Ei-iE

By Dr Anna Hogan, University of Queensland, Australia A dramatic stock decline and profit far below expected levels are a blow to the education corporate giant's development plan, and a symptom that it has become a toxic brand in the eyes of many.

By Fred van Leeuwen. General Secretary, Education International For World Teachers’ Day this year the education community is marking the 50th anniversary of the ILO/UNESCO Recommendation on the teaching profession. This landmark document identifies “the essential role of teachers in educational advancement and the importance of their contribution to the...

By Antonio OImedo, University of Roehampton & Stephen Ball, UCL In 2008, in their Ode to philanthrocapitalism, Bishop and Green claimed that philanthrocapitalists are “hyperagents who have the capacity to do some essential things far better than anyone else”. Apparently, the fact that they “do not face elections every few...

By Susan Robertson, University of Cambridge In November 2015, I was asked to give the annual lecture in the UK Parliament in honour of the fierce campaigner for comprehensive education - Caroline Benn. Benn was well known for her work on challenging the deeply divided education system in the UK...

By Frank Adamson, The Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education In Unleashing Greatness: Nine Plays to Spark Innovation in Education , the authors invoke the metaphor of the sports “playbook,” promoting an agenda of competition throughout their recommendations. Unfortunately, competition produces both winners and losers. The Yankees can improve...

By Frank Adamson, The Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education In Unleashing Greatness: Nine Plays to Spark Innovation in Education , the authors invoke the metaphor of the sports “playbook,” promoting an agenda of competition throughout their recommendations. Unfortunately, competition produces both winners and losers. The Yankees can improve...

By Stephen Dinham, University of Melbourne, Australia Television shopping channels and online selling are dominated by products that promise much. Lose weight with a miracle diet, get a perfect body with only a few minutes of daily exercise using some piece of equipment, clean your bathroom in seconds, vacuum the...

By Salim Vally, University of Johannesburg Twenty two years since the first democratic elections in South Africa, the combined weight of apartheid’s legacy exacerbated by neo-liberal policies over the past two decades has meant that the promise of a quality public education system remains a chimera. While a mélange of...

By Graham Brown-Martin  Is any education better than none?

By Stephen Dinham,University of Melbourne, Australia Yet another report has been released promising a plan to transform education. The latest, this time from Michael Barber and Joel Klein, two well-known players in the ‘global education reform movement’ (Sahlberg, 2014), is positioned as a white paper or as they call it,...

By Carol Anne Spreen, New York University & Sangeeta Kamat, University of Massachusettes, Amherst Private for-profit multinational corporations are making billions of dollars by charging poor families around the world to send their children to school. At the same time, governments have been shirking their obligations to provide quality public...

by Kishore Singh, United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Education Education is a fundamental human right for every child and its provision is a core public function of the State. However, education as a public function of the State is being eroded by market-driven approaches and the rapid...

By Angelo Gavrielatos, Project Director Global Response, Education International The flailing reputation of the Pearson-backed ‘edu-business’ has fallen to a new low after it was caught spreading false accusations to have a Canadian academic researcher jailed while studying its Ugandan operations.

PRESS RELEASE (London, 10 June 2016) In an unprecedented statement  made public on 9 June 2016, the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC ) expressed concerns about the UK “funding of low-fee, private and informal schools run by for-profit business enterprises” through its development aid as...

Education unions and the defence of democratic societies Democracy cannot succeed unless those who express their choice are prepared to choose wisely. The real safeguard of democracy, therefore, is education. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 1938

By Howard Stevenson, University of Nottingham, UK Earlier this year the UK government published its plans for school reform in England in a White Paper – Educational Excellence Everywhere (DfE, 2016). Within the UK education policy is a matter for individual nations and so policy paths differ significantly across England,...

By Stephen Dinham, University of Melbourne, Australia. Just over 20 years ago David Berliner and Bruce Biddle published The Manufactured Crisis - Myths, Fraud, and the Attack on America's Public Schools. In this they cited the ‘sweeping claims attacking the conduct and achievement of America’s public schools - claims that...

By Susan Robertson, University of Bristol