This article presents the most recent results of a comparative review of early childhood education and care carried out by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Founded in 1961 and based in Paris, OECD is one of the world's most important sources of statistical, economic, and social data. Based on reviews in the…

The Dakar Framework for Action represents the most important international political commitment towards promoting Education for All. The Framework contains two gender-based goals. In Article 7 (ii) the participants commit themselves to eliminating "gender disparities in primary and secondary education by 2005". The second commitment is to achieve…

The year 2004 is the centenary of the first official kindergarten in China. During this 100 years of development, early childhood education in China has experienced two big developmental spurts, first at the beginning of the twentieth century and then again at the turn of the twenty-first century. The argument presented by this paper is that…

This article examines the influence of instructional time on achievement, particularly from the perspective of national implementation of schooling and national levels of achievement in mathematics. The report is in four sections. The first section provides a brief introduction to the idea of instructional time as a fundamental educational…

The inclusion of disabled children in their local schools and communities is part of the universal struggle of disabled people to claim their basic human rights to equality and participation, and to insist on the necessary changes in society and its institutions to make this possible. Although this movement is still in its infancy, reports from…

Gender-equity goals in Cambodia are intimately linked with socio-economic and cultural biases that are embedded in the very system of education and in the society as a whole. There are, however, strong indicators that the vicious cycle in Cambodia's education system could be broken, and here the commitment of key stakeholders and partnership modes…

Slovenia is currently undergoing a process of school reform in order to extend compulsory education from eight to nine years and to lower the school entering age from 7 to 6. According to the Ministry of Education, Science and Sport, the new elementary schools will focus less on the content and more on developing cognitive and social skills. At…

At a ministerial meeting held in Paris in 1996, the Ministers of Education from countries belonging to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) invited this organization "to evaluate the implications of various visions of the school of the future." The work, undertaken over more than four years by the OECD's Centre for…

This article presents an overview of teaching subjects and time allocation in the German school system, with a particular focus on Berlin. An analysis of existing documents and guidelines will be combined with interviews conducted in the last part of 2002 with the Berlin school administration and with headmasters and teachers at different schools.…

In the past decade, Romania has passed through a profound educational reform. The main outcomes concern tangible progress concerning regulations and the curriculum. In spite of these impressive changes, gender sensitivity and gender fair policies have been largely absent from objectives, subjects, textbooks, assessment and evaluation. The…

Over the past several decades, Latin American countries have supported processes of bringing public policy decisions on education closer to the people concerned. Participation at all levels of decision-making processes has generally been highly valued. Nonetheless, these decentralization efforts came about without governments taking the necessary…

The Swedish school system is a highly comprehensive one, with "grundskola" (compulsory school) for 7- to 16-year-olds and the non-compulsory "gymnasieskola" (three-year upper secondary school) as the main types of school. Since the decentralization reforms of the 1990s, municipalities (290 in total) have been given considerable liberty in…

In this paper, the authors offer an analysis of the relation between the intended and the implemented curriculum for primary education in Argentina, from the origins of the Argentine education system to the present day. They introduce the concept of "curricular regulation" as a method of analysis that includes not only the processes defining a…

This case study focuses on qualitative indicators, though a number of quantitative indicators will be included to provide context. Qualitative issues to be looked at will include: education policies and, more specifically, curriculum-related policies containing provisions aimed at gender parity and equality in all aspects of education; gender…

This article presents the case of the South African curriculum reform, which chose--on ideological rather than pragmatic grounds--a radical progressive/constructivist pedagogy model, with the expectation that it would help to redress the educational (as well as political, social and economic) inequalities of the country's inglorious racist past.…