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It starts with a demand-side analysis in chapter two, examining historical trends in demand for skills, revealing the types of skills in demand, and projecting future demand for skills driven by economic growth and policy development. Chapter two also highlights the emerging skills shortages and mismatches in Yunnan. The rest of the report focuses on the access, quality, and relevance of Yunnan's education and training system and how effective it is in supplying the skills in demand. An overview of Yunnan's formal and non-formal education and training system is presented in chapter three. Chapter four focuses on the formal Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) system, examining its governance, industry participation, curriculum reforms, quality assurance, and finances. Analysis of the formal education and training system focuses mainly on secondary and tertiary TVET. Chapters five and six address two major training programs outside the formal education system: non-formal training for rural workers and work-based training for urban workers, both of strategic importance. Finally, chapter seven draws on lessons from the Shanghai Program for International Student Assessment, or PISA to demonstrate the role of schools in developing the cognitive skills of 15-year-olds. The report concludes with a summary of findings and a set of policy recommendations for meeting the skills challenges and improving the education and training system.

In a context of increased primary school enrollment rates, secondary education is appearing as the next big challenge for Latin American and East Asian countries. This report seeks to undertake a detailed diagnostic of secondary education in these two regions, understand some of the main constraints to the expansion and improvement of secondary education, and suggest policy options to address these constraints, with focus on policies that improve the mobilization and use of resources.

The K-12 instructional materials market, including textbooks, supplemental materials, and digital resources, totaled $16.4 billion in sales in the 2009–2010 school year. It is projected that sales in 2010–2011 will be $17.3 billion, a 5.3% year-to-year increase. There has been a slow down in this market, starting in 2006–2007 and intensifying in 2008–2009, yet the K-12 school market continues to grow at a steady pace despite fluctuations in the U.S. economy. The fundamental fact that student enrollment and per pupil expenditures continue to increase assures us that the K-12 market continues to grow, but it also reinforces the fact that recent years were not banner years for educational publishers. Looking at sales of particular categories of educational products, it is easy to see that the technology-related resources led the pack in a generally difficult sales year in 2009. Big jumps were recorded in terms of sales of interactive whiteboards (+33.98%), online/digital content (+19.0%), and learning management or student information systems (+11.3%) and, to a lesser extent, computing/mobile devices (+3.0%), and instructional software (+1.2%). Looked at another way, if all of the digital product applications are grouped together, this group was up a strong 11.3% in 2009, while the various types of books used by students, as a group, was down 12.7%. These results make it evident that digital resources have not only gained traction in the K-12 school market, they are starting to dominate. In fact, 2009 may be the first year that it became necessary for a company to be heavily invested in digital content/delivery in order to achieve sales success in the non-textbook instructional materials market segment.

Improving student learning is the key challenge for education in Latin America and the Caribbean. This book is divided into three parts. Part one focuses on the central role of student learning in education. Chapter one examines why student learning outcomes are important. Chapter two analyzes the extent to which learning takes place in schools in the region. Chapter three discusses some of the advantages and disadvantages of generating and using information on student learning to raise the quality of education. Part two reviews the evidence on the factors and policies that affect student learning. It first presents a conceptual framework that facilitates understanding of the factors that influence student learning. It then reviews the evidence on the impact on student learning of economic, political, and social conditions (chapter four); student endowments and behaviors (chapter five); school endowments and behaviors (chapter six); and institutional factors and policies (chapter seven). Part three focuses on quality assurance and beyond. Chapter eight examines evidence from countries that have succeeded in achieving high levels of learning among most, if not all, students, in order to present policy options on education quality assurance. Chapter nine summarizes the book's main messages and discusses unanswered questions.

To test the feasibility of adding driving simulation tasks to measure visuospatial ability and processing speed to an existing neurocognitive battery for breast cancer survivors (BCSs). 38 BCSs and 17 healthy controls from a cross-sectional pilot study conducted at the University of Kansas Medical Center. Exploratory substudy measuring pupillary response, visuospatial ability, and processing speed during two 10-minute driving simulations (with or without n-back testing) in a sample of BCSs with self-reported cognitive complaints and healthy controls. Feasibility of measurement of pupillary response during driving simulation was demonstrated. No between-group differences were noted for pupillary response during driving simulation. BCSs had greater visuospatial ability and processing speed performance difficulties than healthy controls during driving simulation without n-back testing and slower n-back response time. Preliminary evidence showed a possible link between cancer/treatment on visuospatial ability and processing speed in BCSs.

In March 2020 all schools in Italy were closed due to the Covid-19 pandemic, and the novelty of distance learning was introduced. During the 2020-2021 school year, pre-primary and primary schooling was carried out in situ, while secondary education was re-organized into a mixed system, with students spending 50% of their time attending classes from home, in distance learning. This reconfiguration was a challenge to students, teachers, and parents, affecting the learning experience of the most vulnerable students and students with disabilities, particularly. It necessarily brought into question Italy's \"progressive\" legal framework for \"school inclusion\". The scope of the present article is to analyze the teaching activities carried out with students with disabilities in Italy during the first wave of the emergency lockdown and their consequent challenges for school inclusiveness. An overview of the Italian inclusive model in education and the national measures adopted to guarantee the right to education during times of school closure/restriction is outlined. We have sought to test the hypothesis that distance learning may introduce many risks for inclusion (resulting in a \"downgrading inclusion\", that is, a decline of the level of inclusion already reached for students with disabilities), but it may also present an improvement in how teachers address these students and their needs. To this end, after reporting data from the available studies on this target, we provide insights from a web questionnaire submitted to a non-probabilistic sample of nearly 150 primary and (lower and upper) secondary school teachers. Results showcase that, though with a general worsening of school inclusion, in some cases, teachers were actually able to support students with disabilities and their families in a new, customized, empathetic, and more attentive manner.

The English education system has undergone large-scale restructuring through the introduction of academy schools. The most salient feature of these schools is that, despite remaining part of the state sector, they operate with more autonomy than the predecessors they replaced. Two distinct periods of academy school introduction have taken place, under the auspices of different governments. The first batch was initiated in the 2002–03 school year by the Labour government of the time, and was a school improvement programme directly aimed at turning around badly performing schools. The second batch involved a mass academisation process following the change of government in May 2010 and the Academies Act of that year, which resulted in increased heterogeneity of new academies. This paper compares the two batches of introduction with the aim of getting a better understanding of their similarities and differences, and their importance for education policy. To do so, we study what types of schools were more likely to change to academy status in the two programmes, and the impact of this change on the quality of new pupil enrolments into the new types of school. Whilst we do point out some similarities, these are the exception rather than the norm. For the most part, our analysis reveals a number of marked dissimilarities between the two programmes, in terms of both the characteristics of schools that became academies and the changes in pupil intakes that occurred post-conversion.

In the current economic climate, the British Government is revising a whole range of policy sectors to highlight areas where savings and cuts can be made. The policy of subsidising home-to-school transport for pupils who live beyond a set distance from the school which they attend has been in place since 1944 and this policy costs local authorities in England over £1 billion a year. The aim of this paper is to examine the outcomes of policy choices facing Government relating to subsidising the transport of pupils travelling between home and school. Specifically, the paper employs a multilevel modelling technique to develop a series of relationships between bus usage by school and the level of spending by local education authorities on home-to-school bus travel provision while controlling for other factors such as school quality, land-use patterns and various proxies for household incomes. The results suggest that there is a differential effect of funding on the total school-level bus mileage for primary (aged <11), secondary (aged 11–16) and post 16 schools. It is found that if local authority school budgets for bus travel provision were removed, then school-level bus mileage in England would decrease by 16, 27 and 10 % for primary, secondary and post 16 schools respectively. It is hoped that the results of the study will help inform practitioners and policy makers to select the policy responses that are most appropriate.

Background New Jersey Department of Education (NJDOE) requires by law for accidents/incidents (injury) involving career-technical-vocational education (CTE) students and staff to be reported within five business days to the NJ Safe Schools Program (NJSS) using an online surveillance system. NJ public schools and charter schools (CS) through school districts (SD) or county offices report school data annually to NJDOE, including per pupil spending (PPS). In this study, we examined potential associations of PPS with several variables on injury in NJ: injury cause, injury location on the body, injury type, injury severity, use of PPE, and location of treatment for injury. Methods PPS data for December 1998–June 2015 from CTE SDs (one per NJ county, n  = 21), four CS SD and eight county special services districts were analyzed. T-test examined potential differences in PPS regarding injury severity and use of personal protective equipment (PPE). Stepwise logistic regression assessed potential associations between PPS and various injury surveillance variables. Results There were more CTE injuries reported among SD with lower PPS than among SD with higher PPS. Relatively less severe injuries, e.g., bruise/bumps and cuts/lacerations, more often occurred at schools and SD with higher PPS. Conversely, relatively more severe injuries, e.g., fractures, more often occurred at schools and SD with lower PPS. Conclusion Future research should further investigate disparities regarding younger worker injuries reported within school-based career-technical-vocational education programs by PPS and other factors like sex or gender, severity, safety training provided and work experience at time of injury.