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Voluntary national reviews (VNRs) are an important component of the follow-up and review process for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Presented by countries at the annual United Nations High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development (HLPF), VNRs detail a country’s self-reported progress to peers. This voluntary process has been criticised for its weak accountability. Global governance literature, however, points to an increase in these “soft” governance mechanisms as well as the potential strategic benefits of this approach. Using a mix of logistic regression and document analysis, this study examined VNRs as a soft governance tool and a reflection of the governance mechanism of the SDGs. The authors examined the scope and content of VNR submissions from 2016 to 2022, with a deeper review of 2022, which focused on the global goal for education (SDG 4). Three types of soft governance – governing by goal-setting, by numbers and by morality – were used as lenses to make sense of the results. The authors’ findings demonstrate the ability of soft governance tools to bring together diverse actors around a broad set of goals, and how the power of numbers can influence which indicators countries report on in their VNR.

Derek Neal writes that economists must analyze public education policy in the same way they analyze other procurement problems. He shows how standard tools from economics research speak directly to issues in education. For mastering the models and tools that economists of education should use in their work, there is no better resource available.-- Provided by publisher

Generation of quality data to aid planning, assessing the education performance, monitoring programs implementation and learning outcomes are the basic functions of the Education Management Information System (EMIS). This study examines the existing EMIS in the Pacific Island Countries PICs and proffers solution. A SWOT analysis on the selected PICs EMIS through the published technical reports and policy documents from government and donors’ between years 2000 and 2021, revealed that EMIS in PICs have not progressed beyond the stages of collecting demographic data and generating basic indicators. Fiji EMIS which has prospect of leading other PICs EMIS could only generate few indicators manually, and the findings indicate that these indicators are not being considered in decision making. To solve these defects, we proposed data-driven microservices architecture developed with MERN (MongoDB, ExpressJS, ReactJS, and NodeJS) stack on 13 NoSQL collections, tested with pseudonymised data from Fiji Ministry of Education (consisting of 98.6% Learners, 100.2% Schools and 99.5% Teachers in post). Our solution renders dynamic visualized production-ready education data and 28 UNESCO standard indicators to guide decision making and this may serve as a model for PICs EMIS.

In recent decades, higher education systems and institutions have been called to respond to an unprecedented number of challenges. Major challenges emerged with the phenomenal increase in the demand for higher education and the associated massive expansion of higher education systems. In response universities were called to adopt planning and research methods that would enable them to identify and address the needs of a larger, more diverse student body. Higher education institutions began to place greater emphasis on planning and marketing, seeking to maintain their position in an increasingly competitive higher education market. Under the current economic downturn, universities are under pressure to further cut costs while maintaining their attractiveness to prospective students. As a result educational policy makers and administrators are called to select the 'right' alternatives, aiming for both efficiency and effectiveness in delivered outcomes. This book provides insights into the use of data as an input in planning and improvement initiatives in higher education. It focuses on uses (and potential abuses) of data in educational planning and policy formulation, examining several practices and perspectives relating to different types of data. The book is intended to address the need for the collection and utilization of data in the attempt to improve higher education both at the systemic and the institutional level.

Background: Higher education has the main role in generating innovative activity in knowledge-based economies. Therefore, the efficiency of the higher education sector reflects the alignment of the higher education policy with government expenditure. However, countries in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE region) have been struggling with national budget optimisation, which can cause fiscal stress and thus affect the efficiency of higher education. Objectives: The main objective is to examine mutual interaction of higher education indicators, through formulating financial models that connect performance and financial indicators. Methods/Approach: A total of 4 higher education indicators were analysed and observed in the time period of 10 years in selected CEE countries. The statistical analysis was based on panel data models. Results: The main result of the paper is the analysis of coherency of selected higher education indicators in selected CEE countries in order to establish functional links between government expenditure and efficiency through formulating financial models. Conclusions: Formulated financial models can predict the behaviour of selected performance indicators, depending on financial indicators. Therefore, the obtained models can contribute to the efficient allocation of funds and comprehensive macro-level decision making assessments in higher education policy reforms.

\"What purpose does educational assessment serve? Are the same instruments suitable for different purposes? How much trust can we place upon the outcomes of educational assessment? The subject of educational assessment is much discussed and much misunderstood. Policymakers assert its importance to quality in education and its essential role in ensuring accountability for public education, and the results of educational assessment are thought to be of such vital interest to society that they are often made public knowledge. This approachable text explores the philosophical issues underlying these debates and how they impact on public educational policy. Two leading educators well-known for their work on educational assessment offer different perspectives on the value of exams and tests for a flourishing system of education, while the editor, Gerard Lum, comments on the strengths and weaknesses of the arguments\"-- Provided by publisher.

With the Internet era’s development, information technology’s role in education has become more prominent. In this paper, we firstly design the quality index of college network ideological and political education from the two broad dimensions of the goal (network ideological and political education work) and goal achievement (network ideological and political education effectiveness) of the quality of network ideological and political education in colleges and universities in the new era. Then, combining XGBoost algorithm and TPE hyperparameter optimization method, XGBoost is used as a classification model, and its iterative optimization is carried out by TPE hyperparameter optimization method, to establish the prediction model of the quality of ideological and political education based on XGBoost-TPE. Then, the online ideological and political education courses of university X are taken as the research object, and data are collected and calculated to study the prediction of the effectiveness of each index on the Civic and Political Education. Finally, the predicted and actual scores of the two ideology and politics courses are compared to explore the influence of teachers’ teaching quality factors on the quality of ideology and politics education. The analysis shows that the quality of course parenting, the quality of research parenting, and the home-school-society linkage parenting mechanism have the most significant influence on the predicted direct, indirect, and spillover effectiveness of ideological education, respectively, which are more than 60%. Teacher 1 and Teacher 2 contributed 2.38 and -1.13 to the achievement of Course D, and Teacher 3 and Teacher 4 contributed 2.47 and -2.53 to the accomplishment of Course E, respectively.

\"This book examines the cause of the student achievement gap, suggesting that the prevailing emphasis on socioeconomic factors, sociocultural influences, and teacher quality is misplaced. The cause of the achievement gap is not differences in parenting styles, or the economic advantages of middle-class parents, or differences in the quality of teachers. Instead, schools present learning tasks and award grades in ways that inadvertently undermine the self-efficacy, engagement, and effort of low-performing students, causing demoralization and exacerbating differences in achievement that are seen to exist as early as kindergarten. This process systematically maintains and widens initial gaps in achievement that might otherwise be expected to disappear over the K-12 years. Misdiagnosis of the nature of the achievement gap has led to misguided solutions. The author draws upon a range of research studies to support this view and to offer recommendations for improvement.\" -- Publisher's description

In this article, the late Jarl Bengtsson briefly traces the evolution of the concept of lifelong learning within the member states of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). He points out that on the one hand lifelong learning is accepted, in policy terms, by all OECD countries and many other countries, but on the other hand there is an uneven and slow pace of implementation of lifelong learning. He examines three main reasons for this, namely the lack of workable implementation strategies, the lack of a funding system and stakeholders' resistance to change. Without denying that each country is different and has to develop its own strategy, Bengtsson identifies a certain number of policy and research issues common to all countries, which are relevant to the acceleration of the implementation of lifelong learning strategies and programmes. Based on a paper originally presented at the Asia European Meeting (ASEM) Conference in Beijing in November 2009, this article closes with a reflection about where lifelong learning might be in 40 years' time. Jarl Bengtsson updated his seminal paper in 2012 for inclusion in this special issue on lifelong learning, taking into account recent developments such as the establishment of learning societies. Sadly, he died before publication was completed. Dans cet article, feu Jarl Bengtsson retrace brièvement l'évolution du concept d'apprentissage tout au long de la vie dans les États membres de l'Organisation de Coopération et de Développement Économiques (OCDE). Il signale que si ce concept est accepté en termes de politiques dans tous les pays de l'OCDE et bien d'autres encore, le rythme de sa concrétisation est lent et inégal. Il examine trois raisons à ce fait, à savoir le manque de stratégies fiables pour la mise en œuvre, l'absence d'un système de financement et la résistance au changement de la part des parties prenantes. Tout en reconnaissant que chaque pays est différent et doit élaborer sa propre stratégie, Bengtsson identifie un certain nombre d'éléments de politique et de recherche communs à tous les pays, qui sont décisifs pour accélérer la mise en œuvre des stratégies et des programmes d'apprentissage tout au long de la vie. Inspiré d'un texte présenté à la conférence du Dialogue Asie-Europe (ASEM) à Pékin en novembre 2009, cet article se termine sur une anticipation quant à la position de l'apprentissage tout au long de la vie dans une quarantaine d'années. Jarl Bengtsson a actualisé en 2012 son article précurseur en vue de cette édition spéciale sur l'apprentissage tout au long de la vie, en y intégrant les évolutions récentes telles que la création de sociétés apprenantes. Il est malheureusement décédé avant la parution de cette édition.