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In the Bollywood film Crow's Egg (Manikandan, 2015), two Indian children eat crow eggs that they collect from trees (taking three out of four eggs and leaving one with the mother crow) because they cannot afford chicken eggs. Because their father is in prison, the children make money by selling pieces of coal that fall off trains to support their working mother. Interestingly, the film shows no images of school in the lives of the two children, aged about seven and 10, and their friends next to them. Unfortunately, there are millions of children in the world who have no room for school in their lives, and they are not just numbers, they are individuals.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the question of parents’ rights to make choices regarding the education and upbringing of their children.

Article 26(3) of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states: ‘Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children’. However, authors including Joel Feinberg also argue children have a right to an ‘open future’, implying parents and the state have obligations to ensure certain elements are present in a child’s care and education. Commodifying education and early childhood care where it occurs in many developed societies, ostensibly provides parents with greater choice regarding the education and upbringing of their children. However, following the work of Brenda Almond, I argue that parents do have some rights to make choices about the care and education of their children. But just having the freedom to choose from alternative schooling or caring options may be insufficient to provide a choice in any significant sense, if one is only choosing between service providers all offering essentially the same service.

It would seem then, that responsible leadership and ethical decision-making by the state and by service providers requires them to engage in consultation with parents and facilitate their participation in determining the nature and content of educational and developmental programmes for children.

Leaders in these roles will also need to have a strong sense of the competing demands on content coming from this array of ethical requirements.

Child malnutrition is a grave concern for Pakistan, as the country has one of the highest incidences of child stunting in the developing world. The present study examines the relative significance of parents' education on a child's nutritional status in Pakistan.

For analysis, the study has used data from Phase 7 of the Pakistan Demographic and Health Survey (PDHS) (2017–2018). Since the dependent variable ranges from 0 to 1 (1 indicates not a stunted child, while 0 represents a stunted child), binary logistic regressions are used for the analysis.

The results show that mothers' and fathers' education positively contributes to a child's nutrition. However, mothers' education is considered more significant, especially in the long run. The mother's education categories are positive and significant in the long run, while only their higher education is positive and significant for the father's. Moreover, the magnitude of the effect also shows that the probability of stunting is less if the mothers are educated. The long-run coefficient for mothers' higher education is 0.752, while that of fathers' higher education is only 0.232.

The present study compares the importance of mothers' and fathers' education in child nutrition and concludes that the role of the mother is more crucial for child upbringing. There are rarely any studies that focus on the role of fathers' education in child nutrition and compare whose role, mothers' or fathers,' is more important for child well-being.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-06-2023-0483

This study examines the extent to which educational outcomes are transmitted from mothers to daughters in rural China. An analysis of the 2010 China Family Panel Survey reveals that: (i) how far daughters go in their education is strongly associated with their mothers’ education; (ii) the association between mothers’ and daughters’ educational outcomes in rural China was found to be stronger than the corresponding relationships between mothers and sons, fathers and daughters, and fathers and sons, especially at higher levels of education; and (iii) while having more brothers and being born later worsens daughters’ educational outcomes, mothers’ higher education effectively mitigates these negative effects. These findings add to a growing body of literature and empirical evidence that challenges conventional social mobility research paradigms that neglect mothers’ roles. More importantly, the distinction between mother–daughter relationship and that between fathers and daughters and mothers and sons highlights the fact that education is likely transmitted intergenerationally via mechanisms that differ depending on the gendered parent–child pairs.

Cultural traditions should not be lost, and yet because of lifestyle changes, reorganisation of family life and the influence of globalisation, the rich heritage of a country like Finland risks being forgotten. In this chapter, the author argues for ways to redress this situation by ensuring the transmission of traditions, cultural heritage and enculturation through early childhood education.

This chapter aims to provide a critical analysis of special needs education within the United Kingdom today. Central to such an analysis is an understanding of the rapidly changing social and political milieu within which special needs education is embedded, including the rapidly changing demographics of schooling, and the devolution of political power into four separate but linked countries – England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. Following a discussion of such wider social, political and educational issues, the authors explore the convergences and divergences in policy and practice across the four devolved administrations. The authors describe a plethora of contemporary policy developments within each of the four administrations that speak to the need for special needs education to change in response to 21st century concerns about the problems of access to, and equity in, education for all children. Despite this, the authors remain extremely circumspect about the potential of many of these developments to lead to successful inclusive practices and developments on the ground – and explain why. The analysis in the concluding section focuses on the issue of teacher education for inclusion and some very innovate UK research and development projects that have been reported to successfully engage teachers with new paradigm thinking and practice in the field of inclusive special needs education.

Viewing the global movement for inclusive and equitable education through the lenses of the social construction of childhood and world culture theory, this chapter explores the normalized cultural conceptions of children and childhood, once situated on the periphery of policy landscapes, that have in recent years become increasingly shared by contemporary global society. I assert that a “global ideology of childhood” reflects a global consensus on the nature and needs of children, underscoring the widely held belief that all children are entitled to similar rights, protections, and childhood experiences. The overarching question addressed by this research is: How are global ideas reproduced and interpreted in national contexts? Through a case study of Nepal’s National Framework of Child-friendly Schools for Quality Education, I examine how the global ideology of childhood is reflected in a national education policy and how multilevel policy actors, and international, national and local non-governmental organizations (I/NGOs) in particular, envision the sustainability of the child-friendly school model – and broader socio-cultural ideas concerning children and childhood – in Nepal. Drawing on interviews with these actors and content analysis of policy documents, this chapter aims to provide a rich, descriptive account of how global culture is appropriated in one national context.

In this article, we discuss the issue of the right to education of young children, focusing on the Institution of Early Childhood Education (EIC in Portuguese), of views with legal markers and educational indicators of a Brazilian State. From a research that approached Early Childhood Education (EI in Portuguese) in settlements of the Landless Rural Workers Movement (MST in Portuguese) and making use of the Bakhtinian framework we highlight the processes of inequality that devastate childhood in the rural settings. The data reiterate the need to not only combat the logics of precariousness that affect the service given but also to guide the specificity of Children’s education field, within a framework of the effectiveness of primary school attendance. Hence, we call one’s attention to the debate of the ways of setting up institutions, with a view to serving children, urging the regulations related to the right to education, particularly, the right to Early Childhood Education in the peasant’s context, particularly in settlements.

In recent decades, childhood in Japan has undergone significant transformations. Government policies geared at boosting women's labor force participation, a declining fertility rate, rising costs of having children on the one hand, and increased spending on public childcare and support measures for families, on the other hand, contribute to these ongoing changes. Having only one child is becoming the norm while mothers' role in society is shifting. The traditional family structure is moving from the previously predominant male breadwinner model to more dual-earner families. Children now spend significant amounts of time in care and education institutions.

In this chapter, we analyze current configurations of early childhood in institutions and the family from a policy perspective and regarding children's predominant education and care arrangements. Drawing on various survey data sets and evidence from demographic statistics to pedagogical ethnographies, we look at how childcare policies and families reshape the organization of children's lives and outline how institutions and educators create learning experiences aligned with the values of a collectivist society. However, despite being deeply rooted in traditional child-rearing goals, many parents also subscribe to rigorous educational arrangements from early childhood onwards to prepare children for success in a competitive education system. The chapter finishes with an outlook on future directions of how policymakers and the ongoing institutionalization of childhood continue to change children's lives.

In this chapter, the author describes the education of Roma, Sinti and Caminanti (RSC) children in Italy focussing on possible pathways to school inclusion. According to available national reports, there are about 140,000 RSC people living in Italy, who the author calls a ‘hidden minority’. The author provides detailed information on their ethnic origins and traditions, describes their legal and social situation, culture and language. Then the author outlines the attainment of RSC in the Italian education system and the most important policies to support their successful education. In conclusion, the author presents selected programmes to promote social inclusion and education of RSC children.