In France, there is a huge change in teacher trainee: the creation of ESPE in septembre 2013: Ecole Supérieure du Professorat et de l'Education in the place of IUFM.

See http://www.enseignementsup-recherche.gouv.fr/cid66509/presentation-des-ecoles-superieures-du-professorat-et-de-l-education-e.s.p.e.html

Just an aside: Rene, I live and work in Australia, but just happened to go to the university of Nice-Sophia Antipolis Valrose campus today (Wed 16th)

Thanks Rene, Mark. We will wait to see what other RG friends say...

In Colombia because of the crises in Europe and the United States, there has been an increasing interest on bilinguialism. It is believed that bilingual education will help the country become more developed. In my opinion, everything is good on paper, but out there in the real world, the government has not invested enough money. It is indeed only a facade. Yet, that's what they are talking about.

In Spain two days ago has been approved the 7th reform of the school system from 1978. It follows the neoliberal tendency of focusing in excellence that will create an more inequal system. It has been contested by all the educational collectives and almost all parties in the congress, excepted the Popular Party, declared that it will be repeal the law as soon as possible. So, maybe it is better if you don't take care about.

In Trinidad & Tobago, our latest government has attempted to add on what it considers more modernized educational teaching structures over recent times. This has included changing the primary system and going back and forth among initiatives that adds a second language, adding music and arts to the curriculum and things of this nature. There is a huge problem however, in that they are giving a few days workshops to teachers on how to carry out these extra subject areas that were not always there before. Firstly, they have been carrying out these training sessions without doing the proper research into what is needed in our local setting, and furthermore many of these teachers have very, very basic knowledge of the areas they are to educate our young ones about. In doing my personal research, many of them admit to being lost when they get back into classrooms. Moreover, many have divulged that they disagree with their students being assessed on these new areas that they as adults feel they are not equipped to properly handle.

This is just one of many of the plans our government has for our long term education system, but again, it comes without the needed information that comes from teachers and students who are forced to use these services.

School-based Management and decentralization in the educational system and Internalization and globalization of education

In regards to the question again, the Colomban government also brought in the No Child Left Behind Policy created during the Bush administration in the United States. It is a failure in the USA, and boy it couldn't be worse in Colombia. We should indeed copy what is good but not what is mediocre.

Hi Jose Lobo, I think your country is not the only one that copied ideas that didn't work. It's always with the best intentions, and always perfect on paper. But when implemented among humans, it just did not turn out right. Agree?

I couldn´t agree more Miranda. I believe that before implementing a whole approach, one needs to read the research and go to the so called country to interview people and observe classes in inner city schools to see if what people preach matches observations and results. Anyway, innocent mistakes condemn innocent people as well. What do you think?

The problem alluded to in prior comments is that these decisions are politically based rather than educationally based. In Australia this is a major problem. Politicians do not make good educational decisions.

Miranda asked about educational plans having been proposed in our countries, so I suppose it's left to politicians, who control the budget, to decide.

All of those who are uneasy with 'unattended' lawmakers, have to ask themselves, what we can do to make them change the course. The question will then be: can a majority of professional educators in your country agree on a plan? Content, methods, technologies? And, would it help to follow the most effective educational systems worldwide?

Australian educationalists are reasonably lucky, our system is reasonably robust and well financed. The major educational plans here seem to be to reduce teacher flexibility in the classroom by imposing stricter controls on assessment and curriculum. That being said, Australian teachers still retain a good degree of control in their own classrooms. There seems to be a continuing tension here between educationalist' belief in the need to retain classroom flexibility, and political desire to reduce it. Politicians, probably because of their backgrounds seem to take a quality control approach, with stricter controls on curriculum, assessment, national testing and what constitutes good teaching. Educationalists here seem to be pushing for a quality assurance model, setting minimal guidelines and asking for better teacher training.

I know which model I hope eventually wins out.

There may be cultural differences in the way we talk about our systems. I speak from the position of one who is extremely lucky in having a robust flexible system and I am afraid of losing even a small amount of that flexibility. I assume that there are others around the world who speak from a desire to gain even some of the robustness and freedoms to teach well that we in Australia take for granted.