ABSTRACT
Since the recent worldwide economic downturn, the key aim of almost all countries to improve the quality of children’s education has greatly intensified in order to counteract the impact of the crisis on economic growth, prepare for economic recovery and alleviate poverty (UNESCO, 2004; Zhang and Minxia, 2006; Thomas, 2010). In this context, competition for the best educational provision and resources will increase, especially in developing countries and for students and schools in disadvantaged and poor rural areas. Moreover, there is increasing influence from international legislation promoting education quality and the principles of relevance, equity and rights such as the world declaration of universal basic education for all and Millennium Development Goals (UNESCO, 2000; World Bank, 2005). If developing countries are to meet the challenge of delivering good quality and relevant education to all learners in the twenty-first century they need to undertake major reforms in their education systems, including ensuring that both access and quality are enhanced for those generally excluded by poverty, ethnicity, gender, and other factors. Thus, the need to identify and evaluate good policy and practice to feed into new educational reforms in developing countries has reached a critical point. China, for example, has recently announced a new long-term programme of reforms to enhance educational quality, fairness and equity as well as specifically teacher quality, which policy makers and the public see as one of the key levers to improve student outcomes (NPC, 2009). China has also recently announced a considerable increase in education funding to 4 per cent of GDP, much nearer to the funding levels of developed countries. Similarly, new educational reforms are in progress, to a greater or lesser extent, across many developing countries in Africa and South America.
