In 2013 the governments of the  European Union (EU) member states mandated the European Commission to negotiate the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). Since then, already 10 rounds of negotiations have taken place, with the last one in mid-July  when particularly services where tabled for discussion.
Even though the European Commission (EC) and the US have faced heavy criticism from the civil society for the lack of transparency in the negotiation process, there are still among other points, public services, such as education that have been negotiated behind closed doors. It is clear that the levels of secrecy for TTIP surpass the usual practice. More...

Preparing the way for the United Nations’ sustainable development agenda, two seasoned experts on literacy, Ulrike Hanemann (senior programme specialist at the UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning, UIL) and Veronica McKay (acting executive dean of the College of Education at the University of South Africa, UNISA) jointly guest-edited a special issue of the International Review of Education – Journal of Lifelong Learning (IRE), entitled “Lifelong literacy: Towards a new agenda”. More...

This new publication is a critical review of the first results of action research on measuring the learning outcomes of literacy programmes. Five francophone African countries ‒ Burkina Faso, Mali, Morocco, Niger and Senegal ‒ have been developing and implementing common tools to measure the level of skills reached by participants of literacy programmes. More...