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S. Xavier Alphonse is a PhD in English literature. He is the Founder Director of the Indian Centre for Research and Development of Community Education (ICRDCE), Chennai, India and former Principal of Loyola College, Chennai and former Vice Principal of St. Joseph's College, Trichy. He was a member of the University Grants Commission (UGC), New Delhi for two terms (2006-2012). Dr. Alphonse was also a member of the Distance Education Council (DEC), New Delhi. He is the chairman of National committee on Community Colleges appointed by the UGC to discuss the concept and methodology for establishment and functioning of the Community Colleges. Dr. Alphonse is a consultant to the state government of Tamilnadu for the Community College Project. He was also the consultant to the Honourable Prime Minister of Papua New Guinea for the creation of 13 community colleges in 2008. He is an authority on college autonomy in India, and pioneered the formation of community colleges as an alternative system of education for the poor and the downtrodden. He has written 73 articles and authored and edited 37 books on the Community College system and its implementation.

Does it always happen that men take over the senior positions when institutions become co‐educational and large? A study of the academic staffing during the transition of the colleges for the training of teachers, which were small, mainly single‐sex institutions, to the colleges of education which were larger, co‐educational establishments seems to illustrate one occasion when this occured. These changes in the colleges took place between the late 1950s and early 1970s, during a time of constant crisis in teacher supply and while the schools worked to accomodate the large number of children from the post‐1945 increase in the birth rate. Many of the changes in teacher training, including the introduction of the B.Ed. degree, were advocated in the recommendations of the Committee on Higher Education, chaired by Lord Robbins and are discussed later.

The Colleges of Further Education, along with the Polytechnics and the Colleges of Education, form the public sector of the binary system of higher education. These are all Local Authority colleges with Governing Bodies set up according to Instruments and Articles of Government approved by the Secretary of State for Education and Science. The government of these colleges is similar, and the DES has been very active in encouraging more autonomy for the institutions. As an example, DES Circular 7/70 outlines the functions to be exercised, respectively, in relation to a College of Further Education, by the LEA, the Governing Body, the Principal, and the Academic Board.

Teacher colleges played a significant role in the preparation of teachers for over 100 years in New Zealand. Teacher training colleges opened in the 1880s and served as the main institutions for teacher preparation. Toward the end of the twentieth century, the plight of teachers’ colleges once again fell victim to the ‘decline and demand cycle’ for teachers. Fueled by discussions regarding the extent teacher training should be “practically based in the classroom”, new government directions and policy priorities for the preparation of the teaching workforce were implemented. All teacher colleges experienced either staged amalgamations or ultimate closure. In the late 1970s and 1980s, the preparation of teachers entered a new phase as the responsibility shifted to the university sector, which included the training of kindergarten teachers. While the policy rhetoric imagined this to be an amalgamation, the reality was a process fraught with a number of anxieties, not the least of which were the intellectual shifts.

This chapter presents the findings of a Gender and Leadership study on promoting gender responsiveness and equality in Ghanaian Colleges of Education (CoEs) conducted in 2017. Specifically, this chapter explores CoEs actors’ perspectives on and experiences with using predetermined gender-responsive scorecard (GRS) as a strategy for promoting gender equality within the CoEs. Multiple-case study involving 10 CoEs selected purposively was used to explore the GRS implementation. Data collection and analysis methods included semi-structured interviews and “processual” analysis. The findings revealed a general contradiction among respondents regarding which gender actions/strategies had been implemented in the case study CoEs. Nonetheless, amid reported implementation challenges, there was general acknowledgment of the importance of the GRS in running gender-responsive CoEs in Ghana. The study concludes that the effective use and implementation of the GRS strategies appear imperative in promoting female success in CoEs, not only in Ghana but also in contexts where gender gap is an issue in teacher education.

The history of Catholic Teacher Education is linked to the growth and development of Catholic schools that began in the early nineteenth century. The Catholic Church struggled to recruit enough certificated teachers and relied heavily on pupil teachers. This began to be resolved with the opening of Notre Dame College, Glasgow, in 1895 and St Margaret's College, Craiglockhart, in 1920. The two Colleges would merge into the national St Andrew's College in 1981. This national college would undertake a further merger with the University of Glasgow in 1999 to become part of the newly formed Faculty of Education, later School of Education. The School of Education continues to discharge the mission to prepare teachers for Catholic schools.

This chapter uses a dynamic structural model of household choices on savings, consumption, fertility, and education spending to perform policy experiments examining the impact of tax-free education savings accounts on parental contributions toward education and the resulting increase in the education attainment of children. The model is estimated via maximum simulated likelihood using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Young Women. Unlike many similarly estimated dynamic choice models, the estimation procedure incorporates a continuous variable probability distribution function. The results indicate that the accounts increase the amount of parental support, the percent contributing and education attainment. The policy impact compares favorably to the impact of other policies such as universal grants and general tax credits, for which the model gives results in line with those from other investigations.

In Africa, the community college model, catered to nontraditional college aspirants, has been increasingly seen as an important alternative to respond to the growing demand for postsecondary education. By highlighting the case of Ethiopia, this chapter explores the implications of the community college model through the examination of the system, teacher training, and perspectives of students and employers. Some education and training can be more efficiently delivered at the community college level by means of focused and high-quality teaching, rather than through a long duration of bachelor's program.