Higher education institutions (HEIs) are critical to the delivery of education for all in any nation state. What they believe and what they do are critical components to creating societal impact. But what they believe and do is not always clear. Using a derivative of SWIFT (Structured Word Identification and Frequency Totals), the authors examined…

The attainment of Education for All (EFA) goals is crucial to the productivity of any country. However attaining these goals cannot be realised unless due consideration is given to the inputs and processes that must be enacted to achieve such goals. In this article, the Revised Primary Curriculum (RPC) used at grades one to three in Jamaican…

Improving all aspects of the quality of education is dependent on preparing teachers to become critical citizens. The social reconstructionist approach to teacher education is essential to transforming an education system defined by inequity, issues of quality, and issues of access. How do pre-service teachers perceive the mission of quality…

The Education for All (EFA) goals, established for countries to improve educational performance, are most challenging for many developing countries. Notwithstanding the challenges, each country must implement suitable programme intervention in order to accomplish these goals. Goal 6 calls for the overall improvement of the education product, which…

The flight of human capital is a phenomenon that has been of concern to academics and development practitioners for decades. Unfortunately, there is no systematic record of the number of skilled professionals that many African countries have continued to lose to the developed world. Termed the "brain drain", it represents the loss of…

Germany has relied on its well-established tradition of preparing the workforce through the so-called dual system of practical in-firm training (apprenticeships) and theoretical foundations conveyed by vocational schools. Believing in the high quality of academic school programmes that prepare a small elite for university studies, the German…

This article highlights the rationale for Namibia's participation in three studies which were conducted under the auspices of the Southern and Eastern Africa Consortium for Monitoring Educational Quality (SACMEQ) during the period 1995-2007. The article provides some of the innovative ways in which the results of the first (SACMEQ I, 1995)…

In 2003, UNICEF-Kenya and the Kenyan Ministry of Education introduced the "Child Friendly Schools" initiative to encourage educational policy makers and practitioners to look for alternative ways to measure the quality of primary schools beyond pupils' test scores. In 2009, Kenyan government officials distributed the Child Friendly Schools…

This article analyses the relationships between different notions of education quality and policies on primary and secondary schools implemented in Argentina during the last two decades. The authors focus on three moments: (1) the emergence of the discussion about quality (at the end of the 1980s) in Latin America and in Argentina; (2) the…

Drawing on the author's experience as a founder and editor of the first academic journal devoted to education abroad ("Frontiers: the interdisciplinary journal of education abroad"), and his work leading the first membership association devoted exclusively to education abroad (the Forum on Education Abroad), this article provides suggestions for…

The revitalisation of African higher education has been a policy imperative on the agenda of many international and African organisations in the last decade, as well as a focus for research and debate. Revitalisation is a theme which is itself framed by a larger set of current discourses about the powerful role of knowledge in society and in the…

The study on "Widening Participation in Higher Education in Ghana and Tanzania: developing an Equity Scorecard" is a contribution to making higher education more socially inclusive in sub-Saharan Africa. The findings reinforce some of the policy initiatives taken in Ghana and Tanzania, and underscore the importance of widening participation in…

Complexity is a feature common to all vocational education and training (VET) governance arrangements, due to the wide range of students VET systems caters for, and the number of stakeholders involved in both decision making and funding and financing. In this article, Pierre and Peter's framework of governance is used to examine complexity in VET…

This article assesses the status and practice of higher education quality assurance in sub-Saharan Africa, focusing on degree-granting tertiary institutions. A main finding is that structured national-level quality assurance processes in African higher education are a very recent phenomenon and that most countries face major capacity constraints.…

Modern Australia evolved from separate colonies, which came together as a federation a century ago. The balance of state/federal responsibilities is relevant to most aspects of Australian life. This includes higher education, where universities are largely state owned but federally funded (with government funding declining), while the other higher…