Purpose – This paper aims to analyse the reform syndrome, bottle-neck effects and their impacts on teachers and school education in the last ten years and highlight the direction of new developments. Design/methodology/approach – The paper examines educational reforms in Hong Kong in the last decade. Findings – Echoing the international trends of educational reforms, Hong Kong, as an internatio...

This paper investigates the determinants of political support for the privatization of education in the UK. The electorate is assumed to apply cost-benefit calculations, depending on their circumstances; a set of criteria for evaluating educational reforms is linked to individual voters' characteristics. It is then possible to identify which voters would oppose or advocate educational reforms s...

In this chapter we present social network analysis in the context of recent educational reforms concerning teachers’ instructional practices. Teachers are critical to the implementation of educational reforms, and teacher networks are important because teachers draw on local knowledge and conform to local norms as they implement new practices. We describe three social network approaches. First,...

There is a strong, positive, and well-documented correlation between education and health outcomes. In this paper, we attempt to understand to what extent this relationship is causal. Our approach exploits two changes to British compulsory schooling laws that generated sharp across-cohort differences in educational attainment. Using regression discontinuity methods, we find the reforms did not ...

Various educational reforms in Sweden have resulted in a formally equivalent educational system for deaf and hearing pupils. Has this resulted in equal levels of educational attainment? This article compares 2,144 people born between 1941 and 1980 who attended a special education program for the deaf and 100,000 randomly chosen individuals from the total population born between 1941 and 1980. D...

Southeast Asia’s traditional export of relatively low-skilled products is facing increased competition. There is therefore a general need to upgrade production in the region, which requires a more skilled and educated labour force. Historically, education has not been emphasized in Southeast Asia but there are indications that this is about to change. This paper starts with a general discussion...

This paper examines the political dimension of the educational research undertaken by Ghanian, Guatemalan, and Malian teams as part of the 1991 to 1996, USAID-funded “Improving Educational Quality” (IEQ) project. The following questions are addressed: (a) why were (or were not) aspects of the educational reforms studied by the researchers; (b) why were (or were not) research Ž ndings used in de...