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The relative return to input-augmentation versus inefficiency-reduction strategies for improving education system performance is a key open question for education policy in low-income countries. Using a new nationally-representative panel dataset of schools across 1297 villages in India, this paper shows that the large investments over the past decade have led to substantial improvements in input-based measures of school quality, but only a modest reduction in inefficiency as measured by teacher absence. In the data, 23.6 percent of teachers were absent during unannounced visits with an associated fiscal cost of $1.5 billion/year. There are two robust correlations in the nationally-representative panel data that corroborate findings from smaller-scale experiments. First, reductions in student-teacher ratios are correlated with increased teacher absence. Second, increases in the frequency of school monitoring are strongly correlated with lower teacher absence. Simulations using these results suggest that investing in better governance by increasing the frequency of monitoring could be over ten times more cost effective at increasing teacher-student contact time (net of teacher absence) than hiring more teachers. Thus, at current margins, policies that decrease the inefficiency of public spending in India are likely to yield substantially higher returns than those that augment inputs.

The overall objective was to elicit and sustain meaningful participation by the community in the management of schools. This could only be possible if the interface was integrated with local institutions. For this reason, School Management Committees in approximately half of the sample villages were strengthened through elections and capacity-building support to enable Committee members to effectively respond to community-identified needs. The primary purpose of this report is to record the rationale and motivations behind the decisions taken by the project team during the project’s design and implementation, and to catalyze a candid discussion about the challenges faced during implementation. The report is divided into three sections. The first section deals with the design phase of the project. There are two chapters in this section. The first lays out the framework and context for project design; the second discusses the design and testing of instruments, the portal, manuals and training of field facilitators. Section Two focuses on the implementation phase of the project. The first chapter in this section reviews village mobilization efforts and the convening of village-level meetings. The second chapter documents the post-meeting engagement process through the Community Dialogue Platform, while the third chapter reviews capacity-building support for newly constituted School Management Committees. The third and the final section reports the key findings from collation, synthesis and analysis of the process data collected for all interventions in this project. The first chapter in this section reports statistics on measures of participation and other indicators to measure treatment fidelity, strategies that measure accuracy and consistency of interventions. The second chapter analyzes text messaging traffic generated on the portal for the duration of the campaign, while the final chapter gives detailed expenditures analysis of School Improvement Plans developed by the School Management Committees.

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.

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.

Improving education outcomes by disseminating information to parents and thereby encouraging them to become more actively engaged in school oversight is attractive since it can be done relatively cheaply. This study evaluates the impact of alternative approaches to disseminating information about a school grants program in Indonesia on parent knowledge about the program in general, knowledge about the implementation of the program in their child’s school, and participation in school activities related to the program as well as beyond it. Not all dissemination approaches yielded impacts, and different modes of dissemination conveyed different types of information best, resulting in different impacts on behavior. Specifically, the low-intensity approaches that were tried - sending a letter from the principal home with the child, or sending a colorful pamphlet home with the child - had no impact on knowledge or participation. On the other hand, holding a facilitated meeting with a range of school stakeholders or sending targeted short message services (SMSs) to parents did increase knowledge and participation. Facilitated meetings mostly increased overall knowledge and fostered a feeling of transparency on the part of parents, which resulted in greater participation in formal channels for providing feedback to the school. SMSs increased knowledge about specific aspects of the program, such as the grant amount, and tended to increase participation through informal channels.

Improving education outcomes by disseminating information to parents and thereby encouraging them to become more actively engaged in school oversight is attractive, since it can be done relatively cheaply. This study evaluates the impact of alternative approaches to disseminating information about a school grants program in Indonesia on parents knowledge about the program in general, knowledge about the implementation of the program in their childs school, and participation in school activities related to the program as well as beyond it. Not all dissemination approaches yielded impacts, and different modes of dissemination conveyed different types of information best, resulting in different impacts on behavior. Specifically, the low-intensity approaches that were tried—sending a letter from the principal home with the child, or sending a colorful pamphlet home with the child—had no impact on knowledge or participation. On the other hand, holding a facilitated meeting with a range of school stakeholders or sending targeted text messages to parents did increase knowledge and participation. Facilitated meetings mostly increased overall knowledge and fostered a feeling of transparency on the part of parents, which resulted in greater participation in formal channels for providing feedback to the school. The text messages increased knowledge about specific aspects of the program, such as the grant amount, and tended to increase participation through informal channels.

Education management information systems (EMISs), usually located within the ministry of education, are tools that can help governments improve education system administration by providing information that can be used in strategic planning, resource allocation, and monitoring and evaluation. Frequently, however, they are underutilized and become merely a reporting mechanism. Using the data at the point of collection usually individual schools in a decentralized environment and feeding them into service improvement action plans can circumvent problems with the national EMIS, and allow the data to become instrumental in improving local education service delivery outcomes.

Reliable evidence is needed to design policies that will allow overcoming Timor-Leste's remaining challenges in provision of quality education. In recent post-conflict years, aided by availability of oil revenues, Timor-Leste has been able to considerably improve availability of schools and access to education. This report presents findings of the 2012 Education Survey, collaboration between the Ministry of Education, the National Directorate of Statistics, AusAID and the World Bank. The survey collected detailed information at all primary, pre-secondary and secondary schools in the country. Its objectives were to support the improvement of Timor-Leste's education quality and service delivery through building a solid information source and analytical foundation which will allow for sound, evidence-based policy making. The survey results indicate that student absenteeism should be a major cause for concern. More than one third of grade one students were absent from school on the day of the survey, in some districts it was half or even more. Education levels of primary school teachers are low, with the majority only having secondary education. For 71 percent of primary school teachers the highest level of education is secondary school, for 6 percent it is even lower. Both demand and supply side interventions are needed to tackle the challenges faced. Some key policy areas should be: 1) improving school attendance through creating appropriate demand-side incentives; 2) enhancing teacher quality; 3) strengthening instruction language policy; 4) improving education system management; 5) improving school infrastructure and learning environment; and 6) ensuring adequate supply of textbooks.

Primary enrollment rates in Indonesia are near 100 percent for all students, but students from poor and vulnerable households have a difficult time completing higher levels of education. Poor households most often have heads of households with primary school education or lower while rates of illiteracy among households below the poverty line are approximately double that of non poor households. For the most recent cohort (with completed elementary and secondary education) less than 50 percent of those from poor households who enrolled in first grade made it to junior secondary and less than 20 percent made it to senior secondary (compared to 90 and over 75 percent, respectively, of those from the richest 20 percent of households who enrolled in first grade). Poor households also state that if higher education has to be rationed in their household because it is too expensive, it is more often male children who will be sent and female children kept back. The Bantuan Siswa Miskin (BSM) program, which provides cash transfers for school attendance, could provide the right solution for poor households facing rising costs and increased risk of low education. The BSM program provides transfers from central education agencies directly to students or schools in which students sit. The BSM program is actually 10 independently-run initiatives that together cover all levels of education (including vocational education) at secular and religious public schools. Unlike other household-based transfers, the BSM initiatives have neither a central coordinating unit nor a unified budget. Within each institution, separate units independently manage and execute initiatives for students from each level of schooling and for vocational education. The Kemenag-run BSM initiatives for university scholars are further fragmented by religious affiliation (of partner universities). In total, there are 10 BSM initiatives, each with its own manual, fund flow structure, and implementing procedures. There is little coordination between initiatives, even those located in the same institution. This note assesses the operation and implementation of the BSM program to determine how well poor households are served. It provides quantitative analysis of the coverage, incidence, and average benefit levels of BSM to determine both the progressivity of the program's targeting and the adequacy of benefit levels. Qualitative information on program delivery and program operations will also shed light on areas for reform. A review of the program's design and operating guidelines will offer enhancements to the program's effectiveness and relevance.

What happens when the state's vision and expanding reach bring it into contact with traditional value systems and governance structures? In what circumstances can the distribution of resources in a fragile society prevent-or exacerbate-conflict within and between communities? How do state expansion and public spending impact upon societal expectations of the state and state legitimacy? This report examines these questions through the lens of access, claiming, and decision making in government-sponsored community development programs. The findings illustrate the hurdles faced by government and development actors operating in pluralistic societies, and provide input on how local governance and decision making might be incorporated to enrich programming. This report aims to provide the government of Timor-Leste, particularly those responsible for decentralization, community development, and local governance planning, with information to inform their determination of an appropriate mix of models for local development. The relative priority the government will ultimately give to these different models, partly a trade-off between speed and depth, will impact on the way in which development and local governance are understood and taken on board by rural communities. This report finds that the achievement of the dual goals of state legitimacy and sustainable, effective local development hinges in large part on the willingness of state officials (and the donors that support them) to engage productively with communities and locally legitimate customary systems of authority.

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.

This study examines Public Expenditure Tracking Survey (PETS) and Quantitative Service Delivery Survey (QSDS) carried out in Africa with the objective of assessing their approaches, main findings, and contributions. Section 2 investigates the context, motivations, and objectives of PETS and QSDS that have been carried out in Sub-Saharan Africa. Section 3 examines the institutional arrangements for resource allocation and service delivery in social sectors. Section 4 presents some of the main findings of tracking surveys. Section 5 analyzes methodological approaches used in previous tracking surveys in order to identify factors that could explain the difference in past surveys' success, and identify potential methodological harmonization. Section 6 presents a series of good practice principles that arise from past experience, and discusses how they could be implemented. Section 7 proposes potential future surveys and endeavors.