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This article examines the visibility of an African language, isiZulu, in the public domain of education in South Africa. It explores synergies and disjunctures in language use and exposure for children across the continuum from home to ECD centre and early primary school, and how they affect children's competence in reading in two languages by Grade 4. Our qualitative cross-sectional study finds isiZulu is visible in the homes, communities and at each grade level, along with other African languages; but use of, and exposure to, these African languages varies widely. In most homes, while storytelling is common, little reading is done; educational settings, in contrast, are print-rich environments, displaying isiZulu and English and making English highly visible very early on. Teaching of reading in both languages is done at a very slow pace, using restrictive pedagogies, and with little continuity across Grades, but enables Grades 3 and 4 children to read simple, connected text in both isiZulu and English. The article calls for language appropriate, specialised reading teaching that strengthens learners' language and reading development bilingually, and increases and consolidates the visibility of the African language in the curriculum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In-country migration is widespread in South Asia, and the region hosts the world's largest number of out-of-school children. Yet the relationship between internal migration and inclusion in formal education has received only limited academic and policy attention. The Agenda 2030 pledge to leave no-one behind prompts us to argue that when it comes to migrating children, formal education systems in South Asia are in ontological crisis. Cases of mobile pastoralists and seasonal labour migrants illustrate that being 'left behind' is produced by intersecting norms of modernity, which formal education systems reproduce, via logics of rights, human capital and 'terms of inclusion'. Formal education systems are antithetical to mobility-dependent livelihoods, discount situated learning, and perpetuate unequal social relations. 'Alternative' education has done little to contest these norms and their productions. Terming this an 'ontological crisis' signals both the disjuncture between realities and Agenda 2030's moral exigencies, and the opportunity to act. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Increasing community and parental connection with schools is a widely advocated means of improving levels of student learning and the quality and accountability of education systems across South Asia. This paper draws on a mixed-methods study of accountability relations in education in the Indian states of Rajasthan and Bihar. It explores two questions: what formal platforms exist to enhance connections between socially disadvantaged families and the schools serving them; and (how) do they influence engagement with student learning? It finds that various platforms have proliferated across public, low-cost private and non-government schools. But, while they promote enrolment attendance and monitoring, a substantive focus on student learning is empirically demonstrated to be missing everywhere. The paper argues that an apparently surprising similarity of (dis)connection is located in system features that are common across school types, locations and social structures. It proposes that this is a 'field' in which connection, facilitated by various platforms, is performed according to bureaucratised norms of accountability that even pervade family and community responses. Seeing this as a socially constituted 'field' that constrains meaningful discussion of learning across schooling provision for disadvantaged families contributes new insight for accountability-focused reforms in education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

India's 2009 Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act presents an idealized social contract which assigns roles to multiple actors to uphold a mutual duty, or collective responsibility, to secure children's access to a quality school education. This article explores how the social contract assumed by the RTE Act misrepresents the conditions required to enact mutual responsibilities as well as actors' agreement to do so. Qualitative data from Bihar and Rajasthan show how state actors, parents, community groups and teachers negotiate and contest the RTE Act norms. The analysis illuminates the unequal conditions and ever‐present politics of accountability relations in education. It problematizes the idealization of the social contract in education reform: it proposes that if the relations of power and domination through which 'contracts' are entered into remain unaddressed, then expressions of 'mutual' responsibility are unlikely to do other than reproduce injustice. It argues that policy discourses need to recognize and attend to the socially situated contingencies of accountability relations, and that doing so would offer an alternative pathway towards addressing structural inequalities and their manifestations in education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• The Agenda 2030 commitment to LNOB operates as a form of 'doublespeak' in India. • The Agenda 2030 call to end extreme inequality requires facilitating the 'hegemonic struggle'. • The absence of religion in Agenda 2030 masks the way that religion is leveraged by populists. • Pastoralism is a 'pious occupation' where religion shapes connections to the land and animals. • Religion is an important factor in the hegemonic struggle that the LNOB commitment should enable. The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development pledged to 'leave no one behind' (LNOB). This article suggests that LNOB can be a form of 'doublespeak', susceptible to being used to mask ideologies and policies that worsen social, political and religious divisions. Despite stated commitments to LNOB, both Agenda 2030 and the Modi-led Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government of India adhere to narrow models of development that fail to address and exacerbate the growing problem of religious and other inequalities. This article argues for reclaiming LNOB's radical potential by conceptualising it as an empty signifier that takes on meaning through the hegemonic struggle to articulate what 'left behind' means. It develops this argument through a case study of Hindu Nationalist developmental normativity and two mobile pastoralist communities in Gujarat: Hindu Rabaris and Sufi Muslim Fakirani Jats. The empirical data show that in Gujarat's marketised neo-liberal land regime, mobile pastoralism as a livelihood is increasingly stressed and liable to be constructed as 'left behind'. Simultaneously, the Hindu and Sufi religious practices that shaped pastoralists' relationships with land and animals are being transformed and, framed by the BJP government's promotion of a Hindu nationalist religious identity, are shifting towards adoption of communal Hindu and Muslim identities that exacerbate social and religious inequalities, with particular effects on women. The paper concludes that LNOB has potential to tackle religious and other inequalities and generate a more radical and democratic politics of development if the range of demands that are met by this 'empty signifier' is broadened to challenge the hegemonic representations that dominate, and religion's centrality in this struggle is recognised. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights • Retaining mobile learners is addressed by re-framing 'school' as a spatially dispersed network. • Networked schooling embeds education within pastoralist resource management to orientate service provision. • Networked schooling facilitates retention and system flexibility but is resource intensive. Abstract Despite repeated calls for education systems to respond flexibly to enable all children to participate in formal education, limited progress has been made for those we term Mobile Out of School Children (MOOSCs). Livelihood-related mobility often precipitates a process of learner drop out during the year. Retention of such children, and reducing the risk of their relapsing into MOOSC status, requires a re-framing of 'school' as a spatially dispersed system, or network, to accommodate learner movement. Networked schooling for children in mobile pastoralist communities in Ethiopia embeds formal education within mobile pastoralists' resource management practices and orientates service provision accordingly. Although it is resource-intensive, networked schooling enables the requisite flexibility to support retention of pastoralist and other mobile learners. It of significant interest to global effort towards leaving none behind, particularly in the global drylands and other contexts where climate change is making learner mobility increasingly complex, and the need for a systemic response ever more pressing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Uganda's 'early exit' language policy positions African languages ambiguously in public education provision. Runyoro-Rutooro and Runyankore-Rukiga are spoken in Western Uganda in public spaces where translanguaging happens as a matter of course. These languages are heard at pre-primary and lower primary levels but are superseded by English from primary grade 4. Teachers speak Rutooro, Rukiga and English to varying degrees but must negotiate the different priorities stipulated by the policy within this linguistic landscape as they teach reading to multilingual children. In so doing teachers create linguistic synergies and disjunctures between home, community and school. This exerts a toll both on teachers and on students' capabilities to become proficient in spoken and written local language and English in both the dynamic present, and in the imagined future. This paper reports from a small-scale qualitative cross-sectional study of synergies and disjunctures in language use as children learn to read in local language and English across home, Early Childhood Education and primary school in two sites in Western Uganda. Findings suggest that mitigation of such cognitive wastage in young children by a 'late-exit' policy would support reading proficiency and encourage translanguaging practic es, creating synergies with the wider, public use of Ugandan languages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper extends and enriches debates on migration, borders and education by conceptualising education inclusion as a border regime. It applies a regime analysis to illustrate the borders of education inclusion for a community that migration studies have hitherto neglected: mobile pastoralists. It argues that education inclusion signifies a new form of social belonging and border crossing that many mobile pastoralists are undertaking, often precipitated by dispossession from their traditional, mobile livelihood. Supported by empirical data from Ethiopia’s Afar region, the regime analysis reveals how educational opportunity for these learners is regulated by border ‘checkpoints’. It identifies persisting and emerging inequalities of opportunity under current regimes of education inclusion that challenge the Sustainable Development Goal pledges to reach the last first. A re-appraisal of scholarly boundaries is called for to support the interdisciplinary effort needed to place mobile pastoralists among those who count first.  [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nomadic groups are highly discriminated against in access to education services, and the 2010 Education For All Global Monitoring Report demanded urgent action to address their education deprivation. Mobile pastoralists, particularly, appear to be falling beyond the remit of migration studies in education, although they are among the most mobile people in the world. Pastoralists' education inclusion has been promoted by models of provision across the 'mainstream', 'alternative' and Open Learning traditions, but examples from around the world show that each broad approach comes with identifiable 'terms of inclusion' that, in different ways, reproduce and/or challenge pastoralists' marginalisation. Achieving political commitment to addressing the scale and extent of pastoralists' education deprivation is not unimaginable, but contingent on significant reappraisal of mobility as a livelthood strategy and of the legitimacy of pastoralism as a sustainable contemporary livelihood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Non-government organisations (NGOs) are big players in international development, critical to the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and constantly under pressure to ‘achieve more’. Scaling-up their initiatives successfully and sustainably can be an efficient and cost effective way for NGOs to increase their impact across a range of developmental outcomes, but relatively little attention has been paid in the education sector to how best this may be done and debates appear to have stalled. One approach to scaling-up is replication, on which this paper focuses. While there is no one universally applicable path through which an educational NGO can achieve successful replication, more can be done to support choice of the best path to follow, with respect to specific NGO circumstances and the context within which it operates – and hopes to operate in future. This paper presents four known paths to replication alongside new illustrative diagrams to explore their advantages and disadvantages, and highlights the need for a fifth approach that does not appear in current literature. ‘Network replication’ is proposed as new pathway that draws on known strengths of networks and offers a learning-oriented approach to scaling-up. While inevitably not without its potential problems, Network replication is a scaling-up option that deserves consideration. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses various reports within the issue on topics including the association of marginality with an active process of exclusion, intercultural education, and role of networking in addressing marginalization of disabled people.

The education exclusion of pastoralists is increasingly recognised as a critical area for attention in progress towards Education For All. This article sets out two interlinked propositions as to what underlies barriers to education inclusion for pastoralists in India: a conflation of ‘education’ with schooling; and ambiguity over whether pastoralism is a relevant contemporary livelihood. Taking an adverse incorporation and social exclusion perspective on marginality, policy narratives of education inclusion are explored using its construct of ‘terms of inclusion’. Empirical evidence showing how pastoralism and formal education intersect demonstrates multi-faceted exclusions which simultaneously drive demand for schooling and impose highly adverse terms of incorporation for pastoralism in the globalising economy. Policy strategies currently undervalue ‘education’ as situated learning with a crucial role in pastoralist livelihood sustainability, recognition of which is essential to considering how such ‘education’ can interface with institutional arrangements and tackling the delegitimisation of pastoralism by hegemonic, place-based schooling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social exclusion is not random, but concentrated in already marginalised groups and often related to the “frozen accidents” of particular forms of thinking about education and development that come to dominate policy and strategies for service provision. This paper examines how accessing the recently enacted right to education raises a range of justice concerns for mobile, and particularly transhumant pastoralist, children in India. It argues that provision of formal education reflects institutionalised patterns of economic discrimination and status inequality that deny such children what Nancy Fraser terms “participatory parity”. The policy norm of habitation-based provision fails to fulfil the rights criteria of making schooling available and accessible, while the colonial criminalisation of mobility leaves an enduring legacy of discrimination. Formal education is complex and contradictory in relation to both moral dimensions of the human right and its contribution to social justice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Literacy has been a crucial aspect of education as a human right for over 50 years, but this basic right remains unassured for at least 700 million adults worldwide. In 1999, UNESCO acknowledged that schools are not making the expected contribution to increasing national literacy rates or providing individuals with the literacy skills they need. The relationship between schooling and literacy is an acute issue in India: the absolute numbers of non-literate adults,many of whom have failed to become literate at school, continue to increase; and high proportions of children are not achieving adequately in literacy at school. The paper presents a socially situated examination, drawing in part on collaborative action research, of how a small sample of primary teachers approach literacy teaching and learning in socio-economic contexts of disadvantage. The paper identifies structural, social and pedagogical constraints to effective literacy teaching and learning in schools and in conclusion, draws out the implications for teacher development of a relative neglect of literacy teaching and learning in Indian vernacular languages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that how literacy intersects with notions of development is more complex than generally perceived by those who advocate 'literacy' as a development tool. Among the transhumant pastoralist Rabaris of Kutch in Western India, various forms of literacy are increasingly implicated in community development. In a context where Rabaris face the gradual erosion of their livelihood opportunities, literacy for adults is not associated with development; rather Rabaris favour the option of formal schooling and the possibilities it confers for occupational diversification for the next generation. Community governance, meanwhile, is also increasingly shaped by aspects of literacy. Changes to community governance structures have been ushered in by a new generation of literate (but not necessarily schooled) leaders; they use conventions of the wider literate society to lend formal power and authenticity to their work and strongly advocate formal schooling, which combines gaining literacy skills with an enhanced social status. Schooling and literacies emerge as central to Rabaris' aspirations for 'progress' in the contemporary world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The Republic of Yemen has a very high number of working children, employed in a variety of occupations, ranging from street vending to guards on farms, and domestic labour. Including these children in formal education is a major challenge facing the Republic, which has one of the lowest rates of female participation in primary education in the world, and a very underdeveloped non-formal sector. In a context where poverty levels are very high, particularly in rural areas, families remain under significant financial pressure to rely on children''s work to supplement, or indeed provide, their income and survival. This broader context challenges school-based efforts to include working children, particularly where initiatives aiming to improve the quality of the formal system are only just beginning to make an impact. This paper discusses key challenges of providing education to working children in Yemen, focusing on the work of the International Labour Organisation''s International Programme for the Elimination of Child Labour (IPEC) and some of the issues that it faces in using schooling as a strategy to prevent child labour. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This special issue is the third collection of papers Compare has published from the 2003 UKFIET/Oxford conference on The State of Education: Quantity, Quality and Outcomes . The papers presented here were originally given in the Education and Decentralisation symposium organised by Caroline Dyer, Mark Poston and David Theobald, and in the Michael Crossley and Keith Holmes symposium on Culture, Context and the Quality of Education . [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Decentralisation is often expected to improve democratic participation and empowerment, and improve government responsiveness to local needs. International experience demonstrates that striking the right balance between centralisation and decentralisation remains highly challenging, and that developing appropriate institutional capacity to discharge new responsibilities is difficult and often neglected – yet both are crucial to effective decentralisation. Taking a sample of six district institutes of education and training (DIETs) across three states as a case study, this paper explores India's policy and processes of decentralising teacher education. It identifies as major barriers to the emergence of DIETs their recruitment and staffing policies, and contested agendas of power, control and accountability. Yet it also finds evidence from two districts of progress towards establishing productive partnerships, in an emerging process of decentralisation that is allowing the DIETs to play a significant role in supporting teachers. Here, the DIET idea is justified, and the potential of a decentralised teacher education system to improve systemic accountability towards quality improvement and primary teachers is demonstrated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The need to enhance the relevance and quality of pre- and in-service teacher education in India has long been recognised in official commentaries. Despite the structural innovation of District Institutes of Education and Training to enhance systemic responsiveness to local contexts, training messages mediated through DIETs are largely not having the expected impact on classroom processes. Using qualitative data generated from six case study sites, this paper examines in-service training in DIETs and how they have responded to teacher development challenges. It finds that formal teacher education continues to have low ‘ecological validity’, and highlights tensions in the recruitment and technical expertise of DIET staff, and in their attitudes towards elementary teachers, that constrain engagement with local contexts. The paper then considers several aspects of elementary teachers’ local knowledge which underline the need for a review of the dominant ‘skills and knowledge’ approach to teacher development pursued by DIETs. It argues that training must shift its focus from skills to an engagement with the pressing question of teachers’ will to adopt training messages in current contexts. The paper closes with discussions of how teachers’ professional agency can be promoted, and further considerations of how teacher education can be strengthened in pursuit of quality in a context of decentralisation. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Introduces the articles in the December 2003 issue of the periodical 'Compare.' Human and social capital; Learning as a central process in social capital formation and application.

Editorial. Introduces articles in the September 2003 issue of 'Compare' journal. Influence of national and international policy agendas on educational institution; Response of universities in China to the phenomena of globalization and internationalization; Influence of the policies of the World Bank on technical education in Greece in the 1960s and 1970s.

This paper argues for the need to adopt a more participatory and research-based approach to teacher development in India. Drawing on the experiences of a participatory teacher educator development project in three States, we discuss processes of developing a democratically orientated qualitative research team to work with teachers and teacher educators, highlighting the interplay between their education and socialisation and the demands of the methodology. In the second part of the paper, aspects of developing collaborative action research projects with teacher educators in the context of District Institutes of Education and Training are discussed. Both these approaches require the development of autonomy and critical reflexivity, and although there are tensions in this process, these emerge as vital components of developing a more democratic approach to teacher education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Migrants, and particularly nomads, are among the most marginalised social groups, and are widely excluded from educational provision, despite pledges of Education For All. The phenomenon of movement itself presents many challenges for both providers, and would-be users, of educational services. Around the world, the provision of education for nomads has reflected and been instrumental to particular stances on pastoral development. The links between education and development are explored specifically in the case of a transhumant pastoral group in Western India. The article reveals Education For All as an ideological notion, reflecting values that contradict those of nomadic groups, and argues that the value positions underlying this notion need to be articulated and further contextualised if it is not simply to reflect existing, and exclusive, hegemonies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Misjudging the ease of policy implementation is recognised as one of the most common planning mistakes. If implementation is not planned and structured, effective management of change may give way to ad hoc adjustments and short-term strategies for coping, with a subsequent dilution of policy efficiency. Developing countries can ill afford the wasted resources that result, but little research attention has been directed at providing information about implementation processes that policy makers can draw on. This article discusses a model of 'backward mapping' that was applied in India, and generated a variety of useful insights which have contributed to learning for policy. In contexts where comparatively little is known about the implementation process, the use of such models to generate this kind of learning can improve our understandings of the 'black box' of implementation, and open up new options for policy strategies to achieve policy goals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on the Regenerated Freirean Literacy Through Empowering Community Techniques (REFLECT) approach to literacy teaching and learning. Who developed the REFLECT approach to literacy; Information on REFLECT; Look at the social context of the literacy course.

Presents information on the relationship between education, literacy and development among nomads of Western India. Detailed information fatalism and education; Information on the experiment carried out; Method of the experiment; Results of the experiment.

The article reviews the book "Growing Up in a Pastoral Society: Socialisation Among Pashtu Nomads in Western Afghanistan," by Michael J. Casimir.

Provides a background on research papers on the quality of education which were published in the volume 33, number two, 2003 edition of the periodical 'Compare.' Link between education and the issues of democracy and participation; Link between education and issues of democracy and citizenship.

Editorial. Comments on the educational policies throughout the world. Theoretical approaches and methods in the analysis of different aspects of education; Argument on critical reflection; Economics of knowledge; Adaptation of education to the changes in social identity and values; Role of language in education; Issue on teacher job satisfaction.

The article announces that the journal has been accepted for Institute of Social Sciences (ISI) recognition and that it will be covered in the Social Science Citation Index (SSCI).

The article announces career changes in the boards of periodical "Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education" which includes appointment of Germ Janmaat as co-editor and Tristan McCowan as co-editor, and resignation of Paul Morris from the post of co-editor.

Introduces articles related to education contained in the June 2004 issue of "Compare."

Introduces a series of articles on participation in educational development. Health education curricula for primary schooling in Uganda, Zambia and India; Failure of institutional reforms in Mexico to encourage participation of rich and poor students; Literacy practices of rural adolescent boys in Jamaica.

Editorial. Introduces research on education and teaching, published in the volume 32 of the 'Compare' journal. Response from Caroline Vincent and Dougal Hutchison to the article on birth date effects in schooling by Gillian McDonald; Inclusion of abstracts completed by students of the BAICE; Raf Vanderstraeten's paper that uses the concept of pillarisation as a schema around which to conceptualise differentiation within the Belgian and Dutch education systems.