Contextualized in China's social change of the past half-century, this article conceptualizes the two aspects of China's rural-urban divide in educational inequality--the household registration system ("hukou") assigns people to a hierarchy, and the rural-urban schooling system institutionalizes unequal resource distribution…

Using PISA data for 16 Western OECD countries having comprehensive school systems, we explore the conditions under which the socioeconomic composition of schools affects educational efficiency and equality, to a greater or lesser extent. First, a multilevel analysis is applied to examine and compare the effect of school socioeconomic composition…

The rapid decrease in gender inequality in education over the past several decades in China has drawn significant attention in the existing literature. Several factors have been proposed or examined to explain this decrease. However, few studies have examined this topic from the perspective of the changing job structure and skill requirements in…

The Education Millennium Development Goal of universal primary education (UPE) states that "by 2015, children everywhere, boys and girls alike, will be able to complete a full course of primary schooling." The 2008 midterm Global Monitoring Report claims that "A country's distance from UPE appears most clearly in terms of the…

Many nations make use of a "personal statement" (or equivalent) in their higher education admissions system. This article examines how statements differ according to applicants' educational background. Among the indicators used are fluency of expression, quantity and quality of workplace experience, and extracurricular activity.…

This special issue introduces a set of article addressing the question of what "fairness" means with respect to the distribution of access to higher education. Articles herein address the criteria that "should" be used to allocate funding, offers of admission at selective institutions, and conceiving and assessing …

Access to higher education in Egypt is expanding in both the public and private sectors. Using a nationally representative sample from the Survey of Young People in Egypt, this article is able to disaggregate patterns of access by both demographic group and university sector. Findings suggest that access in the public sector is governed strongly…

Since the 1940s, the concept of community participation has framed, mobilized, and legitimated national development agendas in the Singida Region of rural central Tanzania. Based on 19 months of ethnographic and archival research, this study examines the forms of community participation elicited through state and international development…

Educational systems with a high level of tracking and vocational orientation have been shown to improve the allocation of school-leavers in the labor market. However, tracked educational systems are also known to increase inequality of educational opportunity. This presumed trade-off between equality and labor market preparation is clearly rooted…

In her teaching, research, and community activities in Canada, the author has repeatedly confronted questions regarding equality, diversity, and power. In this article, the author discusses diversity and equal opportunity to achieve excellence in education. Reflecting on these issues should help everyone to understand the complexities involved in…

The presence of a teacher in the classroom is central to the provision of schooling, with accumulating evidence showing that teacher absence compromises student learning. Teacher absence is common in schools in low- and middle-income countries. With much of the developing world making rapid progress in achieving universal primary school enrollment…

In Uganda, the implementation of universal primary education (UPE) in 1997 and universal secondary education (USE) in 2005 have led educational policy makers, teachers, parents, and students to seek creative solutions to the problem of ensuring educational quality as schools incorporate 4 million more students. Some Ugandans worry about…

This article compares the changes in the determination of educational aspirations from the end of the communist period in 1989 to 2003, focusing on a single postcommunist country, the Czech Republic. The Czech case is particularly relevant for comparative research on educational inequality and aspirations, as previous studies have shown…

In this article, the authors focus on a poor rural area in northwestern China and investigates whether the gender attitudes of mothers can be linked to their plans for educating their own children in the future. Using recent longitudinal data from the Gansu Survey of Children and Families (GSCF), a survey of rural 9-12-year-old children, families,…

In almost every dimension, South Africa has undergone dramatic changes since the end of apartheid. Public education in South Africa has been completely transformed from an amalgam of separate and highly unequal educational systems, defined in terms of the race and place of residence of students, into a unified system based on the principle of…