GCES Symposium 2011

Second Annual GCES Symposium

Intersections of the Public and Private in Education in the GCC

March 16-17, 2011

Al Hamra Fort Hotel and Beach Resort

Ras Al Khaimah, the northernmost Emirate

The GCES symposium 2011 examined the increasing influence of the private sector on education policies and practices in the GCC. The main questions addressed included:

What does the increasing influence of the private sector mean in terms of access, equity, quality and accountability?
What role should the private sector play in public education?

Speaker

Susan Robertson

Susan L. Robertson is currently a Professor of Sociology and the Head of Faculty at the University of Cambridge. Susan has held academic positions at the University of Bristol in the UK as well as in New Zealand and Australia. Her research engages with education policy, state transformations, governance, and social justice. Susan is also the founding editor and editor-in-chief of the journal Globalization, Societies, and Education. She has published articles in leading journals, including the Journal of Education Policy, and her recent books include Public-Private Partnerships in Education and Global Regionalisms and Higher Education: Projects, Processes, Politics. Some of her most recent publications include the book chapter “Non-state Actors, and the Advance of Frontier Higher Education Markets in the Global South” (2019) and the article “Ordinalization and the OECD’s Governance of Teachers” (2020).

Program & Schedule

The conference aimed to stimulate discussions on educational reform in the GCC, providing a platform for current and future research that explores achievements, challenges and pitfalls in education. As the education landscape continues to change, it is important to explore whether and how former education-related practices influence how education is practiced now as well as in the future.

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