UNESCO Chair

From September 30 to October 2, 2024, UNESCO and the African Union convened 600 UNESCO Chairs and Partners for an International Forum. The event was held in the prestigious conference building of the African Union in Addis Ababa. Ethiopian President Sahle-Work Zewde, who had chaired the committee that produced UNESCO’s Futures of Education Report, presided over the opening session. Amharic and Swahili versions of the Report were launched, and now sit alongside the existing versions in 13 languages.

On the first day of the Forum, UNESCO Chairholder Mark Bray participated in a panel on the future of the right to education. Building on previous discussions in Geneva and Paris (see below), he noted complexities in the domain of shadow education and called attention to the book on Shadow Education in Africa published by the Comparative Education Research Centre at the University of Hong Kong. 

Following the Forum was a one-day event, also in the African Union building, organised by the UNESCO International Institute for Capacity Building in Africa (IICBA) in conjunction with the African Union. It marked World Teachers’ Day, and was another forward-looking event that stressed the importance of international partnerships.

Stanford University's list of "World's Top 2%" scientists identifies the world's leading researchers, representing approximately 2% of all scientists worldwide. It encompasses standardised data on citations, h-index, and a wide range of bibliometric indicators. The methodology is available here. 

Each year since the list was launched in 2020, Mark Bray has been included. In 2024 he was ranked 262 among 95,876 authors.

Professor Bray is especially known for his work on shadow education. A 2024 bibliographic analysis by Hajar and Mehmet observed that “Bray and his colleagues from the University of Hong Kong … have been the most prolific and influential research team”. This study was an update of a 2022 analysis that similarly stated that “Bray has been the most productive researcher in the shadow education field with the highest number of publications …, citation count …, and total link strength”. A related finding was presented in 2024 by Li and Wang: “Mark Bray leads within shadow education research cooperation networks because all his three centrality measures rank at the top.”

On September 13, 2024, ICUA’s Governing Board convened to consider progress and chart further directions. The meeting was chaired by the Deputy Governor of Hainan Province, and brought together officers from China’s UNESCO National Commission, other branches of government, and UNESCO Headquarters (Paris). Other Governing Board members included Mark Bray in his role as UNESCO Chair at HKU; and Yousriya AlHarthi, who Coordinates the ASPnet schools in Oman, brought a voice from the Middle East. The meeting applauded the hard work and vision of the new leadership.

The Evolving Right to Education

The right to education, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages, was enshrined in the 1948 United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Since that time, consensus on the right to education has been elaborated and refined to reflect changing circumstances across the world.

On December 14, 2023, UNESCO, in its Paris Headquarters, launched a new process of consultation and dialogue on the evolving right. The event was organised in partnership with the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Education and the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.

The Framework for the event noted that in the rapidly-changing world, education is undergoing a transformational journey. Education, it added, “is no longer only confined to traditional classrooms and textbooks but has expanded to encompass lifelong and life-wide learning”. UNESCO and partners are considering how the right to education, as enshrined in international normative instruments, can be reinforced to meet these evolving needs and to address the twin crises of equity and relevance.

Professor Mark Bray joined the dialogue his capacity as UNESCO Chair in Comparative Education. He stressed the need to address issues relating to shadow education when considering dimensions of human rights. Participants recognised the pertinence of this remark, which is being taken into account during preparation of the next steps. Related materials are available here.

The UNESCO Teacher Education Centre in Shanghai

Around the world, UNESCO has 14 Category 2 centres in the education sector. The centres are privileged partners with access to UNESCO’s logo and international and intergovernmental bodies, and are an integral part of UNESCO’s Comprehensive Partnership Strategy.

In October 2021, after four years of planning, China officially launched its UNESCO Category 2 Centre in Shanghai. The Centre focuses on teacher education, and is directed by Professor Zhang Minxuan.

Professor Zhang is a graduate of the University of Hong Kong (HKU), having completed his PhD in 2001 under the supervision of Professor Mark Bray. They are here pictured together during Professor Bray’s June 2023 visit to the Centre. Following graduation from HKU, Professor Zhang became Faculty of Education Dean and then President of Shanghai Normal University.

The Centre has remarkable facilities, with a new building opened in 2022. It has already achieved a lot, and has ambitions for much more. Initiatives include training of personnel for special education in ASEAN countries, and of mathematics teachers in Tanzania. Further, in October 2023 the Centre launched an annual  Exchange Project for National Education Administrative Officials as part of the 10th anniversary commemoration of China’s Belt and Road Initiative. The event welcomed 33 officials from 17 countries, and focused on both pre-career teacher education and in-career teacher cultivation and training.

HKU is proud to have ongoing links with Professor Zhang, and wishes the Centre continued success in its leadership for international development.

UNESCO’s International Institute for Educational Planning (IIEP) was founded in 1963, and thus in 2023 reached its 60th year. 

Mark Bray, holder of the UNESCO Chair at HKU, was the IIEP’s eighth Director, from 2006 to 2010. At the invitation of’ the IIEP, Mark Bray prepared a piece for the anniversary website. It is entitled “Evolving Directions in Educational Planning: Looking Back, and Looking Ahead”, and is available here.

The piece commences by revisiting the 2011 book published by IIEP that Mark Bray co-edited with N.V. Varghese. It is entitled  Directions in Educational Planning: International Experiences and Perspectives. The book was an assessment of trends in educational planning over the decades, noting challenges in the 1980s but then rejuvenation. The United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) have provided a focus for this rejuvenation, together with assessments of the impact of COVID-19, artificial intelligence, etc..

 

Professor Bray then travelled to Paris to join IIEP in their celebratory  Symposium on Educational Planning on November 8-9, 2023. Over 1,400 people from 150 countries and territories joined in person and online. They included personnel from Ministries of Education and international agencies, many of whom were former IIEP trainees. The event noted multiple past achievements while looking ahead to the future. A summary, with photographs and videos, is available here.

The HKU UNESCO Chair, of which Mark Bray is the Chairholder, was officially launched on May 18, 2012. Among foremost guests for the launch was Tang Qian, at the time Assistant Director-General for Education in UNESCO Headquarters. 

Eleven years later, on June 1, 2023, Tang Qian again held the stage with Mark Bray, this time in a forum organised by East China Normal University (ECNU) entitled “Youth Leaders and Futures of Education”. With a biographical focus it charted a pair of life-histories that had commenced separately and half a century later had converged in Paris. 

The forum was attended by graduate students from China and from a dozen African countries. It was chaired by Ora Kwo, who has long acquaintance with both Mark Bray and Tang Qian. Ora Kwo taught in HKU for nearly four decades from 1981, and has her own experiences with UNESCO especially during and after residence in Paris in the late 2000s.

The forum began by stressing the value of dialogue across generations and nations, and with a vision of leadership as a journey of sustainable personal growth. Ora Kwo commenced with a traditional Chinese dictum: “One Family from Four Seas” (四海一家). She invited personal reflections for better understanding of the challenges and opportunities for education in international relationships. Participants were invited to contribute their voices after two rounds of questions to Tang and Bray.

Starting on different sides of the globe
Tang Qian was born in Beijing in 1950, and received his early education in Tsinghua Primary School followed by Tsinghua High School. In 1968, during China’s Cultural Revolution, he was sent to rural Shanxi Province to share peasant lives and strengthen his commitment to nation building and social change. Five years later he became a student in Shanxi University. Following graduation in 1976 he was assigned to a middle school where he taught physical education and English. Then in 1979, as one of the earliest government-funded graduate students, Tang was sent to Canada where he obtained a Master’s degree in exercise physiology and a doctorate in biology from the University of Windsor.

 

At the crossroads of academia and diplomacy, Tang Qian chose the latter. From 1985 he worked in central ministries and local governments in China, until in 1993 he took a post in UNESCO’s Paris headquarters. His tenure there lasted for 25 years, and is the focus of an autobiography in Chinese of which a summary is available here. 

Mark Bray was born in 1952 on the other side of the globe, and completed his schooling in England. In 1970 he experienced excitements of a gap between schooling and university, as a volunteer teacher in a rural secondary school in Kenya. It was a radical immersion in a different culture and in a location without electricity or running water. He returned to Africa during each summer vacation of university studies. Then, following graduation he served in rural Nigeria for two years, again as a volunteer teacher. These experiences, Mark Bray recounted, were seminal in shaping his character. He later enrolled in a Master’s degree in African Studies at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, following which he returned to Nigeria to teach and to conduct fieldwork for his doctorate which was completed in 1980. 

The UNESCO Chair is pleased to be associated with a new book written by Professor Zhang Wei. The book, published by Routledge, is entitled Taming the Wild Horse of Shadow Education: The Global Expansion of Private Tutoring and Regulatory Responses. It can be downloaded free of charge here. 

Zhang Wei completed her PhD at HKU in 2013, focusing on shadow education in China. She remained in HKU for some years as a postdoctoral fellow and Secretary of the Comparative Education Research Centre (CERC). Now she is Executive Director of the Centre for International Research in Supplementary Tutoring (CIRIST) at East China Normal University (ECNU), Shanghai.

The book builds on Professor Zhang’s background report for UNESCO’s Global Education Monitoring (GEM) Report on non-state actors in education. That background report was prepared when she was a GEM Fellow in 2020/21, and has had significant impact not only as a contribution to the UNESCO analysis but also more widely.

Mark Bray, UNESCO Chairholder, was invited to join the Opening Ceremony on February 14, 2023. He did this in his role as a past CIES president (2016-2017) as well as a past president of the Comparative Education Society of Hong Kong (CESHK, 1998-2000) and of the World Council of Comparative Education Societies (WCCES, 2007-2010). 

Within the conference, Mark Bray also chaired a Presidential Invited Session on Shadow Education in Asia. Panellists included Wei Zhang focusing on models of governance in Japan, India and China; Nisma Elias focusing on the reproduction of elite status in Bangladesh; and Hang Bich Duong focusing on teachers’ motivations and identities in relation to private tutoring in Vietnam. Priyadarshani Joshi, from UNESCO’s team for the Global Education Monitoring (GEM) Report, was the Discussant.

Among the opening speakers was Federico Mayor, who had launched the programme in 1992 during his tenure as UNESCO Director-General (1987-99). Introduced by Stefania Gianini, the current Assistant Director-General for Education, Mayor recalled the vision at that time. Participants lauded the vision, which they felt had indeed been largely accomplished and was ongoing.

Another highlight was the keynote address by Achille Mbembe from the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa. It was entitled “The Transformation of the Knowledge Commons: Perspectives from the Global South” and, together with other plenary sessions, is available here.        

Mark Bray’s history of empirical research in Cambodia stretches for a quarter of a century. His work for UNESCO and UNICEF in the 1990s led to a book published in 1999 by UNESCO’s International Institute for Educational Planning (IIEP). The book was entitled The Private Costs of Public Schooling: Household and Community Financing of Primary Education in Cambodia. Expenditures on private tutoring were among the striking components of those household costs.

This book was followed by another in 2005, co-authored with Seng Bunly and entitled Balancing the Books: Household Financing of Basic Education in Cambodia. The research was conducted under the auspices of the World Bank, repeating the earlier sample survey of primary schools and adding lower secondary schools.

Then in the mid-2010s Mark Bray returned to Cambodia to examine patterns in Grades 9 and 12. Among publications are articles in the International Journal of Educational Development (2016) and the Journal of Curriculum Studies (2018).

The work has been conducted in conjunction with the Centre for International Research in Supplementary Tutoring (CIRIST)  at East China Normal University and the UNESCO Regional Center for Educational Planning (RCEP) in United Arab Emirates. The UNESCO Chair much appreciates this collaboration.  

UNESCO’s Mahatma Gandhi Institute of Education for Peace and Sustainable Development (MGIEP) has launched its International Science and Evidence Based Education (ISEE) Assessment. It brings together multi-disciplinary expertise on educational systems and reforms from a wide range of stakeholders. The report is a huge accomplishment, based on four working groups for:

1. 1. Education and Human Flourishing,
2. 2. Education and Context,
3. 3. Education and the Learning Experience, and
4. 4. Education Data and Evidence.

The HKU UNESCO Chair particularly contributed to Working Group 2.  Its section of the report can be downloaded here. Specific foci include political economy implications for efficiency, equity and social justice. The report also addresses education technology, neuroscience, and curriculum in a changing world.

And now the second edition is available in:

• Korean,
• Portuguese,
• Russian, and
• Turkish.

We are proud to reach such wide readership. The book is core reading for university students around the world, has been reviewed in 33 journals, and has several thousand citations (including individual chapters) in the international literature. To learn more about the book, click here.

 

GEM Report on Non-State Actors in Education

Other works cited in the report include the paper on shadow education in India written by Shalini Bhorkar and Mark Bray and published in the  International Journal of Educational Development, the CERC book entitled Regulating Private Tutoring For Public Good by Mark Bray and Ora Kwo, and Bray’s Presidential Address to the Comparative and International Education Society (CIES) published in the Comparative Education Review.  

In November 2021, UNESCO Chairholder Mark Bray launched the Portuguese translation of his book about Shadow Education in Africa. The book is published by the Comparative Education Research Centre at the University of Hong Kong in conjunction with the UNESCO Chair. It appeared first in English, followed by French and now Portuguese. Arabic is on the way, completing the set of four main official languages spoken on the African continent.

The book is an elaboration of a background paper for UNESCO’s Global Education Monitoring (GEM) Report, of which the 2021/22 iteration focuses on non-state actors in education. Shadow education features prominently in that report, in large measure reflecting the inputs of Professor Bray and colleagues.

The Portuguese translation was prepared by Candido Gomes in conjunction with the UNESCO Chair in Youth, Education and Society at the Catholic University of Brazil. It was supported by Alexandre Ventura at the University of Aveiro in Portugal and by Rui Da Silva at the Centre for African Studies of the University of Porto.

The book was launched on 19 November 2021 at a conference hosted by the University of Aveiro. The conference focused on the management of education in times of uncertainty. Within this context, Professor Bray first gave a keynote address on shadow education worldwide, before turning specifically to Africa with a launch of the book.

The event was chaired by Alexandre Ventura who is himself a noted researcher on shadow education in Portugal and Brazil and who has excellent connections with Lusophone African countries including Angola and Mozambique. As a former Deputy Minister of Education in Portugal, Professor Ventura is helping to call the book to the attention of policy makers as well as researchers.

• Chad: Aboubakar Assidick Tchoroma,
• Gabon: Camelia Ntoutoume-Leclerq,
• Guinea: M. Bah,
• Guinea Bissau: Arcenio Adulai Baldé, 
• Senegal: Chaikana Lam, and
• Togo: Dodzi Kokoroko.

The UNESCO Chair is pleased to announce the latest volume in the Monographs series published by the HKU Comparative Education Research Centre (CERC). Written by Mark Bray, it is entitled Shadow Education in Africa: Private Supplementary Tutoring and its Policy Implications. It can be downloaded free of charge or purchased in paper copy for HK$100 or US$16 including postage through this website.

The book builds on a Working Paper for UNESCO’s Global Education Monitoring Report, which for the 2021/22 edition focuses on non-state actors in education. Shadow education is recognized as a component on non-state activity of growing scale and significance.

The book addresses both Sub-Saharan and North Africa, and draws many lessons from comparative analysis. It is the first comprehensive work on shadow education in Africa. Particular attention is paid to regular teachers who also provide tutoring, and to private-sector enterprises.

Portuguese and Arabic translations will be published in due course.

The second book is the Myanmar-language version of Shadow Education in Myanmar: Private Supplementary tutoring and its Policy Implications. This book, co-published by CERC and UNESCO and with collaboration of Yangon University of Education, was authored by Mark Bray, Magda Nutsa Kobakhidze and Ora Kwo. Both versions may be downloaded free of charge from here.

The 2021 iteration of UNESCO’s Global Education Monitoring (GEM) Report will be about the roles of non-state actors in education. This is a very important theme, covering both for-profit and not-for-profit providers and including a focus on shadow education.

At the invitation of the GEM Report team, Professor Mark Bray prepared a blog about shadow education, available here. It highlights the scale of the phenomenon in a range of countries, and comments on its implications not only for learning but also for social inequalities.

With other colleagues, Professor Mark Bray is now preparing further inputs, helping to shape the agenda and to focus attention on themes.

UNESCO’s Futures of Education Initiative