Access to basic education in Ghana: politics, policies and progress

This monograph examines the history and politics of educational reform in Ghana, focusing on the issue of access to basic education in the post-colonial period. The monograph employs data from a series of interviews conducted with senior policy-makers, implementers and researchers, as well as drawing on documentary sources, to explore the drivers and inhibitors of change at the political, bureaucratic and grass-roots levels. It describes the patterns of change in relation to enrolment and outlines the key policies adopted through from the British colonial administration to the various independent regimes, authoritarian and democratic. Progress in universalising access has been substantial and basic education indicators in Ghana, both in early post-colonial times and today, stand out positively when compared to most countries in sub-Saharan Africa. The study explores the nature of the domestic political and administrative machinery which has enabled comparative success in enrolment growth in Ghana, attending also to the importance of political will as well as to shifting patterns of international and donor influence. The study draws out key tensions in education policy making, including tensions between the goals of access, equity, quality and relevance; those between academic and vocational orientations; those between elite and popular interests and those between political and technical imperatives. The processes of reform begun by the Kwapong and Dzobo committees and continued through to the fCUBE policy are examined in detail and the underlying aims and objectives of these processes are shown to share a number of common although sometimes mutually conflicting features. Interview data allow a nuanced interpretation of both impetus and resistance to policy formulation and implementation. The reforms of 1987 are shown to be critical in the development of the universal basic education policies that emerged subsequently and those later policies are considered partly as responses to unrealised objectives from 1987. Following the restoration of democratic government in Ghana, the establishment of a constitutional commitment to universal basic education in 1992 provided a lasting and binding responsibility for the state, which was followed by a comprehensive policy in fCUBE. Subsequently education policy has played an important role in political manifesto pledges. The monograph concludes by considering the election pledges of the 2008 Ghana Government, their provenance and initial indications of their implementation and finally summarises its findings on progress and on the importance of policy, regime, political will, and the drivers and inhibitors of reform implementation in relation to the pursuit of basic education for all in historical perspective

Palsgraf Revisited (Again)

[Excerpt] “A funny thing happened at the 2005 meeting of the American Law Institute in Philadelphia. With hardly a thought as to the profundity—and probable futility—of its act, the assemblage bulldozed one of the enduring nuggets of common law wisdom to the pile of discarded relics of legal history. Apart from those in personal injury work, most lawyers won’t remember too many specifics about their first year law school torts courses. But if I had to bet on a single common law judicial opinion that is likely to stimulate a flicker of recognition in many memories—by specifying common law, I mean to muscle aside Marbury v. Madison by definition—my money would be on Palsgraf v. Long Island R.R. Co

The politics, policies and progress of basic education in Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka is hailed internationally for her achievements in literacy, educational enrolment and equality of educational opportunity. However, progress has not been straightforward due to the complex interactions between politics, policy formulation, and the implementation of reforms. This dynamic process has often led to contradictory outcomes. This monograph describes and analyses the political drivers and context of educational reform from the colonial era to the present before an in-depth exploration of the origins and implementation of the comprehensive 1997 education reforms. Much of the evidence referring to the later period has been drawn from extensive interviews with 20 senior members of Sri Lanka’s education policy community. From 1931 to 1970 education policies were driven by the need to assert national control over an inherited colonial system and to create a unified system of education. Policy formation relied heavily on debate in public and in parliament, following practices of governance inherited from the former colonial master. The implementation of reforms was largely undertaken by bureaucrats and teachers without interference from politicians. This policy environment changed markedly during the 1970s as decisions regarding education came to be largely driven by the need to contain rising youth unrest. Debate was stifled both in the public domain and in parliament, and politicians became increasingly involved in the day-to-day practices of education, especially those concerning teacher transfers. The 1997 education reforms were comprehensive, including programmes to ensure universal access to basic education and improvements in learning outcomes. They attracted considerable ‘political will’, a vague but much vaunted term in the international policy discourse. Yet, despite seemingly high levels of national political will, reform has not been plain sailing. School rationalisation has been impeded by community resistance and by bureaucratic demands insensitive to local conditions and cost constraints. The reforms in junior secondary education have been inhibited by weak leadership, lack of planning, heavy curriculum demands, and the absence of a pilot programme. The monograph explores the connections between the political and technical drivers and inhibitors of reform in practice and argues that low-level, as well as high-level political will, has played an active part in determining whether formulated policies are translated into action on the ground. Bi-partisan support for education policy is essential if implementation is to endure

Deterministically driven random walks in a random environment on Z

We introduce the concept of a deterministic walk in a deterministic environment on a countable state space (DWDE). For the deterministic walk in a fixed environment we establish properties analogous to those found in Markov chain theory, but for systems that do not in general have the Markov property. In particular, we establish hypotheses ensuring that a DWDE on $\Z$ is either recurrent or transient. An immediate consequence of this result is that a symmetric DWDE on $\Z$ is recurrent. Moreover, in the transient case, we show that the probability that the DWDE diverges to $+ \infty$ is either 0 or 1. In certain cases we compute the direction of divergence in the transient case

The superconducting state of the high-transition temperature superconductors: Experimental basis

Experiments on the high-T(sub c) cuprate superconductors continue to narrow the possible theoretical explanations of the phenomenon. Experimental evidence to date points to a BCS-like state, with pairs in singlet s-states, the familiar gap in the excitation spectrum, type 2 behavior in a magnetic field and a normal state with fermi liquid origins. Several other features of the superconducting state in the cuprates, however, appear to differ from those of conventional alloy superconductors (these relate to the detailed structure of the gap and to the nature of the coupling mechanism). Recent experiments have helped clarify what these differences are, and together with the earlier experiments, they now impose still stronger constraints on theories of these superconductors. These and other developments will be reviewed

Angle diversity to increase coverage and position accuracy in 3D visible light positioning

The most common approach to light-based indoor positioning relies on multilateration of received signals to the mobile device. Any deficiencies in the fidelity of these light signals can significantly distort position estimates. In this paper, we propose a method to dynamically control the light distribution from the overhead luminaires to mitigate fading effects that would otherwise occur under static lighting. By manipulating the direction of the luminaire, effectively the dispersion pattern, we introduce signal diversity in the form of multiple pointing angles and light distributions. In addition to providing angle diversity, steering and then tracking sustains the maximal line-of-sight path between a source and receiver, which reduces angle-dependent attenuation and optimizes the signal-to-noise ratio for any coordinate without needing to change the physical properties of the source or receiver. This gain in signal strength combats the limited field-of-view of luminaires and photodiodes to provide better overall coverage, which translates directly to increase positioning accuracy, particularly in a 3D space. In the results, we show field-of-view gains of 43% and improvements in MSE of 20cm.Accepted manuscrip

Survival mediation analysis with the death-truncated mediator: The completeness of the survival mediation parameter

In medical research, the development of mediation analysis with a survival outcome has facilitated investigation into causal mechanisms. However, studies have not discussed the death-truncation problem for mediators, the problem being that conventional mediation parameters cannot be well-defined in the presence of a truncated mediator. In the present study, we systematically defined the completeness of causal effects to uncover the gap, in conventional causal definitions, between the survival and nonsurvival settings. We proposed three approaches to redefining the natural direct and indirect effects, which are generalized forms of the conventional causal effects for survival outcomes. Furthermore, we developed three statistical methods for the binary outcome of the survival status and formulated a Cox model for survival time. We performed simulations to demonstrate that the proposed methods are unbiased and robust. We also applied the proposed method to explore the effect of hepatitis C virus infection on mortality, as mediated through hepatitis B viral load

RECENT COST INCREASES: THEIR FUTURE IMPACTS ON AGRICULTURE

Demand and Price Analysis,

Manipulation in interpersonal relationships :

Manipulation has historically been perceived as a negative behavioral characteristic. The problem of this study was to examine the utilization of Machiavellian manipulation by elementary school principals and to analyze the sources of variability in the use of manipulation according to gender.This study was concerned with the investigation of the behavioral characteristic of manipulation as an administrative skill. Adult Continuing Education is concerned with developmental learning skills as they apply to various professional work environments. Manipulation was the skill investigated. A sample of 60 educational administrators was defined from a population of 219 elementary school principals whose schools were located in Lawton, metropolitan Oklahoma City and metropolitan Tulsa. 30 principals were male and 30 principals were female.The statistical measurement used for the study was the Kolmogorov-Smirnov Two-Sample Test. The nonparametic test was selected because it is most sensitive to any kind of differences in the distributions from which the two samples were drawn--differences in location, central tendency, dispersion and skewness. Comparison of the data by gender obtained from the study indicates that male and female administrators both use Machiavellian manipulation, and there is no significant difference between groups. This necessitates further investigation of the modernization of the idea that manipulation is an organizational administrative tool and is used by both male and female administrators