Consultant and researcher with specialist expertise on education, training and human resources development issues in Sub-Saharan Africa

Welcome to my website. For the last forty years, I have been working as an education economist undertaking research and consultancy assignments across a wide range of education, vocational training and other human resources development issues mainly in sub-Saharan Africa.

The main purpose of this website is to disseminate the findings of my current and past research to as wide an audience as possible and to stimulate discussion and debate around key issues concerning education policy and practice in Sub-Saharan Africa and elsewhere.

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Latest posts

October 15, 2022

Primary and secondary education

THE ATTAINMENT OF GENDER EDUCATION EQUALITY: A PRELIMINARY ASSESSMENT OF COUNTRY PERFORMANCE IN SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA

A key Sustainable Development Goal target is to ‘eliminate gender disparities in education’ by 2030. The prevailing consensus is that considerable progress has been made in reducing gender schooling inequality during the last two decades. As the 2020 UNESCO Global Gender Education Monitoring Report notes that ‘there has been a generational leap in access to […]

October 15, 2022

Primary and secondary education

DISSATISFIED BUT NOWHERE TO GO: TEACHER ATTRITION AND UNEMPLOYMENT IN SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA

There are two types of teacher attrition or ‘wastage’. Voluntary attrition where teachers leave the profession before the official retirement age (and thus formally resign from their positions) and involuntary attrition where serving teachers either retire (at the officially prescribed age or earlier as a result of illness), die, or are dismissed for misconduct. Read […]

October 15, 2022

Primary and secondary education

TEACHING TOO LITTLE TO TOO MANY: TEACHING LOADS AND CLASS SIZE IN SECONDARY SCHOOLS IN SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA

The critical importance of all young people in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) being able to access good quality secondary education is now widely recognised by governments, international aid partners and other key stakeholders. To this end, the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 4.1 has an explicit target that ‘by 2030, all girls and boys complete […]

October 15, 2022

Primary and secondary education

HOW WELL PAID ARE PRIMARY SCHOOL TEACHERS IN SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA? A REVIEW OF RECENT EVIDENCE

Teacher pay in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) and South Asia has been a highly contentious area of education policy since the early 2000s. This has largely arisen in response to the findings of research and other policy analysis that argues that teachers at government schools in many countries are ‘overpaid’ and that, where this is the […]