Satya Wacana Conference & Seminar, The 3rd ICETEACH

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Current Issues in Education in Developing Countries
Cees van Maarseveen

Last modified: 2016-11-01

Abstract


As the Millennium Development Goals era comes to a conclusion with the end of the year 2016 this paper looks at accomplishments with respect to the goals in relation to education. Furthermore it depicts the current issues in education in developing countries. The dichotomy in developed and developing countries and the term developing countries itself may be misleading. It would be better to distinguish between developing countries and categorise them according to their state of development as transitional countries, middle income countries, post-conflict countries etc. rather than try to bring them all under one denominator. This paper looks at the critical issues at primary, secondary, technical and vocational education, as well as teacher training and education. Access to both primary and junior secondary education remains problematic as it is well captured by UNICEF in stating that “we have to fix the broken promise of education for all”.
The paper discusses a variety of problems and issues and categorises them as follows:
  1. Problems related to access and pre-conditions
  2. Problems related to Funding and hidden cost
  3. Problems related to educational content and resources
  4. Problems related to inclusiveness, learning environment and school culture
  5. Problems related to vision, leadership and management
Finally the paper introduces a model with forces in education as a tool to analyse and present problems in Education.

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