Introduction: Schools for the ‘Asian education century’: priorities and challenges

The concept of the ‘Asian century’ has become popularized in the light of the spectacular economic growth seen in many parts of Asia. Dollar (2007, p.2) has pointed out that ‘between 1990 and 2005, developing economies of Asia accounted for 44 per cent of global economic growth, measured by purchasing power parity. The established industrial powers of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) accounted for 41 per cent’. Yet economic growth cannot be considered in isolation as a necessary good, so that Dollar (2007, p.14) goes on to argue that one key outcome of such growth needs to be ‘good economic governance’. For him, such governance ‘provides wide economic opportunities to the populace through measures such as broadbased public education’.