The Learning and Skills Development Agency (LSDA), together with the British Council, provides the leadership for the UNEVOC centre in the United Kingdom (UK). LSDA is a strategic national agency whose mission is to improve the quality of post-16 education and training in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. It does this by conducting research to…

In working within the complex, dynamic, contradictory set of national and international networks and bodies responsible for managing education, the author observed certain issues in the twists and turns of these networks. She mentions three of them. The first is the short-term or specific view of the present challenge of quality education for all.…

The information age has changed the economic and social environment in such ways that countries are moving from being "traditional pull" to "technology push" societies. This makes technical and vocational education and training (TVET) policy especially significant as it seeks to promote specialized practical and professional skills for…

It can be said that the curriculum was the greatest passion of the exceptional intellectual and educational reformer, Cecilia Braslavsky. The selection and organization of knowledge for educational purposes, condensing relationships between society and education, attracted her natural inclination towards a broad and profoundly political…

Ideally, there should be a global statistical picture of TVET presenting, for every country in the world, data such as: (1) Enrolment rates by gender, age and programme; (2) The relative proportions of people enrolled in general and vocational programmes; (3) The relative proportions enrolled in programmes provided by enterprises, government and…

This article presents a reading assessment pilot test that took place in the context of a process of analysis and dialogue aimed at contributing to the analysis of school quality in Peru, as part of a World Bank sector assessment. Peruvian first and second graders at the bottom half of the income distribution were asked to read a brief passage…

This article explores the factors that contribute most to the Iranian students' mathematical achievement using the Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) 99 data. Mathematics achievement involves a complex interaction of factors that have specific direct effects and/or indirect effects through other factors on school outcomes.…

The quality of education is an issue of growing concern in many countries today, and there is increasing reliance on the employment of large-scale, scientific survey research techniques to study the quality issues, the monitoring and evaluation of the quality of education, and the formulation of policy interventions designed to improve quality.…

The purpose of this article is to describe an independent evaluation of the impact, in eighteen countries, of the Third International Mathematics and Science Study of 1999-Repeat, usually referred to as TIMSS-R. The countries of interest were all low- and middle-income countries that had received financial assistance from the World Bank, after a…

Southern and Eastern Africa Consortium for Monitoring Educational Quality (SACMEQ) is fast emerging as a globally recognized initiative in the area of the monitoring and evaluation of educational quality, and the results of its research and training have not only been used within the member countries, but elsewhere too. SACMEQ has had a presence…

In this article, the author describes Cecilia Braslavsky's pioneering work in the training of academics and technical-professional teams in Argentina. She divides the paper into two parts. The first one covers a period (between 1983 and 1993) in which Cecilia, along with other intellectuals from the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences,…

Over the past 7 years the debate on educational policy in Germany has been greatly influenced by major empirical studies of educational performance in the tradition of the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA), notably the Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), the Programme for…

Education for All (EFA) has been a major target for UNESCO for sixty years. In spite of special efforts to achieve EFA, many millions remain without the education they need. During that time, the importance of a suitable education has increased greatly, making the task more urgent. To resolve this dilemma special efforts are needed. Universal…

"The Student Evaluation Standards" were born from the frustrations and concerns of many people who want the evaluations to better serve student learning. This paper describes those standards and how they serve student learning. The first part of this paper lays groundwork--context--by providing strong evidence that, at least in the United States…

This paper addresses the question as to what extent is it possible for technical and vocational education and training (TVET) to promote and implement sustainable development concepts and practices in Mozambique. The debate on TVET for sustainability has recently been given fresh impetus by a number of papers and recommendations prepared by…