Rosemary Preston

Integrating fighters after war: reflections on the Namibian experience, 1989–1993

Contributing to the growing interest in post‐war integration, this paper reviews recent research on the demobilisation and rehabilitation of fighters. Against the background of the Namibian peace, disarmament and demobilisation processes, the paper conceptualises fighter integration in terms of nation‐building and containment strategies. The creation of the Namibian defence and police forces are essential to the consolidation of the new state and afford relatively secure employment and career opportunities. Gratuity payments, skill training for future income generation, resettlement programmes and assistance to the disabled were primarily intended to minimise the threat of unrest posed by other veterans frustrated at the lack of tangible benefit from their years of contribution to the war.

Knowledge societies and planetary cultures: The changing nature of consultancy in human development

Abstract The sources for this paper include recent writing on the sociology and anthropology of knowledge and on international technical assistance. It also draws on recent work on the changing nature of international consultancy in human development. The paper locates consultants as servants of knowledge societies, not as producers of knowledge, but as mediators between knowledge producers and users. In this, consultancy is seen to be an educational process. On ever shorter contracts, restricted by broker terms and resources, by the rules that govern the conduct of their work and by their existing knowledge, international consultants contribute, at several levels, to the consolidation of what might be described as planetary dimensions of culture. New pressures include the building of local capacity and, working in teams (often multinational teams), the serving as hidden-hand facilitators in participatory planning and development processes. Over time, these concepts are converted into rhetorics of altruism, strengthening human resources, non-discriminatory gender or ethnic policy, and ensuring the relevance of the intervention planned or undertaken. Such strategies are critical components of competitive tenders. If properly presented, they become essential indicators of added value as first donors and then brokers of consultancy services compete to obtain work. To comply with terms of reference and, if desired, to fulfil these additional requirements, international consultants have to engage their partners (donor, broker, team members, host, client and end-user groups), all of whom have different stakes in the process, through the medium of discourses acceptable to them. Overall, money is the force driving all stakeholders in the consultancy game. This leads to a funnelled reconfiguration of information received, by whatever means, into narrowly defined presentational forms that will optimise the chance of winning and securing cash. With the consensus of all partners, this reduction occurs at all levels of discourse (substantive, affective, linguistic). The closer it is to the locus of the fund allocator, the more restricted and yet, increasingly formally written, the more durable it becomes. The logical planning framework is globally recognised as the vehicle for conveying in compressed form the content of consultancy reports. The cryptics of the prescribed content of its byte-sized, isolated cells are universally recognisable. If carefully polished, they ensure funding. They are readily transferable. The implications for knowledge, planetary culture and its other educational processes are discussed, as are the limited efforts to ensure accountability.

Human Capital, Social Capital and Lifelong Learning: An editorial introduction

BAICE was delighted when colleagues at the University of Nottingham proposed that the 2002 BAICE conference address lifelong long learning from human and social capital perspectives. These are topically important constructs in social and educational analysis, and taken together they allow enquiry into all fields of learning at all stages of life, in ways that encourage focused examination of the social and economic dynamics of purposes, processes and effects. The six papers included in this issue of Compare were all presented to the 2002 Nottingham conference. John Morgan (its convenor) and his colleagues, Janet Hannah and Steven Drodge, selected the papers for Compare and undertook initial reviewing. In a welcome innovation, the Nottingham team has also produced a CD of the conference proceedings, which includes the text of all papers received by the end of 2002 [1]. About 150 people attended the conference, with 90 making presentations. Most positioned their work, more and less explicitly, in relation to selected aspects of the overall theme. Few attempted an overarching conceptualisation and perhaps, given the complexity of each of the issues and the links between them, this is inevitable. To present this conference issue of Compare, we introduce in the following paragraphs current thinking about human and social capital, and ways in which it is shaping lifelong learning debates.

States, statelessness and education: Post-return integration of Namibians trained abroad

Abstract The form and extent of education in countries of asylum is the product of refuge-seeker persistence in articulating demand, the scope for NGO educational support and host government attitudes to the refuge-seekers in question. (Over the past decade, strategy has been to discourage education that would facilitate labour market access in countries of asylum.) In camps, the result has been generally poor quality basic education for a minority of refugee children and rudimentary skills training for a tiny proportion of adults. Huge efforts are also made for small numbers of refugees to pursue studies at upper secondary and tertiary levels, often in third countries willing to offer specially negotiated places. While there is little information about the intrinsic or instrumental worth of such training, in countries of asylum, resettlement or origin, governments play a crucial role in allowing exiles to work or not and in providing mechanisms for qualification recognition. A study of post-war integration in Namibia included components on employer attitudes to former exiles and a large-scale tracer study of those who as refugees had received training abroad. Initial fears on the part of the stayer population, of labour market saturation by well-educated returnees, have proved unfounded as formal qualifications are not matched with work experience. Nevertheless, returned exiles are better educated overall than stayers and, only three years after independence, are more likely to be in employment. In a country with high and growing unemployment, this has been made possible by bureaucratic expansion and affirmative action. Employers have strong feelings about the quality of training received in different countries, (data suggest that this may have more to do with levels of training provided than with national politics). Few of those with basic vocational skills have found work, although some are seeking further qualifications. The government has done little to help. The competency rating scheme is inefficient although plans are being made to strengthen it. The system of credit transfer applied to professional and academic qualifications, still bound by South African restrictions, is seen by many as the biggest obstacle to public sector employment. Loopholes have been found to enable non-recognised educational and health professionals to work, often outside conventional career structures. There is much bitterness among those who remain excluded. This, the frustration of those to be retrenched in bureaucratic contraction and the anger of ex-combatants with no tangible gain for their sacrifice combine to produce a potent threat to national stability.

Organisational perspectives on the local management of schools: Papua New Guinean case studies☆

Abstract Associated with the economic adjustments of recent years, there is a trend in many countries for governments to devolve responsibility for logistical support to schools. This paper is a study of factors that can influence the local management necessary for the provision of this support. Drawing from two, largely rural, studies in Papua New Guinea (a national survey and a detailed analysis of community management of 13 schools in a single area), the paper describes the school, its Board of Management and the community as a trio of organisations with theoretically complementary objectives. It points to the inadequacy of general cultural explanations for Board inability to sustain operations over time. It claims that Board members, people in the communities they represent and teachers all have private expectations of their association with schools, which if not met, will undermine commitment. Ensuring these are met, with secondary regulatory action, can reduce the frequency of organisational troughs of apathy. As it is, in Papua New Guinea and elsewhere, the prospect of expectation fulfilment associated with socio-economic advantage means that those with least to gain may refuse to become involved with education systems.

Gender and Relevance: decentralised vocational education in Papua New Guinea

Abstract In Papua New Guinea, responsibility for managing components of different education sectors falls variously to national and provincial government and to communities. In all but vocational training, control of the core curriculum remains with national government. Associated with the diversity of cultures, it is claimed that the paths to development adopted by provincial governments require locally specific skills in their labour forces. Local control of the vocational training curriculum is intended to ensure that these are met. In the context of the decentralisation of services elsewhere, this paper discusses the implications of this policy in terms of the status of the activity and the gendered structures of its implementation and effects.

Refugees in Papua New Guinea: government response and assistance, 1984-1988.

Melanesian West Papuans have been seeking refuge in Papua New Guinea since Indonesia annexed the province of Irian Jaya in 1962. The slowness of the Papua New Guinean government to respond to the 12,000 who crossed the border in 1984 paved the way for subsequent policy of minimal assistance so as not to jeopardize national security, by antagonizing Indonesia or by exacerbating the jealously of local people. As in other places, the long-term effect for refugees is likely to be social and economic marginalization, combined with insecure residential status.

Celebration, reflection and challenge: The BAICE 20th anniversary

This Forum feature is one of a series of initiatives designed to recognise and celebrate the 20 Anniversary of the British Association for International and Comparative Education (BAICE). It is an honour for both of us to represent the association in this anniversary year and we are pleased to help mark this important milestone with this special edition of the Compare Forum. The anniversary initiatives include a well-attended and well-received Anniversary Symposium on the theme of ‘Sustainability, Peace and Education’, convened by the Centre for Comparative and International Research in Education (CIRE) at the University of Bristol (https://cireblog.wordpress.com/blog/) in May 2018, and a panel discussion based upon the present Compare Forum contributions scheduled for the association’s annual conference to be held at the University of York from September 12–14, 2018 (see https://baice.ac.uk). Michael will also build his 2018 Presidential Address around the history, evolution and ‘reconceptualisation’ of BAICE (Crossley 1999), while engaging with the conference theme and his own related research. In planning the shape and content of the Forum, efforts were made to identify a diverse range of contributors who could reflect upon their personal experience of different times, roles and activities. The following sections thus cover the pre-history of BAICE, its foundation and early days, strengthening of the research dimension, increased opportunities for doctoral and early-career researchers, the growth and development of Compare, the official journal of the Association, and contemporary challenges and priorities for future development. Biographical details for the contributors are included at the end to indicate how and when they have each engaged with and supported the society. Contributors were invited to develop the above themes in ways that document the growth of BAICE and demonstrate how much has both changed and been achieved in those first 20 years – years that, as many of our writers have remarked, have passed so quickly! While there is certainly well justified space for celebration, each of our contributors also critically interrogate a number of contemporary challenges that need to be addressed as BAICE explores new priorities for the future. In the light of our own experience, and the papers presented here, that future will be challenging but secure if the collegial, supportive and friendly culture that has long COMPARE 2018, VOL. 48, NO. 5, 801–820 https://doi.org/10.1080/03057925.2018.1499219

Common interests, uncommon goals. Histories of the World Council of Comparative Education Societies and its members, by Vandra Masemann, Mark Bray, and Maria Manzon

Common Interests, Uncommon Goals was written over a 10-year period, as a labour of love and commitment to comparative studies in education. Linked to successive World Council of Comparative Education Societies (WCCES) business meetings in different parts of the world, the book’s preparation was coordinated by the Comparative Education Research Centre at the University of Hong Kong. After an introduction by the editors, heralding a multidisciplinary institutional approach, there are two main sections and a concluding chapter. In the first eight chapters, former presidents report on WCCES developments since 1970 and the issues with which they had to contend during their periods of office. Nineteen of the 20 chapters in part two are histories of member societies established before 1995, with the last characterising the 14 most recent member organisations. Part three contains a single chapter, which frames the development of WCCES and its many constituent bodies with reference to published writing on the organisational instutionalisation of scholarly disciplines. The editors’ challenge was to combine the history of an umbrella organisation with that of its membership. WCCES action is mediated by individual society representatives, from bases in more than 30 countries. They are people who have been active in their national society and held office as members of its governing body and committees. Those supporting the Council for many years, usually in a range of capacities, have a deeply textured knowledge of its history and ways of working. Those involved for no more than short periods of office in national societies are much less aware. Similarly, while WCCES itself has an enviable archive at Kent State University, the completeness of the institutional memories of individual societies varies with the quality of documentary information available (published and unpublished) and of unrecorded individual memories, sometimes referring to events that occurred decades earlier. Nearly all the authors are renowned comparative educationalists and in a commanding position to contribute to these histories. Their texts list names, events, evolving priorities and achievements, sometimes with detailed explanations, elsewhere in passing. Readers unfamiliar with the scholarly terrain may turn away bemused. Those keen to further understanding are offered a resource that will aid enquiry into the development of the field and the organisational networks it has inspired since World War II. Starting electronically, the early stages of such a journey should be easy, helped by the book’s index and chapter reference lists. Researchers will be able to compare narratives of society formation, constitutions and evolution, from the USA, Western Europe and Australasia, to Asia, South America, Africa and the post-Soviet nations. They will be led to track the interdependence of professional organisational Compare Vol. 39, No. 1, January 2008, 124–126

What Was Refugee Status? Legislating the Changing Practice of Refugee Law

The tension between practice and the law it informs is a helix. Established law may set a norm for practice until such a point that the two are so far apart that the norm-setting law is changed. As a slow process, this is usually not before continuously dynamic practice has moved on, widening the gap between it and the new law, which is already lagging behind. However small initial deviations in practice from the norms of law may be, it will be organised political pressures conforming to leading ideas of the moment that direct their increasing momentum and the tenor of eventual legislative change.