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This study investigates the emergence and supply-demand dynamics of a market for low-fee private schools (LFPS) at the level of early childhood care and education (ECCE) in a slum of Lusaka, Zambia. Based on data collection over 1.5 years, the study reveals that, despite a government policy to support ECCE, over 90% of ECCE centers are private; that school operators tend to be former teachers, businessmen/women, and religious leaders; and that LFPSs charge, on average, 2.5 times as much as government ECCE centers for tuition, not including additional indirect costs. The paper discusses how teachers in LFPSs are caught in the middle, making less than the average income earned by others in the surrounding slum, and are unable to afford LFPS fees themselves. Importantly, the paper highlights that lower income quintiles spend a greater percentage of their income on ECCE, and that a majority of families in the study must make tradeoffs between ECCE, food, housing, and other basic expenditures in order to afford private ECCE, which is a necessity given the inadequate supply of government ECCE centers. In addition to addressing school strategies for keeping costs down, this study reports on parental decision-making when it comes to school selection. Finally, beyond a straight market analysis of LFPSs at the ECCE level in Zambia, this article also comments on how this market fits into the dialectical nature of local and global contexts. That is, it draws attention to the workings of the Zambian state and its precarious position in the global capitalist economy.

Much literature has focused on the influence of the World Bank with regard to policy reform in low-income countries. While this literature has been produced over the course of many decades, the underlying studies have not tended to take a multi-decade approach to examining the way that World Bank influence changes in a given country. Put differently, studies tend to examine specific periods of time rather than looking at influence over time. This article seeks to contribute to scholarship on World Bank influence by looking at a twenty-year period of World Bank engagement in Indonesia. The purpose is (a) to map the nature and influence of the World Bank as it engaged with the government of Indonesia (GOI) around education and development policy, (b) to reflect on how and why that engagement changed over time, and (c) to consider the implications of the study in relation to the broader literature on the evolution and current status of World Bank influence. The focus of this article is in the area of governance, where the World Bank has pushed and experimented with decentralization, community-driven development, and school-based management. While the article focuses on education policy, reforms in this area have been impacted by governance reforms more broadly.

For those who focus on the role of education in international development, the approach to education governance of school-based management (SBM) has been the primary means by which the participation of community members has been incorporated into the provision of education. However, while SBM is a well-known approach to governance that has become a global education policy, in that it is widely promoted, adapted, and implemented, a trend that stands out--and which is addressed in this paper--is the use of, and reference to, SBM in work on conflict-affected contexts (CACs). Indeed, there has been insufficient attention directed at understanding how SBM is advocated in these contexts. Our intention is to use the present paper as a point of departure for further discussion on issues that arise in relation to the intersection of SBM and CACs. With that in mind, we seek to characterize the extent to which international organizations espouse support for SBM, particularly when it comes to its applicability in CACs; to review the rationales that are invoked in favor of this governance model, again with a focus on CACs; and to highlight important areas for future research.

This paper presents the results of a systematic review of literature (56 studies) related to Sustainable Development Goal 4.7. The goal of the research reported on here is to contribute to the discussion around strategies for working towards and monitoring SDG4.7 at the institutional level. Within this overarching focus, our review of the literature was designed to identify studies that have looked at both student learning and teacher education related to SDG4.7. This twin focus stems from the recognition that achieving the SDGs will be particularly difficult if policymakers are not attentive to both sides of the learning equation—that is, first, to the ways that teachers learn to teach about issues related to SDG4.7 and, then, the ways that students acquire this knowledge and are assessed. The five findings sections of this review correspond to the five areas of emphasis embedded in the language of SDG4.7, namely, education for (a) sustainable development, (b) human rights, (c) gender equality, (d) promoting of a culture of peace and non-violence, and (e) appreciation of cultural diversity. In accordance with the purpose of this review, the synthesis for each area of emphasis digs into the details of the educational interventions, monitoring and evaluation strategies, and results that are documented in the publications analyzed. Thus, this review can be useful for informing educational or pedagogical approaches related to SDG4.7, as well as for designing monitoring and evaluation tools for the SDGs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]