agenda in higher education around the world for more than a decade. A greater focus on quality in higher education resulted from a range of competing factors, among the most prominent were: political control over higher education (exerted particularly by national governments), the growth in the number of students in higher education (including general changes in the student population and their expectations) and financial control on the part of national governments (frequently related to the previous two factors). Quality monitoring has become a mechanism for governments worldwide to tackle these competing factors. However, at the same time, it can be argued that it was frequently employed to disguise the dominant focus on accountability in higher education rather than on enhancement. Many of the quality assurance models and systems applied to higher education originated in the business and manufacturing sectors. They have often been found unsuitable or only partially suitable for the higher education sector, because they largely disregarded the nature of higher education and its employees, in particular the academics. It may be argued that the quality movement has driven higher education more towards greater uniformity, which may be detrimental to what was understood as the "real" quality in higher education. For instance, innovation was regarded as an important aspect of academic work. Nevertheless, the present quality development drive seems to be working against the nature of academic work. Given this background, it is alarming that the academic voice seems to have had little impact to date on the development of quality systems in higher education. Therefore, the present thesis attempted to investigate the academic voice concerning higher education quality. Overall, this thesis had two main objectives. First, based on the analysis of stories of academics and higher education leaders, the thesis endeavoured to construct a framework of significant quality issues for the potential use in future policy development in higher education in the two countries investigated in this research (the Czech Republic and England), and prospectively in other higher education systems around the world. In particular, it aimed to introduce more human-centred measures into the area of higher education quality. Second, in terms of developing a methodology, the thesis attempted to illustrate the way in which a critical event narrative inquiry study of heterogeneous and complex environments, such as higher education, could be undertaken. Employing such a critical event narrative inquiry approach, the researcher endeavoured to highlight important aspects of higher education quality, which have been largely overlooked in the area, and thus assist the improvement of the practice of quality development in higher education. The study utilised face-to-face interviews with academics and higher education leaders concerning their perceptions of the issue of higher education quality. The researcher anticipated that eliciting of "critical events" through interviews with individuals involved in the area of quality in higher education (academics and higher education leaders) would uncover some important aspects in higher education quality which would not be revealed using other more traditional empirical methods of inquiry, particularly quantitative research methods. To investigate the area of higher education quality, the researcher elected to look into the English and Czech higher education systems. The choice of the English higher education system was influenced by the knowledge that England, and more generally the UK, was among the first countries in the world, and certainly the first in Europe, to introduce a formal quality assurance system into higher education. Australia followed this trend soon after it was introduced in the UK. The researcher elected the Czech higher education system, as a culturally different educational system, distinctive from the Anglo-Saxon educational tradition, and which is uniquely placed on the divide between Western and Eastern Europe. In this respect, the critical event narrative inquiry method was proposed as a suitable method for the investigation of significant aspects of cultural difference. Employing the critical event narrative inquiry method, the researcher uncovered a number of significant issues. Some of these issues were identified by English and Czech academics and higher education leaders as not featuring strongly in their countries' current higher education quality enhancement practices, and yet they were regarded as important by the academics. Some of the issues uncovered in this research, on the other hand, were highlighted as impacting negatively on the quality enhancement processes in their respective higher education systems. There were a number of issues which were identified as common to both the English and Czech higher education systems. These issues might have been an indication of potential wider relevance of such trends among a broader range of higher education systems worldwide. This thesis proposed a framework for a human-centred approach to quality enhancement in higher education based on issues which were common to both English and Czech higher education systems. This framework featured: • Regard for the academic voice in higher education quality policy development; • Attention to human-centred aspects of higher education quality; • Need for a collegial approach and reflection on the purposes of quality evaluation processes; • Equal value afforded to teaching and research; and • Focus on innovation and change. There were also some culture-specific issues uncovered, particularly in relation to the Czech higher education system. These culture-specific issues may be relevant to certain common trends and features in other higher education systems in Central and Eastern European regions. In this respect, the thesis proposed a framework for a human-centred approach to quality enhancement with regard to culture-specific issues. The framework focused specifically on Czech higher education and may be of potential relevance to other Central and Eastern European higher education systems. This framework included: • The significance of transparency in educational processes; • The need for a fundamental change in the style of pedagogy in higher education institutions; to focus more on thinking processes and reasoning; • The need for a more systematic move towards a student-centred approach across the whole higher education system; • The need to address the factor of pressure on Czech academics to publish mainly in English in order to receive international recognition; and • The need for education of Czech academic staff to enable a broader and better understanding of the concept of higher education quality in the context of the Czech higher education system. Investigation of the academic voice in English higher education did not reveal any culture-specific issues. In other words, the English academics and higher education leaders did not identify any issues in higher education quality that were distinctively different from the general issues highlighted also by Czech academics and higher education leaders. Some of the issues pointed out in the English context occurred on a more advanced level due to the different historical, political and socio-economic context of the UK higher education. It appears that quality in higher education is here to stay. As such, it is essential for the future of higher education that quality enhancement be based on education-focused approaches. Overall, this thesis proposed a human-centred approach to quality enhancement as one way of attaining educational focus.

Excellence, creativity and innovation in education -- Innovative school and curriculm design -- Key perspectives on preparing UAE nationals for employment -- Globalization and the university : the realities of the 21st century -- The impact of branches of foreign universities in the UAE.

In India, vide Right to Education Act, 2009, elementary school education has been made a fundamental right of children between the ages of 6 and 14 years. The objective is to achieve the goal of universal elementary education for all. The Right to Education Act, 2009, has also allocated 25 per cent places in private schools for socially disadvantaged children. In the course of assessing the social effect of Right to Education Act, 2009, existing literature has been analysed. Although India has measured great strides in enlisting school enrolment, some problems exist. An attempt has been made to elicit the state of school education in India by analysing the growth of private schools and the facts in state schools. Some suggestions have been made to improve the educational situation in schools in the given social circumstances.