Education Development Plan Research Articles

Simulated Annealing for Ground State Energy of Ionized Donor Bound Excitons in Semiconductors**The project supported by Liu Hui Applied Mathematics Center of Nankai University and the 985 Education Development Plan of Tianjin University

We present a global optimization method, called the simulated annealing, to the ground state energies of excitons. The proposed method does not require the partial derivatives with respect to each variational parameter or solving an eigenequation, so the present method is simpler in software programming than the variational method, and overcomes the major difficulties. The ground state energies of ionized-donor-bound excitons (D+, X) have been calculated variationally for all values of effective electron-to-hole mass ratio σ. They are compared with those obtained by the variational method. The results obtained demonstrate that the proposed method is simple, accurate, and has more advantages than the traditional methods in calculation.

Educational Research, Policy and Practice: National Report on Secondary Education in Lao PDR

Following the adoption of a new education law in 2000, the government of Laos has initiated a series of reforms aimed at realizing the national strategy for human resource development for the year 2020. In implementing government policy, the Statistics and Planning Division and the National Research Institute for Educational Sciences have provided basic statistics to analyze the current situation, develop new curricula and teaching materials, monitor the reform process and undertake action research. The paper outlines the main achievements of the Lao education reform (e.g., quantitative growth of secondary education, curriculum and pedagogical reforms), concerns regarding difficulties in achieving key goals (e.g., low participation in mountainous areas serving ethnic groups), and strategies being adopted within the educational development plan for 2001–2005. Key Words: curriculum, educational goals, education law, educational reform, educational research and policy, ethnic minority, Lao PDR, secondary education, technical and vocational education

Starting with learning: new approaches to development and improvement planning in primary schools

This is a third paper, from ongoing research, examining the relationship between the enhancement of teaching quality and pupil learning in primary schools within a context of development planning and school improvement. The first paper (Broadhead et al ., 1998) argued for a dimensional approach to school development planning. This exemplified whole-school issues, teacher-development issues and pupil-learning issues as inter-related action domains. Similar conceptualizations are proposed by Southworth (1996) and Davies and Ellison (1998). Our study found that schools' priorities were focused on whole-school issues with little evidence in their plans of an intention to focus on pupil learning through class-based activity. A second paper (Broadhead et al ., 1999) drew attention to two initiatives subsequently impacting on development planning. This first initiative was the emergence of Education Development Planning (EDP) with an emphasis on the attainment of national targets related to numeracy and literacy. These targets are passed to Local Education Authorities (LEAs) from the DfES (Department for Education and Skills) and subsequently passed by LEAs, in individual negotiations with schools, as targets for increased levels in end of key stage test scores in literacy and numeracy, for children in their final year of primary school. The second initiative related to OFSTED’s (Office for Standards in Education - school inspectors) increasing inclusion of pupil-learning targets as Key Issues in the post-inspection report to schools. Framing Key Issues in this way was seen as having some potential for moving development planning towards this more challenging action-domain. This paper draws on our most recent study of approaches to school development planning. It uses documentary analysis and telephone interview data to illuminate current practices and to illustrate the levels and types of engagement schools are currently engaging with in planning for improvements in teaching and learning, leading on from the related initiatives outlined above. While schools can ill-afford to ignore government imperatives and while the focus on teaching and learning remains substantively driven towards reaching literacy and numeracy targets, there is nevertheless evidence to suggest that an engagement with teaching and learning is evident in development planning. It seems timely to consider how this engagement might be fostered and what this might mean for the evolution of development planning in primary schools.

Promoting pupil learning within a school‐development framework

In a recent paper we concluded with a brief discussion of a proposed model for conceptualizing school development. Three interrelated dimensions were tentatively offered as a means of examining and understanding the scope of intent and action needed by schools in a search for improvement. The three dimensions were identified as a school‐wide dimension, a teacher‐action dimension and a pupil‐learning dimension. This paper now seeks to put a little more flesh on these dimensional bones, to define and describe the respective dimensions and to reveal the nature of the interrelationship. This paper includes discussion of two related contexts. Firstly, it considers the relation between school development planning (SDP) and OFSTED inspections, drawing on our own and others' findings in this area. Secondly, the paper examines the relationship between SDP and education development planning (EDP), the long‐term planning required of local education authorities substantially concerned with the meeting of Government targets for reading and numeracy at Key Stages 1 and 2. EDP is a relatively new initiative with plans to be approved or resubmitted to the Department for Education and Employment by March 1999. This paper considers the potential impact of its inherently hierarchical structure on the collegiality required for effective school‐development planning. The paper also incorporates a perspective of stakeholders in relation to school development, examining the potential for insiders (school staff) to work more closely and more equally with outside influences in maintaining momentum in the review and development process and in endeavouring to ensure that changes bring about real and lasting improvements.

Fertility Transition in Syria: From Implicit Population Policy to Explicit Economic Crisis

The 1960 census revealed that Syrias population had increased from 2.9 million in 1947 to 4.2 million in 1960 and it was growing at an annual rate of 26 persons/1000 population. In 1970 when the population reached 6.3 million pronatalist officials began to be concerned because forecasts indicated that by 1990 the population would reach 12.8 million and the high growth rate would threaten the countrys economic and educational development plans. Yet it was not until 1993 that the government took measures to curb population growth by population education mandatory school attendance for both girls and boys and encouragement of later marriage age. The total fertility rate still increased to 6.6 children in 1981 from 4.9 in 1960 because of the improving socioeconomic situation the decline of child mortality and the improved survival of female children. Subsequently in the 1980s womens status and their literacy rate also improved while their labor force participation rapidly increased accompanied by a rapid decline of the birth rate that began in 1986. For recent generations the average number of births among working women was 32% lower than the number among nonworking women. The demographic turning point occurred when the crude birth rate fell by 26% between 1985 and 1990. Contraceptives were made available in pharmacies and family planning programs registered an 11-fold increase in the number of visits between 1983 and 1988 and a 7-fold increase in the number of new users. However 1982 ushered in a period of economic decline after a decade of prosperity as fees for oil exports and transit duties fell in the wake of the drop in oil prices. As a result the proportion of women who were employed rose from 7.9% in 1981 to 12.2% in 1989 because of the necessity to counter heavier taxation. In sum the economic social and educational factors accounted for the drop in fertility but the full integration of women into the labor market still awaits policy decision.

Economic austerity in West German education?

The article shows that due to incrementalism and the existence of ‘buffering factors’ in the form of political, legal and other constraints the impact of economic austerity on the educational budget in F R Germany was less significant than expected. Yet the same factors which protected the educational system from budget cuts seem to be dysfunctional from an internal point of view, since they prevent financial resources from being allocated according to political priorities. The recently updated ‘Comprehensive Education Development Plan’ forms the normative basis for the evaluation of allocation policy.

Education and rural development in Ethiopia

Educational development plans in Third World countries have stressed the need to develop the economic, social and political potential of their population through a public education system that has emphasized rural development. A case study of the educational system in Ethiopia from 1942 to 1974, a country where more than 85 per cent of the population lives in the rural areas, revealed that the educational system was geared towards urban development and neglected the rural sector. Hence, Ethiopian education was characterized by the concentration of educational resources in urban areas and selected regions, under-representation of female students in schools and in the labor force, and preparation of students for work in urban white-collar positions, positions which provided limited employment.

Reflections on the concept and practice of educational planning

Boris K. Kluchnikov (USSR ). Director of the D,2qsion of Educational Policy and Planning, Unesco. Formerly Chief of Department of International Organisations, Institute of Oriental Studies, Moscow, and Chief of Laboratory of Economics of Educations Moscow Pedagogical Institute. Author of Participation in the Planning Process and of articles on educational planning and reform. In the past two decades almost all nations have introduced one or another form of economic and social planning, including planning of education. Countries having just gained their independence began to perceive the considerable opportunities opened up by educational planning. Since that time educational planning has been systematically practised in more than IOO countries of the world. Some of the countries are now implementing their fifth or sixth educational development plan. Unesco has a stock of some ninetyfive current educational plans, kindly supplied by the governments. These documents as well as the deliberations of a dozen regional conferences of ministers of education organized by Unesco provide a solid basis for studying the concept and practice of educational planning. The regional conferences constituted a new method for promotion of international and regional co-operation. They became an important forum for education ministers to examine educational policies and plans periodically and to meet with ministers of economics and finance. The regional conferences clearly evidence the progressive development of educational planning. It was not and it is not smooth. With u'iumphs came disappointments. The bright side was not without a dark side. But on the whole it is justified to conclude that in the highly dynamic development of education in the world during the last two or three decades planning has played an outstanding constructive role. The most recent regional conference, which assembled ministers of education of Asia and Oceania in Colombo, July z978, stated that 'educational planning is now well established in the development of the machinery of most governments of the region' and that 'the mechanisms for educational management and administration are being progressively strengthened'. 1 Similar

Developing the medical curriculum at King Abdulaziz University.

The kingdom of Saudi Arabia has placed a high priority on medical education. King Abdulaziz University is developing a medical curriculum aimed at being responsive to the health needs of the people of the kingdom. In creating the curriculum, planners devoted considerable time and effort to studying health manpower resources and needs, regional developments, demographic patterns, socioeconomic and cultural factors, general education development plans, vital statistics, and existing and projected health facilities. These and many other factors played a role in determining the format and the content of the curriculum, which is intended to produce individuals for leadership roles as medical educators, medical practitioners, and researchers.

Costa Rica: A national educational development plan

Costa Rica: A national educational development plan

The Political Economy of Educational Planning in Uganda

THERE HAVE not been many attempts at a synthesis of the varieties of educational planning experience, despite the fact that there have been a large number of educational plans produced in various parts of the world in recent years. One rather obvious, and sobering, element in the educational planning experience which emerges from even a cursory acquaintance with educational plans is that the plans are hardly ever, perhaps never, actually implemented in their entirety. Some actions specified by the typical educational plan are simply not carried out, and other actions pertaining to education, but not specified by the plan, are. So it is exceedingly rare for a plan's targets, stated in terms of enrollments or expenditures, to be actually attained by the end of the plan period. By the end of a typical plan period targets are under-fulfilled or over-fulfilled, but rarely fulfilled as planned. No doubt, a variety of explanations can be offered for this. Here we shall try to identify, for a collection of educational plans put forward in Uganda in the last thirty years or so, the main ex post deviations from the targets specified in the plans. And we shall find that the reasons for the deviations fall quite naturally in a particular class. The deviations pre-eminently arise, so to speak, for reasons of political economy. We define an educational plan as a rational statement of those actions pertaining to education which should be thought most likely to attain the object or objects desired; and we may note that there are two distinct normative problems connected with educational planning. There is the problem of choosing the best educational plan, given a set of desired objectives; and there is the problem of choosing the objectives. The former is a problem of educational planning per se; the latter is a problem of political economy. At any one moment of time, the problem of political economy is to select from the domain of alternative objectives a particular set as being more worth while than any alternative set; and the problem of educational planning is to design a course of action most likely to attain those objectives. For some kinds of objectives, particularly economic ones, there is often considerable difficulty in discerning an appropriate action sequence. And lengthy action sequences become increasingly subject to re-evaluation over time, as unforeseen contingencies are experienced and preferences evolve. So it is not particularly surprising that a government's educational development plans, which often have economic objectives, and are generally designed for five-year periods or more, should so rarely be completely implemented.

Conference on Adult Education in East and Central Africa

In East and Central Africa considerable investment in physical capital is now being made. This must be matched by investment in human capital, if the full benefit is to be gained. Professor John Lewis, of the University of London, stressed ‘The Place of Adult Education in Education Development Planning’ in his contribution to this conference. Educating children will produce results in six to ten years' time. Educational investment in adults can produce results more quickly. But at present the effort to educate adults, such as it is, is spread over many agencies. For significant results adult education must be integrated into a country's general development plan.

The Italian ?Ten-year Educational Development Plan?

The Italian ?Ten-year Educational Development Plan?