Since the passing of the 1988 Education Reform Act British education, particularly at a secondary level, has been transformed. The changes enacted in this and subsequent legislation have opened up state-provided education to a market-oriented system which is led more by the preferences of parents than the dictation of local or national planners. This means that local authorities and other providers of education have been left in a situation where they are relatively powerless to provide adequate schooling in a proactive manner. It is also the case that there is a danger of a 'two-tier' education system developing whereby the better-informed middle classes are served by high achieving schools and less advantaged pupils are left to fill inner city 'sink' schools which cannot provide them with the same educational chances due to lower resource levels. This thesis presents a feasibility study of a variety of techniques drawn from academic and applied geography which can be utilised by such planners in order to better target the resources available to them and improve their reactions to the vagaries of the market. These tools concentrate on geographical information systems (GIS) and spatial modelling techniques. Although both of these sets of techniques have for many years been applied in other areas, including within local Government, they have yet to permeate to a decision-making level in education planning. Thus the time is ripe for their wider dissemination and application in this area. Several examples of the possible uses of GIS are given, using real data for Leeds schools and pupils. Various types of spatial model are described and the most appropriate are calibrated and applied using the same Leeds data. The thesis concludes that the benefits of modelling techniques for planners at all scales, from individual schools to national Government, could be enormous. Through the application of these tools planners will be better placed to provide an education service which caters for all pupils within it. However, there are caveats regarding the requirement for further research into improving model performance and ensuring that output is sufficiently user-friendly.

Many changes were taking place in schools and local government while this thesis was being developed during 1992 and 1993. An historical perspective of the impact of legislation on education is followed by a description of the emergence of school development planning. The literature on school effectiveness and improvement, together with that on inspection and advice, are the contexts for consideration of change and quality in schools. Data from every LEA in the UK is linked with interview data from a sample of LEAs with schools engaged in an ESRC-funded research project. Additional information from national education offices and from other research carried out during the same period is used to triangulate perceptions. Insights from this range of data are then presented in two sections: the implications for LEAs and schools are explored and characteristics identified. The evidence indicates that the strategic role of LEAs has been significant in the introduction of primary school development planning. The implementation of policies that have been mandated by central government since 1988 have increasingly depended on schools' ability to prioritise within their own planning. The impact of these policies on the performance, accountability and strategic capacity of community services is considered. Particular consideration is given to collaboration between services, the power shift away from elected members of LEAs towards school governors, and the scope for effective leadership in education. The implications for the deployment of resources and re-orientation of responsibilities throughout the education service and teaching profession are far-reaching. Conclusions about the appropriateness of networking, of competition, and of new patterns of bureaucracy vary in different parts of the UK. In the wake of recent legislation affecting education and local government, a new initiative is needed to revitalise strategic systemic planning and inter-school collaboration.

No description available.

Ink-based semiconductors that come to mind today include conjugated molecules and polymers, colloidal quantum dots, metal halide hybrid perovskites, and transition metal oxides. These materials form an ink (solution/ suspension/ sol-gel) that can be applied and dried in ambient air to form high-quality films for optoelectronic devices. In this study, we will introduce the current understanding of ink-based lead and lead-free hybrid perovskite and perovskite-inspired thin films. Examples will be presented through time-resolved studies of the solidification to link the solid-state microstructure and device figures of merit to the ink’s formulation, drying, and solidification process. The perovskite crystallization kinetics characterized in situ during the solution process indicates an essential role by the inclusion of Cs+ and K+ alkali metal cations in perovskite inks. The film and device characterizations indicate the functions of mixed cation and halides in determining the optoelectronic properties. The further sophisticated design of perovskite inks enables significantly optimized charge dynamics, including exciton separation, inter-grain charge transfer, trap density, charge mobility, and charge collection efficiency. The considerably improved optoelectronic properties lead to higher charge collection efficiency and, therefore, better open-circuit voltage and fill factor for the Cs+-containing 3D perovskite devices in contrast to the control FAPbI3 one. Recent developments in ink formulation and processing that enable scalable ambient fabrication of high-quality perovskite semiconductor films will also be presented. These findings raise the possibility of developing more controlled perovskites for systematically addressing both charge dynamics and degradation mechanisms in concert for the timely commercialization of perovskite solar cells.

Submitted by Rosivalda Pereira (mrs.pereira@ufma.br) on 2017-06-23T20:42:44Z No. of bitstreams: 1 CesarCasteloBranco.pdf: 11257769 bytes, checksum: 911c33f2f0ba5c1c0948888e713724f6 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2017-06-23T20:42:44Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 CesarCasteloBranco.pdf: 11257769 bytes, checksum: 911c33f2f0ba5c1c0948888e713724f6 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2016-12-12 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES) / Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPQ) / This work proposes new methodologies to optimize the choice of the parameters of the proportionate normalized least-mean-square (PNLMS) adaptive algorithms. The proposed approaches use procedures based on two optimization methods, namely, the golden section and tabu search methods. Such procedures are applied to determine the optimal parameters in each iteration of the adaptation process of the PNLMS and improved PNLMS (IPNLMS) algorithms. The objective function for the proposed procedures is based on the a posteriori estimation error. Performance studies carried out to evaluate the impact of the PNLMS and IPNLMS parameters in the behavior of these algorithms shows that, with the aid of optimization techniques to choose properly such parameters, the performance of these algorithms may be improved in terms of convergence speed for the identification of plants with high sparseness degree. The main goal of the proposed methodologies is to improve the distribution of the adaptation energy between the coefficients of the PNLMS and IPNLMS algorithms, using parameter values that lead to the minimal estimation error of each iteration of the adaptation process. Numerical tests performed (considering various scenarios in which the plant impulse response is sparse) show that the proposed methodologies achieve convergence speeds faster than the PNLMS and IPNLMS algorithms, and other algorithms of the PNLMS class, such as the sparseness controlled IPNLMS (SC-IPNLMS) algorithm. / Neste trabalho, novas metodologias para otimizar a escolha dos parâmetros dos algoritmos adaptativos LMS normalizados proporcionais (PNLMS) são propostas. As abordagens propostas usam procedimentos baseados em dois métodos de otimização, a saber, os métodos da razão áurea e da busca tabu. Tais procedimentos são empregados para determinar os parâmetros ótimos em cada iteração do processo de adaptação dos algoritmos PNLMS e PNLMS melhorado (IPNLMS). A função objetivo adotada pelos procedimentos propostos é baseada no erro de estimação a posteriori. O estudo de desempenho realizado para avaliar o impacto dos parâmetros dos algoritmos PNLMS e IPNLMS no comportamento dos mesmos mostram que, com o auxílio de técnicas de otimização para escolher adequadamente tais parâmetros, o desempenho destes algoritmos pode ser melhorado, em termos de velocidade de convergência, para a identificação de plantas com elevado grau de esparsidade. O principal objetivo das metodologias propostas é melhorar a distribuição da energia de ativação entre os coeficientes dos algoritmos PNLMS e IPNLMS, usando valores de parâmetros que levam ao erro de estimação mínimo em cada iteração do processo de adaptação. Testes numéricos realizados (considerando diversos cenários nos quais a resposta impulsiva da planta é esparsa) mostram que as metodologias propostas alcançam velocidades de convergência superiores às dos algoritmos PNLMS e IPNLMS, além de outros algoritmos da classe PNLMS, tais como o algoritmo IPNLMS com controle de esparsidade (SCIPNLMS).

No description available.