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International news round-up We highlight some education policy stories of interest from around the world in the past month.
Private tertiary group lists on Australian stock market IBT Australia, the operator of several pre-university foundation colleges, launched an initial public offering this month to raise $51 million for expansion. When it lists in December, it will be the first tertiary education company on the Australian stock market. IBT's student numbers have almost doubled to 10,000 in the past three years, the Australian Financial Review has reported.
UK Government plans private nurseries at state primary schools The British Labour government plans to fund primary schools to set up private fee-paying day nurseries for infants and young children, as well as providing breakfast clubs and after-school activities for their pupils. While they will not be forced to run the nurseries, the government believes that schools are well placed to provide activities that prepare children for formal education. A Times story is at this web page.
UK private school chain to run state schools Global Education Management Systems, the largest chain of private schools in England, has recently taken over a group working to turn around failing state schools. It has taken over a non-profit company called 3Es which was the first private firm to be awarded a contract to open and manage a state school. 3Es has a 10-year contract from Surrey Council to run two schools. GEMS has 50 schools around the world and 13 in England, and has ambitious plans to open many more, including 100 in India. A BBC story. A story in the Economic Times.
Online education popular and growing in the US Nearly two million US students were enrolled in online courses this time last year, 19 percent more than the year before and the figure is likely to reach 2.6 million this year. The growth rate among private, for-profit colleges is expected to be about 40 percent, almost double the rate among public or private nonprofit colleges. The schools that consistently have the lowest opinions of online learning, have the lowest enrolment numbers and are growing the slowest, the Chronicle of Higher Education has reported. The figures come from the Sloan Consortium, a US group of institutions and organisations committed to quality online education. More information on the survey.
Paper looks at role govt should play in helping employers with training A research paper says that employers provide and pay for general training and the provision of skills encourages labour turnover but there is little if any evidence in support of underprovision because of liquidity constraints to the demand side of the market. This suggests that the market provides less training than is optimal. Existing empirical evidence suggests that policy discussions should focus on the employer rather than on employees. The paper discusses policies which affect the employers' marginal benefits and marginal costs of training. "Market failures and the under-provision of training", by Italian academics Giorgio Brunello and Maria de Paola, is at this web page.
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