(An item from the ISHN Member information service) An article in Issue #2, 2015 of Journal of Development Effectiveness examines the uphill struggle of aid effectiveness caused by the proliferation and fragmentation of aid projects. The authors suggest that " Aid fragmentation is one of the hindrances to aid effectiveness. As a main contributing factor, proliferated aids from the donor side have been pointed out. In this regard, we first examine the main factors for the donors’ proliferation and its links with the recipients’ fragmentation, which have been asked in several studies, but are revisited again with a comprehensive up-to-date data set. We also examine whether a recipient country is indeed going to get worse off through fragmented aid or, more directly, by proliferated aid. The main findings are (1) donors tend to proliferate their aid disbursement as their aid budget increases; (2) the recipients’ fragmentation is mainly due to the donors’ proliferation, and this has been prevalent since the early stage of aid history; (3) non-monotonicity is shown between aid fragmentation and growth, given that economies of scale is dominant in the incipient stage of a recipient country’s growth, but turns out to affect negatively in the long run; (4) therefore, the donors’ proliferation will eventually harm the recipients’ growth. Read more>>
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(An item from the ISHN Member information service) In 2013, up to $75 billion dollars was invested by the governments of 169 countries into school feeding programmes. It is estimated that for every $1 spent feeding school children, $3 are generated for the local economy. On January 22, a special meeting of global leaders in school feeding met in the UK parliament to discuss how governments are increasingly using school feeding programmes as a means to both improve educational outcomes and at the same time improve agricultural economies. The real impact that a successful HGSF programme can have was provided by keynote speaker, H.E Raul Argebesola, Governor of Osun State in Nigeria who said that since the launch of his State’s school meals programme (known as O’Meals) which feeds over 250,000 children every school day, enrolment has increased by 24%. The O’Meals programme provides employment to over 3,000 women and purchases food from over 1000 local farmers. Key resources published as part of this parliamentary event include: Rethinking school feeding executive summary, State of School Feeding Worldwide 2013 and a HGSF Working Paper Series #1
Read more>> (An item from the ISHN Member information service) An article in the April 2013 Issue of BMC Public Health explores the process, reception and reactions to school closings during an outbrerak of influenza or other diseases. School closings, if done quickly and effectively, may disrupt the disease transmission vectors in such outbreaks. The authors note that "Drawing on Thompson et al’s ethical framework for pandemic planning, we show that considerable variation existed between and within schools in their attention to ethical processes and values. In all schools, health officials and school leaders were strongly committed to providing high quality care for members of the school community. There was variation in the extent to which information was shared openly and transparently, the degree to which school community members considered themselves participants in decision-making, and the responsiveness of decision-makers to the changing situation. Reservations were expressed about the need for closures and quarantine and there was a lack of understanding of the rationale for the closures. In our study, trust was the foundation upon which effective responses to the school closure were built. Trust relations within the school were the basis on which different values and beliefs were used to develop and justify the practices and strategies in response to the pandemic. Read more>>
(An item from the ISHN Member information service) Two articles in Issue #3, 2013 of School Psychology International describe the long=lasting impact of conflicy and violence on students. The first article describes the ecology of family life, neighbourhoods and schools in Belfast. Controlling for religious community, age, and gender, youths’ lower academic achievement was associated with family environments characterized by high conflict and low cohesion. School behaviour problems were related to greater exposure to community violence, or sectarian and nonsectarian antisocial behaviour. Youths’ expectations about educational attainment were undermined by conflict in the family environment and antisocial behaviour in the community, as well as parenting low in warmth and behavioural control. The second article describes interactions between teachers & Arab students in Bedouin schools in Israel. "Student responses indicated that abusive teacher behaviors occur often and are increasing since 1997. Female students tended to register higher levels of punitive teacher behaviors than male students and secondary school students tended to register higher levels of punitive teacher behaviors than elementary school students". Read more>>
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