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Governments worldwide have introduced various programmes to facilitate distance learning in home settings during the COVID-19 school closure. However, given cross-country variations in state capacity, these schemes differ significantly in design, delivery and coverage. Within-country variation in poverty and home conditions also create added challenges for home-schooling programmes. Therefore, case studies examining country-specific initiatives are necessary. To this end, this paper examines the Pengajaran dan Pembelajaran di Rumah (PdPR) in Malaysia, an upper-middle-income country with high Internet coverage and a low level of extreme poverty. Data come from a purposefully designed nationwide social media survey on secondary school children conducted in January 2021. Under the PdPR scheme, the government created various technology-based platforms to ensure online learning. By way of studying children's participation in educational activities during school closure, this paper presents a descriptive assessment of PdPR. We first develop a conceptual framework to summarize the initiative. Then we examine the scheme in three aspects: the regularity of online lessons offered by school authorities; the extent of use of specific components and the medium of access of PdPR by learners; and their subjective evaluation of and difficulties faced with online schooling. Data confirm a significant socio-economic divide by income and location in access to EdTech as well as home support provisions. Most importantly, online lessons are irregular, and a significant proportion of students find online programmes challenging to follow. Given the dissatisfaction, most prefer to return to onsite education once schools reopen. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a systematic assessment of the alleged exceptionality of Malaysia's development progress and its likely explanations, in comparative perspective. Using cross-country regressions and aggregate indices of education, health, poverty and gender equality outcomes, we produce evidence based on conditional correlations, offering three findings. First, the results support the hypothesis that Malaysia's human development progress has been exceptional compared with that of countries with a similar level of economic development, primarily for the period 1970–1990. Next, we show that such progress is associated with a combination of income-mediated and support-led mechanisms, including Malaysia's early emphasis on education and health inputs and infrastructure development. Finally, we look at long-term roots of its progress, arguing that early advantage in state capacity may be at the origin of Malaysia's successful implementation of poverty reduction and growth-enhancing policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examined the nature and correlates of child marriage in eight villages in climate-affected coastal Bangladesh using a mixed-methods approach: focus group discussions and in-depth qualitative interviews of female victims of child marriage as well as quantitative data collected using structured interviews of households. More than two-thirds of the qualitative survey respondents had encountered at least one event of natural disaster before marriage. Quantitative data confirmed significantly higher exposure to flood and river erosion among the coastal population. The quantitative data also suggested a positive association between shocks related to climate events and the incidence of child marriage, while the qualitative data indicated multiple themes related to the causes of child marriage, such as economic vulnerability, coping with risk and patriarchal norms. Yet the qualitative study respondents did not directly refer to natural disasters and climate changes when narrating their marital histories. The qualitative and quantitative evidence does not suggest that dowry-related factors are leading to early marriage. Rather, child marriage appears to be a coping strategy adopted by households in response to their increased vulnerability to natural disasters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]