'Distributing Educational Opportunities: Positionality, Equality and Responsibility.' International Journal of Children's Rights 24 (3) (original) (raw)

Putting educational equality in its place

Educational equality is one important value of justice in education, but it is only one. This article makes a case for a meritocratic principle of educational equality and shows that certain arguments against that principle do not justify rejecting it. It would be wrong to, for the sake of educational equality, undermine the value of the family or economic growth in ways that damage the prospects for flourishing of the least advantaged. But insofar as educational equality can be improved without harming those other values, it should be pursued; in practice, educational equality can be pursued effectively within the limits set by those values.

EQUALITY IN EDUCATION: PHILOSOPHICAL AND LEGAL PERSPECTIVE

Euromentor Journal, 2019

The article discusses the problem of equality in education, particularly in the field of access to education. It presents contemporary philosophical trends in regard to this subject matter, explaining the difference between formal equality and substantive one. The conception of educational adequacy is also presented. What is more, the author shows how previously elitist views are still – in a legitimate way – part of principles governing the problem. When it comes to legal considerations, the paper delivers comprehensive outlook on provisions guaranteed in the United Nations system of protection of human rights with respect to equality in education. Inefficiency of these provisions is portrayed as one of the causes of recent changes in the area of right to education, that afflicts also the problem of educational equality.

Inequality of Opportunity in Education

2014

The Policy Research Working Paper Series disseminates the findings of work in progress to encourage the exchange of ideas about development issues. An objective of the series is to get the findings out quickly, even if the presentations are less than fully polished. The papers carry the names of the authors and should be cited accordingly. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this paper are entirely those of the authors. They do not necessarily represent the views of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/World Bank and its affiliated organizations, or those of the Executive Directors of the World Bank or the governments they represent.

Fair Opportunity in Education: A Democratic Equality Perspective

Ethics, 2007

Recent work on justice in the distribution of educational opportunities has focused on two phenomena. The first is the shift in the United States from an "equality" to an "adequacy" standard of fair educational opportunity. Instead of making the state provide equal educational inputs to rich and poor children, advocates for the disadvantaged, courts, and policy makers have been trying to make the state educate all students to at least an adequate threshold of achievement. 1 The second is the fact that education is not just an intrinsic good for the individual but an important instrumental good with positional features. It opens up access to the most rewarding careers and leadership positions in society in virtue of endowing individuals with relatively superior qualifications. Because such high payoffs are attached to an individual's relative academic achievement in the competition for rewarding careers, one person's gain in educational achievement is another's loss of socioeconomic prospects. This consideration has led many egalitarians to reject adequacy standards for educational opportunity and insist that the stateand even parents-should constrain their educational investments in children according to an equality standard. Only so, it is argued, can individuals have genuinely fair opportunities, and only so can the state avoid unjustly injuring the already disadvantaged by effectively closing

Between Equality and Freedom of Choice: Educational Opportunities for the Least Advantaged

International Journal of Educational Development, 2017

This paper reexamines the philosophical debate between egalitarians and libertarians regarding school choice. Section 2 looks at the egalitarian approach defended by Harry Brighouse and Adam Swift, analysing its proposals for restricting parental partiality in search of achieving more educational equality among socioeconomic groups. Section 3 presents the most relevant critique to the egalitarian approach, and the alternative libertarian proposal defended by James Tooley. It argues that the egalitarian approach does not succeed in benefiting the least advantaged, and that it is too restrictive on fundamental freedoms. As an alternative, Tooley proposes to focus on benefiting the least advantaged by ensuring them an adequate education through an expansion of their scope of educational choice, and charity. Section 4 presents a critique of Tooley's approach, arguing that: first, adequacy does not benefit the least advantaged, and, second, that its exclusive focus on freedom of choice disregards the responsibility for those harmed by one's freedom. Section 5 closes by proposing that a redistributive mechanism can solve the deficiencies with both accounts (in non-ideal circumstances) by maintaining the scope of parental freedom, and benefiting the least advantaged through compensation for their unfair positional disadvantage.

Equal Chances in Education – Rights and Opportunities for All

Risk in Contemporary Economy

The aim of this article is to contextualize the meaning of equal educational opportunities in order to understand the pattern of chances for education from a social justice perspective. Also, this paper wants to provide specific characteristics of equal rights and opportunities in education. We already know that in educational institutions, the educators and students are different in terms of various factors. These include race, religion, ethnicity, gender, age, educational qualifications and socioeconomic background. Equal chances in education are an important sign of a good society with an improved educational system and attention for all students to achieve objectives.

Inequality in Education: A Critical Analysis

Several leading development agencies had posited education and equity as key themes at the onset of the 21st century. The United Nation's Millennium Development Goal (MDG) No.2 “Achieve Universal Primary Education” and MDG No.3 “Promote Gender Equality and Empower Women” are devoted to educational attainment and equity on a global level. UNESCO's Institute for Statistics (Sherman & Poirier 2007) recently published a book that compares education equity among 16 of the world's largest countries. Although the focus of this UNESCO volume was limited—using access to formal schooling and allocated resources to education as operational definitions of equity in the case countries— the selection of this topic by UNESCO emphasizes the urgency of education inequality analysis by and for educators, researchers, and policy makers. The World Bank's World Development Report(WDR) features a global development issue thought to be especially timely. The WDRs are generously funded and typically of high professional rigor. The discipline of economics is always well reported as expected. The WDR for 2006, in a line of such reports dating back to 1978, is titled Equity and Development. Equity or equality and its ubiquitously maligned antonym, inequality, is a theme that appears with uniform regularity in the publications of major development agencies as well as finding a home in the development prospectus of the smallest nongovernmental organizations. Linking equity to development in the title of the WDR 2006 will provide grist for the mill of only the most hardened of World Bank critics. Like us, many development professionals recognize the World Bank, with its enormous reach and prestige, for placing equity front and center on the development stage.But why the urgency now? And, in any case, should our concern with equity go beyond the ideal of social justice to the heart of a development agenda? What is the known relationship, if any, between equity and development? And what role, if any, does inequality in educational attainment or learning achievement play in a nation's development ranking?

Right to Education and Equality of Educational Opportunities (SPECIAL ISSUE : Right to Education)

2014

One witnesses unprecedented disparities in access to education in terms of educational attainments. This constitutes a major limitation on the realization for the right to education without discrimination or exclusion. It calls for greater emphasis upon the fulfi llment of State obligations to ensure that the fundamental principle of equality of opportunity in education which is common to almost all international human rights treaties is given effect to. It also calls for intensifying normative action with emphasis on affirmative action and social protection measures for achieving equality of opportunities in education, both in law and in fact. A strong regulatory framework for public and private education systems grounded in the principle of equality of opportunity provides the essential basis for the establishment of an entire range of programmes and policies, guided by equitable approaches in favour of the marginalized, in particular the children from poor families.