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Conditional cash transfer (CCT) programs have become widespread in poor countries as a way to alleviate current poverty and provide investments in human capital that improve families’ living conditions in the long-term. The first goal is accomplished when poor families receive money from governments on a monthly basis. The second goal is reached by conditioning the cash transfers on certain behaviors such as children's regular school attendance. However, these programs may also have impacts on time use decisions within beneficiary households, particularly with respect to time spent working. Using data from 2003, we measure the impact of the Brazilian Bolsa Escola CCT program on children's and parents’ labor status using the econometric framework of policy evaluation. Probit regressions and propensity score-matching methods show that this program reduces the probability of work for children aged 6–15, increases school enrollment, and increases mother and father participation in the labor force.

Just before Christmas of 1970 I received a letter from a French friend who had enabled me during the period 1950–1960 to visit, in Paris, many of the new Industrial Complementary Courses which were being built up as part of the French post‐war drive to restore and advance the nation's industrial life after the sad years of the Occupation. These Industrial Complementary Courses represented the lowest level of technical education and recruited, in a fairly wide field of preparation for skilled factory work, boys and girls who, by their teachers, were regarded as some of the least able pupils. They were not educationally subnormal, and they were not those of the absolutely bottom stratum, academically speaking, but they were boys and girls for whom, in the academic eyes of the average secondary school teacher, normal bookish secondary schooling was impossible. The three years of Industrial Complementary schooling were a post‐primary alternative to any of the other forms of education from the age of 12 to the school‐leaving age of 15 years. The youngsters concerned had already shown that in the bookish studies which had hitherto constituted the bulk of their schooling, they were either thoroughly incompetent or had reached the stage of utter boredom and lack of interest. So, for them, there were now these various dust‐bins provided, under the heading Manual and Industrial.

How much work is “too much” for children aged 10–14 in Egypt? Our narrow focus here is on “work that does not interfere with school attendance.” For girls, work includes time spent in household chores and subsistence activities. We estimate simultaneous hours of work and school attendance equations as a joint Tobit and Probit model, then conduct simulations. Substantial negative effects on attendance are observed above about 10 hours per week (girls) and 14 hours (boys). For girls, heavy household work appears causal, but for boys, it seems that poor schooling leads to boys' dropout, then subsequent work.

This research aims to explore leadership approaches that foster deeper learning and facilitate the transition from traditional schooling to a model aligned with the demands of the post-industrial digital knowledge society.

Employing a mixed-methods approach, the authors conducted surveys among school principals within a network of schools embracing deeper learning based on ten distinct but interlocking criteria that define this particular model of deeper learning. Through in-depth follow-up interviews with school leaders, the authors investigated the factors and obstacles that support sustainable implementation and scalability of deeper learning, with a specific focus on the role of transformational leadership.

During the implementation of transformative practices like deeper learning, school leaders demonstrate diverse perspectives on the necessary changes for their successful integration. Leaders inclined toward a “transactional” leadership style concentrate on changes within individual classrooms. Conversely, leaders exemplifying “transformational leadership” possess a broader vision and address systemic factors such as teacher collaboration, assessment regulations and the effective utilization of time and space within schools. To achieve widespread adoption of deeper learning across schools and the education system, it is essential to recruit more transformational leaders for formal leadership positions and reorient leadership training toward transformational approaches.

The deeper learning model developed for this intervention encompasses a four-stage process: Teachers initially collaborate in small teams to co-design interdisciplinary, deeper learning units. The actual units consist of three sequences: knowledge acquisition, where students gain knowledge through direct instruction supplemented by personalized learning on digital platforms; team-based co-creative and co-constructive tasks facilitated by teachers once students have acquired a solid knowledge base and the completion of authentic tasks, products or performances in sequence III. While small groups of intrinsically motivated teachers have successfully implemented the model, achieving broader scalability and dissemination across schools requires significant “transformational leadership” to challenge traditional norms regarding teacher collaboration, assessment practices and the efficient use of time and space in schools.

This paper presents a structured model of deeper learning based on ten distinct but interlocking quality criteria tested within a network of 26 schools. The model has demonstrated transformative effects on participating schools, albeit primarily observed in smaller substructures of large secondary schools. Teachers who previously worked independently have begun to collaboratively design learning experiences, resulting in “hybrid” classrooms where physical and digital spaces merge and extend to include maker spaces and out-of-school learning environments. Traditional summative assessments have been replaced by various forms of embedded formative assessment. However, these innovations are currently driven by small groups of intrinsically motivated teachers. The research provides insights into the type of school leadership necessary for comprehensive scaling and system-wide dissemination of deeper learning.

Reflecting the Mauritian government's “quality” agenda and its focus on school leadership, this paper reports the findings of research exploring Mauritian principals’ views about the use of total quality management (TQM) for school improvement. While aspects of this research have been reported elsewhere, the purpose of this paper is to focus on school leaders’ use of data and evidence in making decisions for school improvement.

The paper reports on qualitative aspects within a mixed methods research with data collected by means of semi-structured interviews conducted with a purposive sample of six principals. The analysis of the data were an exercise in grounded theory building.

The paper expands the knowledge of principals as quantitative data users arguing that qualitative information based on professional discourses, human judgements and lived experiences should be equally valorised if TQM is used for making informed educational decisions.

The research relied on principals’ views as the unique source of data. The perspectives of the other stakeholders would offer a richer description of leadership reality in Mauritian schools.

The paper suggests a more participatory decision-making model for effective change that could rightfully engage all stakeholders through various complementary quantitative and qualitative processes. It further recommends that alongside the core systemic qualities of TQM, there are ethical, moral and cultural dimensions of leadership that could enhance the teaching and learning environment.

While confirming some extant research, the paper brings new thinking to understanding the critical role of principals within the TQM scenario of data-driven decision making.

The purpose of this paper is to understand further the role played by work-based cognitive skills in the growth dynamics in Europe.

Work-based cognitive skills are studied using a factor analysis on data from the European Work Conditions Survey (Eurofound) referring to work cognitive requirements. This and other measures of education quality and quantity indicators are used to estimate growth regression models for 28 European countries, in order to test for the significance of work-based skills.

The results corroborate the hypothesis that work-based cognitive skills have been a powerful predictor of economic growth over the last decades. Countries where workplaces require and foster advanced cognitive skills tend to exhibit higher economic growth.

The Eurofound Survey on work-based skills, a major source of this study, only began in 1990 so is quite recent and covers few countries.

The results indicate that the mobilisation of the full intellectual potential of workers in their work context is essential to achieve high-economic performances. Boosting workers interactive learning and autonomy should become a key policy and organisational aim.

The authors bring a deeper approach to the way human capital is addressed by testing the relevance of work-based cognitive skills on economic performance. Hence the authors build a bridge between economic growth literature, which focuses largely on the role of formal education, and innovation studies where the emphasis is placed on the relevance of learning processes.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the status of access to school amongst the indigenous children of India. It looks at the enrolment, gender parity and drop‐out at different levels of school education as well as gender‐wise.

Sociological factors and the economics of education discourses on the significance of education and reasons for impediments to access are reviewed. The paper uses SES data for the year 2006‐2007 published by the Indian Ministry of Human Resource Development in the year 2008.

The indigenous children still remain the most deprived group in terms of access to school education and drop‐outs. The girls are the most affected stakeholders. The enrolment and gross enrolment have increased in the last three decades, but it is still very low at the higher levels of schooling. Similarly, the gender gap amongst the indigenous children increases at the higher levels of schooling. The high poverty and opportunity cost of attending schools are the major reasons for low participation.

Although the macro‐level strategies of government reflect an overall increase in enrolment and fall in drop‐out, research is needed to study grass root/micro‐level strategies adopted by NGOs for individual indigenous communities at different locations and their effectiveness.

The effective and equal access to and within indigenous children is an important tool for their socio‐economic development. The paper provides both an aggregated and a disaggregated picture by both gender and state.

A narrative inquiry was conducted to explore the complexities of learning English and Korean as subject matter in cross-cultural contexts in contributing to teacher identity, with possible tensions of identity teachers experience as ethnic Koreans teaching at an international school in Korea that promotes non-Korean, international education in English as a “language of inclusion” and instruction. With expansions of international schools in South Korea, also growing are numbers of Korean teachers teaching at such schools as returnees, individuals with cross-cultural experience. Stories of one Korean language and literature teacher with international schooling experience were examined.

While identifying the practical benefits of acquiring English, she expresses her concern for the presumed loss of Korean as a product of the prioritized use of English on campus. Equally recognized are the diverse opportunities not commonly available at Korean public schools that the participant upholds from her own experience. She acknowledged that her opportunities for the development of English language skills to a high level of proficiency through international education is not commonly accessible to all students in the Korean public school system. She also considered possible impacts associated with prioritizing the use of English over Korean in her international education experience, including their influence on: her sense of identity as a teacher and as Korean; her cultural knowledge as Korean; and her teacher knowledge as she supports her students' learning of English as subject matter in ways that might, in turn, also impact their sense of identity as Korean.

The purpose of this paper is to examine relationships among governmental organizations, non-governmental organizations and the organization and management of instruction in US public education, with the aim of raising issues for cross-national research among countries in which the involvement of non-governmental organizations is increasing.

The paper is structured in four parts: an historical analysis of the architecture and dynamics of US public education; an analysis of contemporary reform efforts seeking to improve quality and reduce inequities; an analysis of ways that legacy and reform dynamics manifest in two US public school districts; and a discussion of considerations for cross-national research.

In US public education, dependence on non-governmental organizations for instructional resources and services is anchored in deeply institutionalized social, political and economic values dating to the country’s founding and that continue to function as constraints on educational reform, such that new solutions always emerge in-and-from the same problematic conditions that they seek to redress. The consequence is that reform takes on an evolutionary (vs transformative) character.

The US case provides a foundation for framing issues for cross-national research comparing among macro-level educational infrastructures, patterns of instructional organization and classroom instruction.

Such research would move beyond reductionist approaches to cross-national research toward new approaches that examine how histories, legacy architectures, contemporary reforms and patterns of instructional organization and management interact to shape students’ day-to-day lives in classrooms.