International Education seminar 
1 February 2012
11am - 2.30pm (Lunch provided)
Venue: Room N357, N block, Faculty of Education, Gate 4, 60 Epsom Ave, Epsom (View map)
Host: The School of Critical Studies in Education
Contact info: Please RSVP to Stacey Davis by Friday 27 January
11am
The value of longitudinal studies to international education
Angela W. Little
Abstract: This paper presents an overview of the Young Lives research project: an international, longitudinal study of childhood poverty. The Young Lives project was designed to monitor progress toward the Millennium Development Goals.
A comprehensive programme of household studies in selected sentinel sites in four countries (Ethiopia, the state of Andhra Pradesh in India, Peru and Vietnam) was established in 2001 and will conclude in 2016/17. The value of a longitudinal study lies, inter alia, in its potential to explore among the same cohorts of children the impact of home background and early childhood experience on children’s educational experience on the one hand, and the impact of educational experience on later outcomes in life such as health, fertility, migration and employment on the other. Selected key findings will be presented to demonstrate the value of longitudinal comparisons for our understanding of the causes and consequences of education.
About Angela W. Little
Angela W. Little is Professor Emerita of Education and International Development at the Institute of Education, University of London, where she worked for 24 years from 1987. She was formerly a Fellow at the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex., is a founding member of the London International Development Centre and is an academician of the Academy of Social Sciences.
Lunch 12.30 - 1pm
1pm
Making Rights Realities - Access and Equity in Education and Development
Keith M. Lewin
Abstract: Over 60 million children of primary school age are not in school. Most are in Sub Saharan Africa and South Asia. Access to basic education lies at the heart of development. Lack of educational access, and securely acquired knowledge and skill, is both a part of the definition of poverty, and a means for its diminution. Sustained access to meaningful learning that has utility is critical to long term improvements in productivity, the reduction of inter-generational cycles of poverty, demographic transition, preventive health care, the empowerment of women, and reductions in inequality. In many of the poorest countries more than half of all children fail to enrol at secondary level. Of those who do fewer than half will complete a full cycle of secondary schooling and qualify for any further education and training. Those who succeed will be overwhelmingly from richer rather than poorer households. The chances of the poorest 20% completing secondary school can be as little as a tenth that of the richest. And if there are gender gaps in participation in primary schooling, they are almost always larger at secondary level. Sub-Saharan Africa remains by far the most undereducated part of the world despite allocating proportionally as much or more finance than other regions to education. In South Asia growing inequalities have accompanied economic development and led to very uneven access to basic education and continued marginalisation of the poorest.
The MDG targets to universalise access to education in the region will not be achieved and will be revised at some point before 2015. Any new targets, which will probably be set for 2025, need to recognise that access is more than enrolment, and that quality, equity and valued outcomes are inseparable if meaningful access to education is to be achieved. There are no good reasons why all children will not attend and complete basic education successfully in 2015. If it does not happen it will be testimony to the failure of one generation of adults to believe in the futures of the next.
About Keith Lewin
Keith Lewin is Professor of International Education in the Centre for International Education at the University of Sussex. He is Director of the DFID supported CREATE research partnership which undertakes research on access to education in South Asia and Sub Saharan Africa. He has extensive experience of school systems in Sub-Saharan Africa, South and South East Asia, and China, has published 18 books and over 150 articles and chapters, and has supervised 40 D Phil students. He has worked extensively with the International Institute of Educational Planning, and with the World Bank, DFID, DSE/GTZ, UNICEF, and UNESCO and with many national governments.
