ABSTRACT
Education is increasingly seen as ‘the’ core component of international development (UNICEF 2005); indeed Gordon Brown, a former British prime minister, identified education as the key to the ultimate development goal: the empowerment of the poor, and of the world’s poorest countries (Steer and Wathne 2009). But there are multiple and complex challenges in providing free, high quality education to all the world’s children; in most developing nations, there are issues of grade repetition, low leaving age, teacher absenteeism, teacher shortages, building shortages, double shifts and large class sizes (Glewe and Kramer 2005), as well as a predominance of under-trained or untrained teachers (UNESCO 2005).
