Drawing on the quintile system of categorising schools, South African public schools are bifurcated into no-fee and fee-paying schools. Emerging research has shown that school principals in both categories of schools encounter several challenges with regard to school funding. In this article, we employ contingency leadership theory to examine how…

The underlying ambition of fee-free education is to increase school access. This study reflects on decentralisation in the decision-making process and implementation of fee-free policies. We compare two policies at the high school level in Ghana to evaluate the differences and commonalities in how they responded to school access. We used…

As a school subject, life orientation (LO) aims to improve learner well-being, but a lack of classroom resources may be a barrier. We investigated whether classroom resources were equally available for LO educators in fully funded (no-fee) and partially funded (fee-paying) high schools in Tshwane South, South Africa. In this analytical…

Taking the ACT test is an important step in the college-going process. Over 1,500 colleges across the US educating approximately 1.5 million first-time degree-seeking undergraduates either require, recommend, or consider test scores as a criterion for admission decisions. The registration fees for taking the ACT on a national test date--at $55 for…

Each year, the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia (SCHEV) provides a tuition and fees report based on charges approved by boards of visitors at Virginia public institutions. The report includes a list of tuition and fee charges to in-state and out-of-state students and for undergraduate and graduate programs. It also provides trends…

Historically, a large and disproportionate share of students who register for an ACT national test date with a fee waiver have not subsequently taken the test on their registered test date. In this issue brief, this phenomenon is referred to as "test-day absenteeism." This is the second brief in a series of studies that investigate ACT's…

Background: Formative assessment has been reported to improve learners' learning in affluent contexts. However, very few studies have reported the impact of formative assessment on teachers' knowledge and understanding in no-fee public schools located in a low socioeconomic context. Aim: This article investigates the impact of the Assessment for…

It is well known that teachers are central to education reforms and to providing high-quality instruction. The National Curriculum Framework 2005 identifies the need for professionally qualified teachers and the need to enhance the professional identity of schoolteachers. Low-fee private schools are often presented as a solution to the supposedly…

Ireland's fee-paying schools consistently rank highly in Ireland's secondary school league tables. Evidence also notes that the alumni of fee-paying schools represent a large proportion of those in leadership positions in business, politics and the legal professions. This paper examines the factors that affect the decision of Irish households to…

Education policies in South Africa are aimed at redressing the legacies of under- and inequitable development, and at making learning opportunities available to all the citizens of this country. The "Amended Norms and Standards for School Funding Policy (2006)," which also outlines the no-fee policy, should be implemented in South…

This article focuses on Christian low-fee private schools (LFPSs) in the Greater Accra region of Ghana. This qualitative study uses a case study approach to longitudinally examine who these schools serve, why parents chose them, and what challenges the schools face. Findings reveal that parents choose Christian LFPSs for religious reasons and the…

The purpose of this study is to outline a new approach to the comparative analysis of student finance systems based on social rights, an approach widely applied in other areas of social policy. It focuses on rights codified in national legislation and financed by central governments, and the collection of indicators measuring formal eligibility…

Since the advent of democracy in 1994, access to quality and equitable education still remains a challenge in the Gauteng province. As an intervention to improve access and quality of learning in all schools, especially township schools, the Gauteng Department of Education (GDE) declared schools across Quintiles 1 to 3 throughout the province to…

The impact of facial emotion recognition (FER) deficits on facial emotion expression (FEE) during interaction with a novel computerized system was investigated in children with ASD (n = 20), in comparison to typically developing (TD) peers (n = 20). Although there was not clear evidence of impaired FEE, children with ASD showed more atypical FEE.…

The purpose of the study reported on here was to investigate the implementation of the no-fee schools policy in quintile 1 schools in the Frances Baard district of the Northern Cape province. The South African schooling system categorises schools into quintile 1 to 5 schools, and, since 2006, disadvantaged learners in quintiles 1 to 3 have been…