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Skills development is one of the priorities for national economic development strategies of Bangladesh. The vision 2021 of the Government of Bangladesh gives the highest priority to building a large base of skilled workers in order to achieve a poverty-free middle-income country by 2021. The skills development sector is highly complex due to multiple service providers, a vast spectrum of target audiences, a large range in modalities of service provision, and varied emphases in terms of skills levels and types. The short-term training, a formal channel of six months training, is an important instrument for bridging the gap between the needs of the labor market for increasing the pool of skillful workers and the aspiration of the students for finding a good job. In order to assess the performance of short-term training and interventions by Skills and Training Enhancement Project (STEP), a tracer study was conducted between December 2013 and January 2014. Skills and Training Enhancement Project (STEP) is jointly financed by the World Bank, Canada and the Government of Bangladesh (GoB), which started in 2010 for contributing to Bangladesh’s medium to long-term objective of developing its human resources as a cornerstone of its strategy for poverty alleviation and economic growth. It supports competitively selected 42 public and 8 private short-term training institutions for improving the quality of training and providing opportunities to the disadvantaged youth for obtaining skills from the select training providers.

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.

The rise of the global economy, where social and economic development are driven by knowledge coupled with the information and technology revolution, signifies that tertiary education everywhere cannot continue with business as usual. The hope is that by creating, applying and disseminating new ideas and technologies to greater numbers, higher education systems will graduate a skilled, flexible and productive work force. The scope of the study includes primarily the governance and management system across the Higher Education (HE) sector in Odisha; the current Quality Assurance System (QAS) including affiliation and accreditation and the inter-relationship between QAS and HE governance system; issues associated with autonomy in Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) in Odisha; the existing policy and legal environment in view of systemic transformation of governance for excellence; and international experience of good practices of governance and management system focusing on quality assurance. This paper aims: to describe and analyze the state of governance in Odisha higher education with special focus on the role of the higher education department of the GoO, university management, college management and the relationship between these structures; to analyze and re-examine the concept of increased autonomy for HEIs in Odisha; and to make recommendations on how to improve efficiency, effectiveness and accountability for increased autonomy in higher education governance.

This background report was written at a time when the Government of Bihar (GoB) was launching a number of reforms in higher education. A private universities bill passed the Bihar state assembly in April 2013 paving the way for opening of private universities in the state. A strong effort to encourage universities and colleges to obtain National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC) accreditation has been initiated. The objective of this background report is to provide policy-makers and stakeholders in higher education in Bihar with an overview of the opportunities and challenges that the state is facing in terms of reaching the ambitious goals in mission manav vikas. The report analyzes the data and information which is readily available on the access, equity, excellence, and finance. It can also be used as a baseline for the state higher education plan in Bihar drafted as part of the Rashtriya Uchchatar Shiksha Abhiyan (RUSA) process. The report is reflecting what has been possible to do in a short period of time with the available data and information.

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.

The case study in extending the school day in Latin America includes the following countries in this paper: Argentina, Rio Negro, Chile, Brazil, Sao Paulo, Uruguay, Argentina, Mendoza, El Salvador, and Mexico.

In Colombia, the beginning of a new century has brought with it a palpable feeling of optimism. Colombians will need new and better skills to apply to new challenges and prospects. The past underperformance of Colombia's education system is both a cause and an effect of a system unable to provide high quality education to all. An "education revolution" has begun and progress is being made. Basic and secondary enrolment, quality and learning outcomes are trending upward. The government's main policy goals at the tertiary level focus on the key challenges: expanding enrolment and improving equity, increasing quality and relevance, and making governance and finance more responsive. To achieve these goals, policy makers and stakeholders must find ways to reach consensus, work together and overcome inertia. Colombia has drifted away from focusing exclusively on the needs of students, the graduates they become, and the society in which they live and work. Restoring the focus on how tertiary education can serve these needs is a good organizing principle for reform. The government developed a proposed reform of Law 30 - the main statute governing tertiary education - and vigorous national debate accompanied its dissemination. Opposition to for-profit education dominated the headlines, but, in the review team's view, other aspects of the proposed reform were and are more important. The dramatic increase in tertiary enrolment witnessed during the last decade has also resulted in a more equitable distribution of access to tertiary education. The goal of enrolling 50% of the age cohort is appropriate and achievable, but it implies new challenges for access and student finance policies. The tertiary system covers the full range of the Colombian economy's needs for skilled manpower, if not necessarily to an equal extent. The government has clear and well-founded plans and aspirations for future tertiary growth and development. The Colombian government and people are well aware that they need not only more, but also better and fairer, tertiary provision - growth in coverage must be accompanied by quality, relevance and equitable access. The Colombian system of propaedeutic cycles is a good step towards allowing students to progress up through the tertiary levels. Colombian tertiary institutions have considerable autonomy, which is valuable in many ways though limiting in others.

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.

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 documents the progress of Lithuania in science, technology and innovation (STI) in areas singled out by three major international reports prepared by the Norwegian Research Council (1996), the World Bank (2003) and the CREST-OMC panel (2007). The task was to summarize recommendations of these studies, report on the progress achieved to date and point to priorities for the future. From a low point in the mid-1990s the Lithuanian STI system has gradually strengthened. Funding for R&D has increased and Lithuanian research groups have stepped up their performance in terms of publication output and relevance. It is the opinion of the reviewers that marked progress is evident and visible with respect to the goals of the three reports. This development has indeed been very positive and shows the strong commitment for a continuous improvement of the basic framework conditions for R&D in Lithuania. Nonetheless challenges remain. In order to further the development of STI-policies in Lithuania the report offers new recommendations in four areas: oversight and governance, science base, R&D linkages, and increasing innovative capacity.