School Choice in South Asia

This paper looks at the private schooling sector in Pakistan, a country that is seriously behind schedule in achieving the Millennium Development Goals. Using new data, the authors document the phenomenal rise of the private sector in Pakistan and show that an increasing segment of children enrolled in private schools are from rural areas and from middle-class and poorer families. The key element in their rise is their low fees - the average fee of a rural private school in Pakistan is less than a dime a day (Rs.6). They hire predominantly local, female, and moderately educated teachers who have limited alternative opportunities outside the village. Hiring these teachers at low cost allows the savings to be passed on to parents through low fees. This mechanism - the need to hire teachers with a certain demographic profile so that salary costs are minimized - defines the possibility of private schools: where they arise, fees are low. It also defines their limits. Private schools are horizontally constrained in that they arise in villages where there is a pool of secondary educated women. They are also vertically constrained in that they are unlikely to cater to the secondary levels in rural areas, at least until there is an increase in the supply of potential teachers with the required skills and educational levels.

A Dime a Day: The Possibilities and Limits of Private Schooling in Pakistan

Obesity is a public health dilemma worldwide. The prevalence of childhood obesity is increasing tremendously in the world. Overweight children and youth are probable to develop diseases in the later years. This study described the obesogenic factors influencing overweight among Asian children and youth. The study also determined the association of these factors to children and youth weight status. This narrative review obtained thirty-four pertinent articles published between 2010 and 2018. The data were extracted from Google Scholar, EBSCO, and PubMed. Numerous reviewed articles identified obesogenic factors influencing overweight among Asian children and youth as follows: familial factors, food retail environment, Westernization, food advertisement, and unhealthy food choices in school. Familial factors comprise parenting style and socioeconomic status. Food retail environment results were gathered from Thailand, China, Philippines, Saudi Arabia, and Korea. The effect of Westernization was seen in four cities of India and China. Influences of food advertisement were studied in Korea, Thailand, Singapore, and Malaysia. Unhealthy food choices in school were evident in South Asia, China, India, and Malaysia. These five factors are considered and an appropriate health program must be established to address this health problem.

There has been a substantial convergence in the educational systems of many countries.' Starting with different educational backgrounds, political systems, and economies, both advanced and developing countries have developed similar educational ideologies, institutions, and curricula. One link among some common developments is vocationalism-the orientation of education around preparation for labor markets. In both advanced countries and LDCs, there has been a tendency to consider specific skill training, especially secondary-level vocational education, to be the principal manifestation of vocationalism. This conception is too narrow: every level of schooling, including the university, has become suffused with vocational goals, differentiated along vocational lines, and judged by vocational criteria. To understand the power of vocationalism, it is important to examine the full range of its consequences. In the first part of this article I will discuss different manifestations of vocationalism-understood as specific skill training-in both advanced countries and LDCs. The second section examines some larger consequences of vocationalism, especially its role in educational inflation and in defining the social roles of education. A finding common to many countries is that, despite claims of economic "relevance," vocationalized approaches prove to have little economic justification, fail to resolve the problems that they are designed to address, and generate new problems for education systems. The final section hypothesizes why, given these discouraging findings, vocational solutions to educational and economic problems continue to surface.

Background: Universal education is a key strategy to enhance the well-being of individuals and improve the economic and social development of societies. A large proportion of school-aged girls in developing countries are not attending schools. Approximately one-third of South Asian girls do not attend school and in some regions only one in four girls attend primary school. Eliminating gender disparities in school attendance may lead to improvements in female education and reproductive health.Objectives: To conduct a systematic review of the available data from international organizations and regional registries to explore the association between female education and fertility choices in South Asia.Methods: Systematic review and synthesis of secondary data.Data sources: MEDLINE, Embase, Google Scholar, World Health Organization, World Bank, United Nations Population Fund, Millennium Development Goals, Institute of Health Management, World Fact book, United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and regional registries were searched for papers published between 1970 and October 2016 and the included papers contained data from 1960.Study eligibility criteria and data abstraction process: Studies were included if they contained data on (i) female education and/or literacy levels in South Asia; and (ii) fertility behavior in South Asian females. Quality of the included studies and extracted data were assessed by two independent reviewers.Results: According to the World Bank report in 2016, the female literacy rate in South Asia has increased from 45.5% in 2000 to 57.0% in 2010 while a decreased trend of total fertility rate (i.e., number of children born per woman) was observed from 6.0 in 1960 to 2.6 in 2014.Limitations: Only studies in English were included.Conclusion: A negative relationship seems to exist between levels of literacy and total fertility rates in South Asian females which if further improved may contribute to longer-term improvements in maternal and child health.

Religious School Enrollment in Pakistan: A Look at the Data

Charged with postcolonial educational planning and development activities over the last 50-70 years, the context and content of educational planning and policymaking have evolved considerably in most Arab countries. The methodologies of planning and policymaking have also changed to match changing milieus and national priorities. Despite some accomplishments, many have amassed a record of educational policy and reform undertakings that have been less successful. Moreover, many Arab countries have been shown to continually lag behind other regions with similar levels of development, such as Latin America and South Asia. However, a few regional countries in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), such as the United Arab Emirates (UAE), have taken a leading role in educational change initiatives in the implementation of globalized neoliberal reforms. More precisely, they have promoted bilingual (English/Arabic) and imported curricula, the modernization of school systems, privatization, standardization, accountability, school choice, and assessment reform. This study examined the implementation of recent UAE neoliberal reforms utilizing a framework derived from postmodern (neo)institutional analysis. This study argues that many policy undertakings have included contradictions and harmful impacts impeding the achievement of intended goals. Furthermore, educational policymaking has been caught between global and centralized national prescriptions for education and its role in society and unique contextual demands, which have created administrative challenges, dissatisfaction, and public resentment.

How Effective Are Private Schools in Latin America?

Using multilevel modelling and data from 10 Latin American countries, this paper provides new evidence on the relative effectiveness of public and private schools. There are substantial differences in the achievement of private and public schools, usually around one-half a standard deviation. A small portion of these differences is accounted for by the higher socioeconomic status of students in private schools. A quite substantial portion is explained by the varying peer group characteristics in private and public schools. After accounting for peer characteristics, the average private school effect across all 10 countries is zero, though with some variance around this mean (the effects range between -0.2 and 0.2 standard deviations). Evidence on selection bias is inconclusive, but the paper argues that these effects may constitute an upper bound to the true effects.

Charged with postcolonial educational planning and development activities over the last 50-70 years, the context and content of educational planning and policymaking have evolved considerably in most Arab countries. The methodologies of planning and policymaking have also changed to match changing milieus and national priorities. Despite some accomplishments, many have amassed a record of educational policy and reform undertakings that have been less successful. Moreover, many Arab countries have been shown to continually lag behind other regions with similar levels of development, such as Latin America and South Asia. However, a few regional countries in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), such as the United Arab Emirates (UAE), have taken a leading role in educational change initiatives in the implementation of globalized neoliberal reforms. More precisely, they have promoted bilingual (English/Arabic) and imported curricula, the modernization of school systems, privatization, standardization, accountability, school choice, and assessment reform. This study examined the implementation of recent UAE neoliberal reforms utilizing a framework derived from postmodern (neo)institutional analysis. This study argues that many policy undertakings have included contradictions and harmful impacts impeding the achievement of intended goals. Furthermore, educational policymaking has been caught between global and centralized national prescriptions for education and its role in society and unique contextual demands, which have created administrative challenges, dissatisfaction, and public resentment.

PurposeThis paper aims to identify the determinants of school choice and factors that define the success of a school as perceived by the parents and then compare “Public” and “Private” schools with respect to the explored criteria to determine the strengths and weaknesses of the institutions.Design/methodology/approachThe study is based on 1,121 quantitative data collected through survey questionnaire from the parents living in urban areas of Bangladesh. The school choice model was developed and validated by applying structural equation modeling.FindingsThis paper offers a statistically significant, robust and reliable five-dimensional 23-item school choice model that includes both school characteristics and preferred outcomes as perceived by the parents. Characteristic-wise comparisons in terms of characteristics revealed that public schools are superior to private institutions in fulfilling several choice criteria such as parents–teacher relationships, performance of the teachers, offerings of special programs, safety assurance in the campus and in having bigger campus with playground. On the other hand, private schools dominate in providing better educational environment, arranging training to the teachers, ensuring satisfactory library services and delivering information effectively to the parents. Among outcome determinants, government schools are well ahead in creating self-discipline, morality and good work habits among students. Private schools are superior in developing critical thinking skill of the kids.Originality/valueThere is a gap of comprehensive empirical study on school choice in South Asia region that includes both school characteristics and outcomes. Therefore, this paper contributes significantly to the relevant literature.

1. Introduction (by Lim, Lisa) 2. Articles 3. The plurilingual tradition and the English language in South Asia (by Canagarajah, Suresh) 4. Language as a problem of development: Ideological debates and comprehensive education in the Philippines (by Tupas, T. Ruanni F.) 5. Not plain sailing: Malaysia's language choice in policy and education (by Hashim, Azirah) 6. Beyond fear and loathing in SG: The real mother tongues and language policies in multilingual Singapore (by Lim, Lisa) 7. Towards 'biliteracy and trilingualism' in Hong Kong (SAR): Problems, dilemmas and stakeholders' views (by Li, David C.S.) 8. English in China: Convergence and divergence in policy and practice (by Feng, Anwei) 9. The teaching of English as an International Language in Japan: An answer to the dilemma of indigenous values and global needs in the Expanding Circle (by Hino, Nobuyuki) 10. Discussion 11. Multilingual Asia: Looking back, looking across, looking forward (by Bruthiaux, Paul)

Campaigning for preconception health

Not much is known about disease prevalence, treatment outcomes, trained manpower,programs, and patients’ awareness of diseases from South Asia, compared with theWestern world. While other aspects are improving, the quantitative evaluation ofawareness of diseases is lagging. Compared with other diseases, the situationfor mental health disorders and addiction is worse. While no single study canfully quantify all aspects of awareness, a good starting point is to understandif increasing the number of mental health facilities is beneficial byunderstanding people’s perception toward the likelihood of contracting variousdiseases, their preferred approach to treatment, and their perception of whetherthere are enough current facilities. We surveyed over 8000 families acrossseveral states of India and asked if they would treat a particular problem athome, visit a local healer, seek religious council, or go to a modern hospitalfor treatment. Our questions also included non-medical options to assess howlikely people are to avoid trained medical help. We also asked people abouttheir perceived likelihood of a family member ever suffering from (1) diarrhea,(2) high fever, (3) alcoholism, and (4) schizophrenia and other mental healthproblems. We reversed the order of diseases in our questions for a fraction ofthe population to evaluate the effect of order of questioning. Finally, weasked, if people feel they have enough local healers, religious places, generalhospitals, de-addiction centers, and mental health facilities. Despite the tabooaround mental health, many people claimed that their family members wereunlikely to contract mental health or addiction problems, people recognized thesevere paucity of mental health facilities and de-addiction centers. This raiseshope for improving the mental health situation in India. We also found asignificant relation between education levels and choices people make,underscoring the positive role education has in improving mental health.

Circulating and traveling around the globe, vouchers and school choice discourses currently function as the new “truth” for educators and parents, mobilizing them to imagine different ways of changing the field of education for the better. Without thorough critical investigations/inquiries, educational voucher policies are often thought of as examples of democratic educational reforms in multiple continents, including South America, North America, Australia, Asia, and Europe.1 Supported by Milton Friedman’s discussions on educational vouchers as tactics to dismantle government’s monopoly over modern public schooling systems and mobilized by neoliberal discourses of socioeconomic and cultural reform discourses, notions of educational vouchers and choice discourses are packed with ideas of choice and promises of social democracy for the field of education.