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The labor force in Liberia is quite young. Youth aged 15 to 34 constitute over a third of thepopulation in Liberia and are somewhat concentrated in urban areas, according to the 2008census. These youth represent both a demographic dividend and a concern. The educational attainment of Liberian youth is steadily improving but remains low on average.Youth recognize that their lack of skills and experience are impediments to employment.The objective of this report is to assess youth skills development in Liberia.Given the composition of Liberia’s economy and the concentration of the labor force outside formal employment, this report has a particular focus on skill development in vocational trades and the informal sector. This report comprises three analyses. Section Two constructs a profile of Liberian youth from existing administrative data are studied to enable a more detailed understanding of the current skill levels among working youth. Section Three first assesses skills development providers based on new survey data summarizes the results of original analysis carried out on data collected on a sample of 139 skill providers’ training offerings, capacity, target beneficiaries, and other criteria. Next section three goes on to present young trainees’ perceptions of skills development opportunities and limits, based on 354 interviews with recent trainees. This report contributes to the Government of Liberia’s Agenda for Transformation (AfT) and the World Bank’s Country Partnership Strategy (CPS) 2013-2017. Both recognize that inadequate skills and vulnerable employment are key constrictions on rapid, inclusive and sustainable growth.This report provides practical recommendations that align with pillars of the National Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) Policy 2015-2020. This report makes recommendations specific to three pillars: promoting productivity in the agricultural sector through TVET, promoting productivity in the informal sector through TVET, and financing TVET.

The Philippines has made remarkable progress in improving the quality of basic education in recent decades. Even so, despite significant improvements in primary and secondary education, the number of students who drop out of school remains worryingly high. More than five million youths have failed to complete a basic education. Alternative Learning System (ALS) is a second-chance, informal education program operated by the Department of Education (DepEd) for out-of-school youths and adults. This report aims to assess the current implementation of ALS using a variety of sources , including recent surveys, and analyzes (a) the target populations, (b) current beneficiaries, (c) delivery modes (with a focus on learning facilitators’ contracting schemes), and (d) labor market returns to ALS. Key messages are as follows: (i) Only a small proportion of the target populations are enrolled in the ALS program, (ii) the first target groups for ALS are students who drop out of high school for financial reasons, (iii) performance-based payment is expected to improve performance, (iv) the current arrangement for monitoring activities within the ALS program can be improved, (v) labor market returns to ALS are significant only when learners successfully pass the secondary A&E exam, and (vi) small class size (fewer than 40 learners per facilitator) is more efficient. The report concludes that a holistic approach is required for a socially efficient solution for students who do not complete school and those who are at high risk. An expansion of ALS may distort incentives among students currently in school, and coordinated efforts with other programs such as the Alternative Delivery Mode are becoming increasingly important. Earlier intervention guarantees greater returns.

Inadequacies in Tanzania's education and training systems compromise the quality of workforce skills, giving rise to skill shortages, and constraining the operations and growth of formal sector firms in the country. This study addressed these concerns using data from a unique Enterprise Skills Survey that asked Tanzanian employers about the education, training, and occupational mix of their workforce, the skill gaps in cognitive, noncognitive, and job-specific competencies affecting their operations, and the strategies they are using to overcome these skill gaps. The study investigates the consequences for firm productivity of employers' choices about their optimal skills mix, and their strategies to mitigate shortfalls in skills supply. Compared with noninnovators and firms primarily serving the domestic market, exporters and innovators face greater skill demand and suffer from skill shortages that are more likely to constrain their operations in such areas as quality assurance, use of new technology, and introducing new products and services. In analyzing firm performance and its relation to skill mix, the study found that firms with higher shares of tertiary-educated workers are more productive; it found no impact, however, from secondary education and technical vocational education and training qualifications, possibly reflecting the universally acknowledged poor quality of secondary education in Tanzania. Employers use a range of strategies to address skill deficiencies, from hiring new workers, to training current workers in-house or externally, using high-skill expatriate workers, or outsourcing professional services. Almost all were associated with higher labor productivity. The exception, employer provided in-house training, had no measurable impact on productivity.

The effect of increasing school resources on educational outcomes is a central issue in the debate on improving school quality. This paper uses a randomized experiment to analyze the impact of a school grants program in Senegal, which allowed schools to apply for funding for improvements of their own choice. The analysis finds positive effects on test scores at lower grades that persist at least two years. These effects are concentrated among schools that focused funds on human resource improvements rather than school materials, suggesting that teachers and principals may be a central determinant of school quality.

This paper seeks to find an empirical explanation of Vietnam's outstanding performance on the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) in 2012. Only a few developing countries participate in the assessment. Those who do, with the unique exception of Vietnam, are typically clustered at the lower end of the range of the Programme for International student Assessment scores. The paper compares Vietnam's performance with that of a set of seven developing countries from the 2012 assessment's data set, using a cut-off per capita GDP (in 2010 purchasing power parity dollars) of $10,000. The seven developing countries' average performance lags Vietnam's by more than 100 points. The "Vietnam effect" is difficult to unscramble, but the paper is able to explain about half of the gap between Vietnam and the seven countries. The analysis reveals that Vietnamese students may be approaching their studies with higher diligence and discipline, their parents may have higher expectations, and the parents may be following up with teachers regarding those expectations. The teachers themselves may be working in a more disciplined environment, with tabs being kept on their own performance as teachers. Vietnam may also be benefiting from investments in pre-school education and in school infrastructure that are disproportionately higher when compared with Vietnam's per capita income level.

To address the educational gap, many Latin American countries are focusing on extension of the school day and enrichment of the curriculum. In Brazil, a nationwide policy -- Mais Educação -- was implemented in 2008 with this objective. This paper explores the nationwide rollout of the program across the country and compares the performance of schools before and after implementation of the program. The paper quantifies the impacts of the program on student learning and dropout rates in urban areas, and investigates the heterogeneity of impacts by several characteristics of the program's implementation. Participating schools are compared with nonparticipating schools after controlling for school selection into the program based on observable characteristics using propensity score matching. The analysis finds that participation in Mais Educação has on average no impacts on school dropout rates and average negative impacts on mathematics test scores. The negative impacts on student achievement are stronger in the short term, which suggests that the negative effects may be reduced as the program improves its implementation. In addition, especially for fifth-grade schools, the level of student spending is associated with reduced dropout rates. Interestingly, in schools choosing the fields of Portuguese and/or sports in the added hours, the program is associated with lower test scores in Portuguese and mathematics. Finally, for the sample of fifth-grade schools, heterogeneous impacts are seen in the program according to the GDP per capita of the city where the school is located. The higher the GDP per capita, the greater the positive impact of the program on mathematics test scores and on dropout rates.

Evidence on the impacts of a large-scale expansion in pre-primary education is limited and mostly circumscribed to high- and middle-income nations. This study estimates the effects of such an expansion on progression in primary school in rural communities in Guatemala, where the number of pre-primary schools increased from about 5,300 to 11,500 between 1998 and 2005. Combining administrative and population census data in a difference-in-differences framework, the analysis finds that access to pre-primary education increased by 2.4 percentage points the proportion of students that progress adequately and attend sixth grade by age 12. These positive although limited effects suggest the need for complementary actions to produce substantial improvements in adequate progression.

This paper reports on the quality of early childhood education in rural Indonesia. On average, the paper finds that centers created under the Indonesia Early Childhood Education and Development Project provide higher quality services than other types of preschools, as measured by a comprehensive instrument of preschool quality based on direct observation of classrooms in session (the Early Childhood Environment Rating Scale-Revised). The paper also examines the relationship between preschool quality and childrens early development using three commonly applied measures of quality: (i) the Early Childhood Environment Rating Scale-Revised; (ii) teacher characteristics; and (iii) structural characteristics of preschool services, such as their size and amount of class time. First, correcting for measurement error using an instrumental variables approach, the findings suggest that preschool quality is a significant and meaningful positive predictor of childrens developmental outcomes. Second, the findings for teacher characteristics are mixed, suggesting that policies focused solely on hiring teachers based on experience and training will be insufficient to improve childrens learning. Instead, policies must address the quality of professional development activities for teachers. Third, the amount of class time spent in early childhood programs is a significant positive predictor of children’s developmental outcomes. This suggests that in rural Indonesia—where early childhood programs are relatively low dose—children are likely to benefit from attending longer hours of preschool, either playgroups or kindergartens. Lastly, the paper compares items in the Early Childhood Environment Rating Scale-Revised with Indonesias national minimum service standards for early childhood education and development, and finds that the relationship between this alternative, context-appropriate measure of preschool quality and children’s development outcomes strongly corroborates the earlier conclusions.

This paper seeks to understand what drove the trends in learning outcomes in Argentina between 2000 and 2012, using data from four rounds of the Program for International Student Assessment. A year-specific education production function is estimated and its results used to decompose the changes in learning outcomes into changes in inputs, parameters, and residuals via microsimulations. Estimates of the production function show the importance of socioeconomic status, gender, school autonomy, and teacher qualifications to determine learning outcomes. Despite an important increase in the level of resources invested in public education, learning outcomes in public schools decreased vis-à-vis private schools. According to the results presented here, the increase in the number of teachers in the system, pushing the pupil-teacher ratio in Argentina to 11, had no effect on learning outcomes. The microsimulation further confirms that changes in the system’s ability to transform inputs into outcomes accounted for most of the changes in test scores. Overall, the study shows the ineffectiveness of input-based education policies to improve learning outcomes in Argentina.

This study presents evidence from a randomized control trial (RCT) in Mongolia on the impact of in-service teacher training and books, both as separate educational inputs and as a package. The study tests for the complementarity of inputs and non-linearity of returns from investment in education as measured by students test scores in five subjects. It takes advantage of a national-scale RCT conducted under the Rural Education and Development project. The results suggest that the provision of books, in addition to teacher training, raises student achievement substantially. However, teacher training and books weakly improve test scores when provided individually. Students whose teachers have received training and whose classrooms have acquired books improved their cumulative score (totaled across five tests) by 34.9 percent of a standard deviation, relative to a control group. Students treated only with books improved their total score by 20.6 percent of a standard deviation relative to a control group of students. On the other hand, extra teacher training did not have a statistically significant effect on the total test score. In addition, providing both inputs jointly improved test scores in most subjects, which was not the case when either input was provided individually. This study sheds light on the relevance of supplementing teacher training schemes with appropriate teaching materials in resource-poor settings. The policy implication is that isolated education investments, in settings where complementary inputs are missing, could deliver minimal or no return.

The aging of the Russian population and the rapid shrinking of its labor force in coming decades will make the human capital each worker contributes increasingly vital for sustaining economic output and growth. While improvements in general education are necessary to build the foundation for a productive future labor force, a broad-based and effective system of adult education can provide second-chance opportunities for current workers to enhance their productivity and lengthen their working lives and for low-skilled immigrants to be integrated into the workforce. How well the Russian Federation addresses these multiple needs at and beyond the workplace will depend on how effective its adult education system is. This study targeting policymakers outlines the problems of Russias growing skills gap, especially the shortage of higher-order cognitive and socio-emotional skills, and examines the current state of adult education.

Parents and students from different socioeconomic backgrounds value differently school characteristics, but the reasons behind this preference heterogeneity are not well understood. In the context of the centralized school assignment system in Mexico City, this study analyzes how a large household income shock affects choices over high school tracks exploiting the discontinuity in the assignment of the welfare program Oportunidades. The income shock significantly increases the probability of choosing the vocational track vis-a-vis the other more academic-oriented tracks. The findings suggest that the transfer relaxes the financial constraints that prevent relatively low-ability students from choosing the schooling option with higher labor market returns.

This paper analyzes the relation between public, education-related infrastructure and the quality of education in schools. The analysis uses a case study of the establishment of two large, high-quality public libraries in low-income areas in Bogotá, Colombia. It assesses the impact of these libraries on the quality of education by comparing national test scores (SABER 11) for schools close to and far from the libraries before (2000–02) and after (2003–08) the libraries were opened. The paper introduces a Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition on difference-in-differences estimates to assess whether variation of traditional determinants of mathematics, verbal, and science test scores explains the estimates. The analysis finds differences that are not statistically different from zero that could be attributed to the establishment of the libraries. These results are robust to alternative specifications, a synthetic control approach, and an alternative measure of distance.

In 2009, the Mexican state of Colima implemented a low-stakes accountability intervention with diagnostic feedback among 108 public primary schools with the lowest test scores in the national student assessment. A difference-in-difference and a regression discontinuity design are used to identify the effects of the intervention on learning outcomes. The two alternative strategies consistently show that the intervention increased test scores by 0.12 standard deviations only a few months after the program was launched. When students, teachers, and parents in a school know that their scores are low, and this triggers a process of self-evaluation and analysis, the process itself may lead to an improvement in learning outcomes. Information on quality, without punitive measures but within a supportive and collaborative environment, appears to be sufficient to improve learning outcomes.

This paper estimates the impacts of secondary school on human capital, occupational choice, and fertility for young adults in Kenya. The probability of admission to government secondary school rises sharply at a score close to the national mean on a standardized 8th grade examination, permitting the estimation of causal effects of schooling in a regression discontinuity framework. The analysis combines administrative test score data with a recent survey of young adults to estimate these impacts. The results show that secondary schooling increases human capital, as measured by performance on cognitive tests included in the survey. For men, there is a drop in the probability of low-skill self-employment, as well as suggestive evidence of a rise in the probability of formal employment. The opportunity to attend secondary school also reduces teen pregnancy among women.

A number of developing countries are currently promoting vocational education and training (VET) as a way to build human capital and strengthen economic growth. The primary aim of this study is to understand whether VET at the high school level contributes to human capital development in one of those countries—China. To fulfill this aim, a longitudinal data on more than 10,000 students in vocational high school (in the most popular major, computing) and academic high school from two provinces of China are used. First, estimates from instrumental variables and matching analyses show that attending vocational high school (relative to academic high school) substantially reduces math skills and does not improve computing skills. Second, heterogeneous effect estimates also show that attending vocational high school increases dropout, especially among disadvantaged (low-income or low-ability) students. Third, vertically scaled (equated) baseline and follow-up test scores are used to measure gains in math and computing skills among the students. The results show that students who attend vocational high school experience absolute reductions in math skills. Taken together, the findings suggest that the rapid expansion of vocational schooling as a substitute for academic schooling can have detrimental consequences for building human capital in developing countries such as China.

This paper develops and estimates an equilibrium model of charter school entry and school choice. In the model, households choose among public, private, and charter schools, and a regulator authorizes charter entry and mandates charter exit. The model is estimated for Washington, D.C. According to the estimates, charters generate net social gains by providing additional school options, and they benefit non-white, low-income, and middle-school students the most. Further, policies that raise the supply of prospective charter entrants in combination with high authorization standards enhance social welfare.

Over the past two and a half decades, Thailand has made great progress in expanding basic education, closing the gap in attendance between socioeconomic groups, and putting more focus on the quality of education. Building on this progress, it appears that even more can be done to maximize the potential of Thailand’s students to become productive workforce participants. Functional illiteracy can be seen across the various types of schools in Thailand, indicating that there are still system-wide issues affecting the quality of education. Improving educational outcomes among these poorer-performing students can have major impacts at the individual level and for Thailand’s economic growth prospects. Having a workforce with stronger analytical reasoning and problem solving skills - skills that extend well beyond simply being functionally literate - can help Thailand move up the value-added ladder to a more knowledge-based economy. Therefore, addressing the remaining gaps will enable Thailand to improve its competitiveness, economic growth, and prosperity.

This paper presents evidence from the first three years of a randomized controlled trial of a government-administered pilot teacher performance pay program in Punjab, Pakistan. The program offers yearly cash bonuses to teachers in a sample of public primary schools with the lowest mean student exam scores in the province. Bonuses are linked to three school-level indicators: the gain in student exam scores, the gain in school enrollment, and the level of student exam participation. Bonus receipt and size are also randomly assigned across schools according to whether or not the teacher is the school’s head. On average, the program increases school enrollment by 4.1 percent and student exam participation rates by 3.4 percentage points, both in the third year. The analysis does not find that the program increases student exam scores in any year. Mean impacts are similar across program variants. The positive mean impact on school enrollment is mainly seen in urban schools and the positive mean impact on student exam participation rates is only seen in rural schools.

The main objective of the report is to provide recommendations for policy makers and sector managers to help improve service delivery and the resultant outcomes in primary education. The fundamental premise of this analysis stems from Punjab Social Sector Public Expenditure Review conducted in FY2013.

According to UNESCO, roughly 120 countries provide some form of technical or vocational secondary education, as distinct from a purely generalist curriculum. An overview of each administration’s secondary vocational education provision is given below under sub-headings suggested by the Terms of Reference (ToR) for this study. The information was gathered through a review of available literature. This varied from administration to administration both in terms of its coverage and of its quality. As a result, the information on each administration is somewhat diverse. This is particularly the case for objective evaluations of administrations’ systems. The report ends by posing nine questions for the Government of India to consider when planning the introduction of vocational education to secondary schools: (i) what is the place of school-based vocational education within India’s National Skills Qualification Framework? (ii) how much choice should be left to school students to decide on the balance of general and vocational education in their learning programme? (iii) what proportion of the vocational education curriculum should be devoted to general education? (iv) how can sufficient numbers of teachers of good quality be found to teach growing number of vocational students? (v) how beneficial is objective careers guidance for school pupils? (vi) what is the role or purpose of work experience for school pupils? (vii) what contribution to vocational education can be expected from employers if the labour market is largely informal with a small manufacturing sector? (viii) what form should assessment take, how would it be carried out and is there a relationship between it and general education? (ix) how can responsibility for vocational secondary education be allocated within a federal system of government? Finally, what should be clear from this study is that administrations develop policies and practices based on their history, their economic and geographic context and their vision, and that these policies will therefore vary between administrations.

Education systems in developing countries are often centrally managed in a top-down structure. In environments where schools have different needs and where localized information plays an important role, empowerment of the local community may be attractive, but low levels of human capital at the local level may offset gains from local information. This paper reports the results of a four-year, large-scale experiment that provided a grant and comprehensive school management training to principals, teachers, and community representatives in a set of schools. To separate the effect of the training from the grant, a second set of schools received the grant only with no training. A third set of schools served as a control group and received neither intervention. Each of 273 Gambian primary schools were randomized to one of the three groups. The program was implemented through the government education system. Three to four years into the program, the full intervention led to a 21 percent reduction in student absenteeism and a 23 percent reduction in teacher absenteeism, but produced no impact on student test scores. The effect of the full program on learning outcomes is strongly mediated by baseline local capacity, as measured by adult literacy. This result suggests that, in villages with high literacy, the program may yield gains on students learning outcomes. Receiving the grant alone had no impact on either test scores or student participation.

This paper studies study the impact of providing school and child test scores on subsequent test scores, prices, and enrollment in markets with multiple public and private providers. A randomly selected half of the sample villages (markets) received report cards. This increased test scores by 0.11 standard deviations, decreased private school fees by 17 percent, and increased primary enrollment by 4.5 percent. Heterogeneity in the treatment impact by initial school quality is consistent with canonical models of asymmetric information. Information provision facilitates better comparisons across providers, improves market efficiency and raises child welfare through higher test scores, higher enrollment, and lower fees.

Advocates argue that voucher programs can correct the incentive problems of education systems in developing economies. An accountability perspective, based on a principal-agent framework, was developed to clarify the arguments for and against education vouchers. An assessment of findings on voucher programs in industrial countries and a review of voucher or quasi-voucher experiences in Bangladesh, Chile, Colombia, Côte d'Ivoire, and the Czech Republic support the usefulness of the analytic framework. The assessment concludes that the policy relevance of voucher programs for developing economies remains uncertain. Major voucher initiatives have been attempted only in countries with a well-developed institutional infrastructure. Some studies find favorable benefits for at least some population groups, but others find limited effects and evidence of increasing social stratification in schools. Whether vouchers lead to better outcomes or greater stratification appears related to specific contexts, institutional variables, and program designs.

In 2011, the World Bank Group commenced a multi-year program designed to support countries in systematically examining and strengthening the performance of their education systems. Part of the World Bank’s new education sector strategy, this evidence based initiative, called saber systems approach for better education results (SABER), is building a toolkit of diagnostics for examining education systems and their component policy domains against global standards, best practices, and in comparison with the policies and practices of countries around the world. By leveraging this global knowledge, the SABER tools fill a gap in the availability of data and evidence on what matters most to improve the quality of education and achievement of better results. This report discusses the results of applying the SABER school autonomy and accountability (SAA) tool in Bulgaria.

Since its independence in 1991, FYR Macedonia has faced a number of challenges in its political and economic transition. One of the greatest has been the shift from a planned economy to a free market oriented economy. This shift resulted in an average annual GDP growth rate of 0.2 percent between 1990 and 2006. Since then, the economy has embarked on an ambitious reform agenda, which has resulted in an average real annual GDP growth of 3.4 percent. The government’s objective is to steer Macedonia toward economic activities with higher value-added and technological content. Strengthening policies for the development of human resources is crucial for the future of the country. A huge challenge in this process is the set-up of an effective and efficient system for workforce development (WfD), one that provides future workers with the skills needed in a modern labor market, enhances the adaptability of those workers who have lost or are at risk of losing their jobs, and prepares the current and future workforce for mobility in work and learning. The rest of this report summarizes the key findings of the SABER-WfD assessment in Macedonia and also presents the detailed results for each of the three functional dimensions. To put the results into context, the next section offers a brief profile of the country’s socioeconomic makeup.

The objective of this report is to describe the process and summarize the results from the pilot implementation of statistical models for measuring the value-added of Bulgarian schools through analysis of the national student’ assessments results. This report presents the technical aspects of the pilot and the key outcomes in terms of value-added measure for each of the schools included in the analysis. The report documents all data processing, adjustments, and procedures run as part of the school value added modeling and in this respect, it is also intended expert statisticians and researchers. The national student assessment results in Bulgaria are reported on a non-transformed raw point scale accompanied by a table that allows a transformation of the raw points to the six-grade rating scale, adopted for measuring students’ performance. Based on this, each school receives an average score and some means of comparison with other schools in the country. Analyzing the test results through value-added analysis is a new approach for the country and the findings from this pilot are intended to inform policy makers in Bulgaria about the advantages and limitations of value-added measures (VAMs) in the context of the Bulgarian education system, its student assessment framework, and the data collected and used by the education management information system.

In October 2010, the Government of Madhya Pradesh hosted, with World Bank technical advice, a Conference on higher education reform in the State. The Governor, the Chief Minister and the Minister of Higher Education all addressed the Conference and about 150 people attended the event. Subsequently, four regional Conclaves were organized, in which a total of more than 400 people participated, representing the leadership, administrators, faculty and students at universities and colleges across the State. This represents an impressive outreach to the sector stakeholders. This report is written on the cusp of the publication of the Government of India s 12th Five Year Plan. The indications are that the Government of India intends to push ahead with some significant reforms in the higher education sector. Of particular significance for this report is the emphasis, for the first time, on the need to support the improvement of State universities and colleges. The objective of this report is to provide policy makers in Madhya Pradesh with a menu of options for improving the equity, governance and financing of the higher education system in the State. Though the primary audience is policy makers, this report could serve as part of the continued dialogue with the higher education sector on the direction for reform.

Although the availability of financial resources does not guarantee quality education, it is impossible to achieve this goal without adequate resources which often come from public sources. Understanding how to use resources for education wisely should thus be a top priority for education policymakers. Systems approach for better education results (SABER) school finance informs this conversation with a focus on the policies that drive performance in a school finance system. SABER school finance collects, analyzes, synthesizes, and disseminates comprehensive information on school finance policies in primary and secondary education across a range of different education systems. To describe the essential functions of an education finance system, SABER school finance collects information in five data collection areas: (i) school conditions and resources; (ii) allocation mechanisms; (iii) revenue sources; (iv) education spending; and (v) fiscal control and capacity. SABER school finance determines the extent to which the system effectively provides resources so that all children can learn, using six policy goals widely shared across countries: (i) ensuring basic conditions for learning; (ii) monitoring learning conditions and outcomes; (iii) overseeing service delivery; (iv) budgeting with adequate and transparent information; (v) providing more resources to students who need them; and (vi) managing resources efficiently. This country report uses this framework to characterize and assess the education finance system in Jamaica.

The Republic of Maldives, a multi-island nation of spectacular natural beauty, is one of the most advanced economies in South Asia. The Maldives consists of an archipelago of nearly 1,200 islands and a population of about 374,000 inhabitants: 300,000 Maldivians and 74,000 expatriate workers. The Maldives had attained a gross national income (GNI) per capita of US$5,790 in 2010. The country ranked 109'th in the human development index (HDI) for 2011, which is the second highest HDI rank in South Asia after Sri Lanka. The Maldives is seeking to accelerate human development and promote economic prosperity. The development of human capital is central to the country's strategy to achieve this goal. The present study analyzes the main challenges facing the general education sector and presents, for the consideration of policy makers in the country, a set of strategic options for the future development of general education.

In August 2010, the Government of Vanuatu carried out early grade reading baseline assessments in English and Francophone schools with financial support from local education partners and technical assistance from the World Bank. The results of the Vanuatu Early Grade Reading Assessment (VANEGRA) are cause for concern. French language findings show that while most students develop some fundamental skills in grade levels 1, 2 and 3, by the end of grade 3, less than 1 in 4 students are able to develop fluency in reading to understand most of the text they read. The VANEGRA survey also collected data on the attributes of students, teachers and schools. Factors that were shown to be predictors of better reading performance in the early grades include: speaking French at home, owning the school textbook, having literate parents, having books at home, reading at school and at home, attending kindergarten, doing homework, and receiving help from a family member to do homework. Neither teacher experience nor in-service training showed statistical effects on student reading outcomes and two types of certification showed negative and statistically significant effects on student outcomes both in reading fluency and comprehension. VANEGRA also asked about use of seven reading instructional activities. Students who were never asked to learn the meaning of new words or practice grapheme sound correspondences showed negative and statistically significant effects. Conversely, students who were assigned reading daily in their own school time showed positive and statistically significant results. Lastly, VANEGRA asked about teacher expectations for students' reading performance. Interestingly, the fact that some teachers allowed students to consolidate some reading skills later than the median expectation was associated with better and statistically significant results. Based on the analysis presented, recommendations for improved reading instruction and greater parental involvement are presented at the end of the report.

Providing at least basic education to all children especially those coming from poor or disadvantaged families is an important factor for increasing chances to improve their lives in the future. Many countries recognize the need to better educate their populations and do so by trying to improve the equity and quality while taking care of efficiency. The provision of equal educational opportunities is a challenge for every society, where specific solutions typically depend on a number of factors. The intention of this document is to raise awareness and provide support to decision makers in planning the measures that will secure access to quality education for all children above all to those who are under higher risk of dropping out of the education system through a set of transportation and education policy measures. The document aims to equip municipal authorities, as well as transport and education stakeholders, with a systemized approach for assessing the access and accessibility of education services, and tools for the selection of the most appropriate options for improvements. The document is organized as follows: chapter one provides a short introductory review of the demographic changes in South East Europe (SEE) countries; chapter two is a valuable source of information on the experiences of countries in the SEE region and worldwide; chapter three gives decision-making framework for local authorities; chapter four provides a summary and a set of recommendations for local- and national-level authorities on the most effective ways of fulfilling legal obligations and ensuring a basic children's right- access to education; chapter five and six sets paths for making chosen policy options sustainable and for future developments based on innovative transport and education approaches and proven practices; and chapter seven gives literature and data sources.

This paper reviews a small community-based school feeding program launched in Togo in response to the 2007/08 food price crisis. The discussion focuses on the operational and policy lessons emerging from the program, to better understand opportunities for scale up and sustainability in the future. A focus of the discussion is how to build safety nets in fragile states and in situations where there is weak and fragmented government capacity to deliver services to disadvantaged and vulnerable communities. In this context school feeding is explored as an entry point through the use of informal mechanisms based on the commitment of communities and civil society. The analysis is premised on quantitative and qualitative analysis carried out at program sites. The discussion identifies the operational challenges and opportunities in customizing school feeding within Togo with an emphasis on targeting, cost effectiveness, procurement and institutional aspects. Evidence on the economic and social benefits of the program is also presented, focusing on dietary impacts, as well as household and local community effects. The objective of the discussion is to share lessons learned from evaluation findings so that they can be useful for implementing similar programs in the future in Togo itself or in other countries. Findings from the analysis highlight the possibilities of implementing school feeding in a low capacity setting and the scope for using the program as a springboard towards a broader and more comprehensive social safety net.

This study examines the changes in Vietnam's primary and secondary education over the past 20 years as well as key factors that affect such critical educational outcomes as attendance, grade attainment, and student achievement in order to derive implications for public education policy. It is divided into an analytical report and shorter overview/policy report. The study finds significant improvement in attendance, attainment, and achievement across all populations. Nonetheless, vulnerable populations (in particular the poorest and ethnic minorities) continue to fare poorly as a result of persistent, and in some cases, increasing inequalities in educational attainment and poor student achievement. Educational attainment and achievement are also shown to be complementary to a large extent. Despite the methodological limitations, evidence consistently confirms that certain characteristics of schools and teachers are significantly related to both educational outcomes. This opens the door for public policy and provides multiple (potential) policies 'entrance points' for addressing the remaining challenges. Some measures have implications for public funding, its priorities and/or efficiency, and others are more closely related to the management of public institutions. Some of the main policy implications derived from the analytical findings are re-asserting or expanding priorities for public funding through expanding support for the Fundamental School Quality Level (FSQL), and supporting full day schooling and conditional cash transfers for vulnerable groups; improving spending efficiency through better targeted fee exemptions and the strengthened application of teacher standards; and improving the management of public sector schools through higher principals' management capacity, strengthened accountability of schools to their communities and better information.

The 'Quality of Education in Madrasah' (QEM) study aimed to provide high quality research into various dimensions of quality of education in Indonesian Madrasahs. The study focused on final year students in Islamic Junior Secondary Schools (Madrasah Tsanawiyah, MT). One hundred and fifty MTs were sampled from across Indonesia, with equal numbers selected from Java and the East and West of the country. Systematically selected intact classes were sampled within schools, involving a total of 6,233 students. Eight instruments were developed for use in the study. Four were achievement tests designed to assess performance in Mathematics, Science, Indonesian and English. Australian Council for Educational Research's (ACER's) School Life Questionnaire (SLQ) was used as an affective measure of school quality. ACER developed an instrument to assess student background characteristics, and a Principal Interview Schedule and a School Inventory were also developed by ACER to collect information on MTs. Mean scores showed that students in Java performed better than students in the East and West regions on each of the four achievement tests, with students in the West performing marginally better than students in the East on all tests. The largest correlations between student background factors and achievement across the three regions were observed for number of home resources and study materials available to students.

This Country Status Report (CSR) for Liberia is part of an ongoing series of country specific reports being prepared by the World Bank in collaboration with governments and development partners. The series aims to enhance the knowledge base for policy development. This report is intended to help engage a diverse audience on issues and policies in the education sector and to develop a shared vision for the future of Liberia. It is the first sector-wide report produced on the education system in Liberia since the end of the war. A policy options matrix follows the executive summary, which will provide government and partners with guidance on the key priorities to tackle. Besides consolidating information in a policy-relevant manner, this CSR makes a unique contribution to the education knowledge base by documenting not only traditional and basic indicators, such as gross enrollment rates and retention, but also examining the performance of the education system in terms of access, quality, equity, and resource allocation and utilization. The report also includes chapters on education governance and teacher management. This report highlights the country's significant education progress since the end of the 14-year civil war in 2003 and the challenges that need to be addressed.

The World Bank's Country Partnership Strategy (CPS) for 2009-2012 marks Indonesia's re-emergence as a confident middle-income country, and one that is enjoying a rising regional and global standing. Ten years ago, Indonesia was in the middle of an extremely severe economic crisis. Today, Indonesia has embarked upon a far-reaching institutional transformation and has become one of the region's most vibrant democracies. Its sub-national governments are now major players in service delivery. This booklet highlights the World Bank's portfolio of activities that support the Government of Indonesia in the Human Development sector, which encompasses both health and education. The World Bank's Human Development sector work covers almost the entire human life cycle, from maternal and neo-natal health, health insurance, early childhood education, school health and nutrition, basic education, to teacher reform, secondary education and youth skills, higher education, medical and health professional education and lifelong learning.

AusAID SPHERE Trust Fund The Philippines has one of the largest public-private partnership programs in education in the world, serving more than 567,500 students who represent almost 9 percent of the 6.5 million high school students in 2009. The Government of the Philippines explicitly recognizes the complementary roles played by public and private schools in the education system. The Education Service Contracting (ESC) program aims to increase access to quality basic education at the secondary level by extending financial assistance from the public budget to 'poor but deserving' elementary school graduates to attend private high schools that have contracted with the government. The ESC program improves school quality, relieves congestion in public high schools, maintains the financial viability of private secondary schools (more than one-third of private secondary school enrollments are supported by the program), keeps the overall costs of public secondary education in check, and encourages households to invest in education.

This report presents a framework - Skills Toward Employment and Productivity (STEP), that provides a simple yet comprehensive way to look at skills development. It brings together research evidence and practical experience from a range of areas-from research on the determinants of early childhood development and learning outcomes, to policy experience with the reform of vocational and technical education systems and labor markets-and provides a set of powerful messages to policymakers, researchers, and practitioners. The report's emphasis on performance measurement and benchmarking, policy and program evaluation, and cross-sectoral approaches focusing on individuals throughout their lifecycle provides a solid platform for developing countries to start exploring reforms.

The sound of children's voices reciting in unison could be heard from afar, as our mission approached a school in rural Cambodia. Inside a second-grade classroom, students took turns at the blackboard. One pointed with a stick at a list of words written by the teacher, while the rest recited. A colleague approached, wrote on the blackboard the same words in a different order, and asked the children to read. Suddenly, there was silence. Most kids had merely memorized the sequence of the words and could not even identify single letters. This scene is frequent. In the poorer schools of low-income countries, many students remain illiterate for years, until they finally drop out. With some care, the process is observable. Typically the teacher writes on the board some letters or words and asks students to repeat them. The letters may be scribbled, the children often sit at a distance, textbooks may be insufficient, and children may not have anyone at home to help them read. But they do repeat the words in unison, getting cues from a few knowledgeable classmates. The teachers stand by the blackboard, address students at large, and call on the few who perform well. How come this issue has not attracted attention? One reason is that in the middle-class schools of capitals students perform much better. Soon after our rural observations, we observed second graders in a middleclass school of Pnom Penh fluently handling the extremely complex Khmer script. However, the schools of the poor have less time for their students. There is teacher absenteeism, a lack of textbooks to take home, parental inability to make up for school weaknesses, no specific curricular time for reading. The result has been chronic illiteracy, high dropout and high repetition rates. To reduce repetition and maximize enrollments, some donors advise governments to promote students automatically.

This report seeks to inform the process of design and implementation of institutional reforms related to the development of a new education quality assurance system in Chile. The report is a synthesis report that draws on previous work by The World Bank in the context of a two-year program of technical collaboration with the Government of Chile. As part of this collaboration, the World Bank produced two related reports, including: (i) a comparative report that analyzes the K-12 education quality assurance systems of Ireland, the Netherlands, New Zealand and Scotland to understand how quality assurance functions are distributed across central government institutions; the characteristics of these institutions; and the relationships between them; and (ii) a comparative report that analyzes how these four OECD systems have evolved over time; what lessons emerge from their experience implementing institutional reforms in the past 15 years; and what lessons emerge regarding the exercise of education quality assurance functions. In addition, the report draws on two research papers by local experts analyzing the implementation of institutional reforms in Chile s health and criminal justice sectors, as well as on an analysis of the Chilean Ministry of Education s current organizational and human resources capabilities conducted by Ministry of Education staff.

The scope of this report is twofold. First, it documents skills gaps and mismatches and attempts to understand the reasons for them. Second, it provides a framework for thinking about skills development, drawing on international best practices, with the intent of stimulating further discussion. Given the breadth of the task, in this report we narrow the focus on a particular segment of the labor force: unskilled youth. There are several reasons sustaining this choice. First, unskilled youth, most of whom are out of school and have little chance to integrate themselves into the labor market, represent a significant share of the labor force that will remain active for the next 30 or 40 years. If nothing is done, out-of school youth will benefit at best only marginally from growth, and may even become an obstacle to sustaining growth in the long term. Second, the current educational system still faces a strong challenge in retaining students, and unskilled youth are likely to remain high on the agenda in the next decade or even longer. Finally, in the past decade, training programs designed specifically for out-of-school youth have begun to emerge around the developing world, in particular in Latin America, and recent evaluations suggest that they can be effective in increasing productivity and the chance of finding employment. Nevertheless, many of the findings of this report extend to overall skills development in Cambodia. In particular, the report points to significant market failures preventing both firms and training providers from offering quality training at all levels, as well as the need to develop certification and accreditation systems that are valued and recognized by employers and span all levels of education. The report proceeds in four chapters. The first covers demographic trends and the labor market. The second looks at skills gaps and mismatches. The third reviews existing training providers. The concluding chapter considers policy options in going forward.

Zeitschrift für Pädagogik 45 (1999) 1, S. 103-120, Der Beitrag faßt Forschungsergebnisse der letzten zwei Jahrzehnte zusammen und stellt ein theoretisches Modell zur Diskussion. Das Bildungswachstum vollzieht sich über Niveaustufen hinweg, die eine strukturelle Einheit darstellen. Sind die Lernspielräume auf einem Entwicklungsniveau erschöpft, wird der Sprung auf ein neues Niveau durch den Eigenausbau des Bildungssystems herausgefordert. Dabei wird der Anteil der Lehramtsstudenten am gesamten akademischen Nachwuchs von 1820 bis in die Gegenwart als der beste Indikator betrachtet. Motor des Bildungswachstums im individuellen Lebenslauf wie im kollektiven historischen Prozeß ist der Mangel, der zu neuen Erwartungshorizonten und Anstrengungsbereitschaften herausfordert. (DIPF/Orig.), The author summarizes research results of the past two decades and puts a theoretical model up for discussion. Educational expansion proceeds via different levels representing a structural unity. Once the room for learning is exhausted on a development level, the leap onto a new level is provoked through the self-expansion of the educational system. In this, the number of students in teacher training as a proportion of the entire student body from 1820 up to the present is considered the best indicator. The driving force in educational expansion both in the individual career and in the collective historical process is a deficit provoking new expectations and efforts. (DIPF/Orig.)