Effective conflict management is essential for fostering a positive school climate and enhancing teaching and learning. However, public basic schools in Ghana face various conflicts that disrupt this environment. This study explores the conflict management strategies employed by school heads, focusing on the sources of conflict, the strategies used, their effectiveness and the challenges encountered. Guided by conflict management theory, the study adopted a qualitative multiple-case design involving purposive interviews with 10 school heads. Thematic analysis revealed key conflict sources: student–student, teacher–student, teacher–administrator, parental and community involvement issues. Strategies such as mediation, negotiation, counselling, adherence to rules and parental involvement were commonly used. The study demonstrates that the successful application of mediation, collaboration and strategic compromise is key to effectively resolving conflicts. However, challenges such as uncooperative stakeholders and inadequate training limit success. The study highlights the need for policy-level interventions by the Ghana Education Service and the Ministry of Education to integrate conflict resolution into leadership training and promote stakeholder engagement.

This study explores the pervasive issue of academic dishonesty among higher education students in Deogarh, Odisha, a reflection of broader socio-economic challenges in India. The findings indicate that students’ behaviours, such as cheating in examinations, are shaped by limited capabilities rooted in economic conditions and societal expectations. Students, often from economically disadvantaged backgrounds, are driven by the need for immediate success and job security, leading them to view cheating as a pragmatic solution. This study applies Amartya Sen’s capability approach to demonstrate how the lack of economic, educational resources and opportunities constrains students’ ability to achieve their full potential, further worsening the problem. This research underscores the need for comprehensive educational reforms that address both academic integrity and the socio-economic factors contributing to academic dishonesty, aiming to foster a more ethical and equitable educational environment in higher education.

This article engages with the emergence, explosive growth, tenacity and persistence of privately provided preservice teacher education (PSTE) in India. The phenomenon, its analysis, and sense-making call for complexity given the multiplicity of actors, institutions and interconnected phenomena involved. The article adopts a broadly historical-political-economic approach to explore, examine, describe and analyse the varied and dynamic interests in play. Two dimensions of the phenomenon are examined: the explosive growth of private teacher education (TE) and its drivers. We argue that ‘correspondence Bachelors in Education (BEd)’ transmogrified into the self-financed form as a result of the National Council for Teacher Education (NCTE)’s attempts to regulate, and willy-nilly playing into and creating conditions favouring private TE and disempowering the university. We then look at the problem from the demand side to examine drivers for demand of low-quality, examining eight possible drivers, and finding strong links to the shifting nature of the teacher labour market. We conclude with observations on the effect of the transmogrification of distance education (DE) and the drivers of demand for low-quality in TE.