This article explores the potential of cross-national achievement studies through a critical reflection upon the experience of South Africa's participation in the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS). There are a growing number of multi-country and international achievement studies. While recognizing the limitations of…

This article takes the case of the South African curriculum to examine the role of national politics and power relationships in giving internationally borrowed ideas their meaning and shape. It discusses the circulation of ideas between global, national and regional levels. In exploring the particular dynamics shaping the South African curriculum,…

The education sector in Uganda is considered to be a leading example of the implementation of new aid practices. This article explores the concept of ownership in the education sector in Uganda. It questions whether too great a preoccupation with world timescales, review deadlines, quantitative targets and the need for accountability to donors can…

Against a backdrop of the importance of project evaluation in Africa, and the centrality of the project logical framework (logframes) to project evaluation, this paper reflects on experiences arising from evaluations of three educational development projects in East and Southern Africa. Each of these projects had a strong teacher development…

Evaluations, tied to specific programmes, need to be complemented by research that is more sensitive to context at the classroom level. A comparative approach may be used as a platform to move into a two-way conversation with the perspectives of practitioners in 'developing' countries and hence scrutinize internationally dominant notions of good…

This article uses a case study of rural education in Ghana to investigate an important element of the decentralisation agenda--community participation in schooling. Drawing on a theoretical framework derived from Bourdieu, it argues that schooling and community life are two distinct and differently structured fields. The research demonstrates how…

Democratisation as set out in the constitution of South Africa is based on the ideal of devolving power and authority to community level. Running parallel with the ideal of democratisation and devolution of powers are the imperatives of redress, educational transformation and restructuring, to be managed by central government and provincial…

This paper analyses community participation in Cambodian schools, looking at the spaces for participation and the cluster school system strategy adopted by the royal government to decentralise education. While institutionalised spaces of participation are relatively new, Cambodian communities have traditionally supported schools despite 25 years…

This paper explores progress in designing and implementing privatisation and decentralisation reforms in the education sector, which have become increasingly advocated by international agencies over the past two decades. Privatisation can be considered one of the organisational forms of decentralisation--indicating a transfer of authority and…

This paper critically reviews the ways in which the policy of education decentralisation in post-apartheid South Africa results in both forms of inclusion and new forms of exclusion. Drawing on a two-year research project carried out in three provinces in South Africa, it shows how in the governance of schools, new forms of exclusion are being…

This paper explores private educational provision in the context of the decentralisation of education management in Indonesia. It provides an overview of the extent and nature of private provision and explores the nature of the interrelationship between private and government schools. The predominance of private provision at secondary level,…

Decentralisation is often expected to improve democratic participation and empowerment, and improve government responsiveness to local needs. International experience demonstrates that striking the right balance between centralisation and decentralisation remains highly challenging, and that developing appropriate institutional capacity to…

Based mainly on a study of newspaper adverts for qualifications and tuition courses in Sri Lanka over a period from 1965 to 2000, this paper describes a decentralisation of control over the supply of qualifications. It is argued that this has occurred not through a deliberate policy mechanism to decentralise qualifications, but rather by default,…

Societies are increasingly complex. Change is accelerating and its effects are unknown. Managing uncertainty is a major challenge, to the extent that in economics it is becoming difficult to assess need in terms of human capital requirements. This contrasts with the certainty that there is an increasing need for skills in the knowledge society and…

This article provides a historical and comparative study of the role that management of inequalities has played in the formation and evolution of educational institutions in three countries: Costa Rica, Cuba and Guatemala. This particular focus shows that this function has played a determining role, even if its organization has varied deeply in…