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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.

School dropout is a growing concern in Central America, and in Latin America as a whole, because of its consequences for economic productivity, the inclusiveness of growth, social cohesion, and increasing youth risks. This paper utilizes more than two decades of household survey data to construct a systematic overview of school dropout at the primary and secondary levels in Central America, including recent trends, causes and consequences, and evidence on what works to reduce dropout. Within each country, poverty, rurality, and indigenous group membership are the strongest correlates of dropout, reflecting several underlying factors that affect the marginal benefits and costs of staying in school. Global and regional evidence increasingly points to common policy priorities for reducing dropout across Central America, including addressing remaining gaps in access at the pre-primary and secondary levels, improving the quality of education at all levels, and strengthening the coverage, targeting, and coherence of existing programs aimed at improving education outcomes. However, additional rigorous evaluations, including cost data, are needed to identify the most effective specific approaches in each country.

Facing the prospects of rapid demographic aging and decline over the coming decades, Poland needs a highly skilled workforce to help generate the productivity growth that it needs to fuel continued convergence of its living standards with those of its West European neighbors. Skilling up the workforce starts with equipping youth with the right cognitive and socio-emotional foundation skills. International research has identified three dimensions of skills that matter for good employment outcomes and economic growth: cognitive skills, such as literacy, numeracy, and creative and critical thinking or problem solving; socio-emotional skills and behavioral traits, such as conscientiousness, grit, and openness to experience; and job- or occupation-specific technical skills, such as the ability to work as an engineer. This report focuses on cognitive skills. It examines results for Poland from the program for international student assessment (PISA), which assesses the mathematics, reading, and science competencies of 15-year-olds. The overall effects of reform on Poland’s PISA scores have been positive, although isolating the precise impact of each reform element is difficult. There is evidence from PISA assessments replicated for older students in upper-secondary education in 2006, 2009 and 2012 that performance gaps previously found between vocational and general schools for 15-year-olds prior to the 1999 reform persist today in upper secondary education, where the performance of students in vocational upper-secondary schools trails that of their peers in general education.

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 study examines the effects of the extension of compulsory schooling from 5 to 8 years in Turkey in 1997—which involved substantial investment in school infrastructure—on schooling outcomes and, in particular, on the equality of these outcomes between men and women, and urban and rural residents using the Turkish Demographic and Health Surveys. This policy is peculiar because it also changes the sheepskin effects (signaling effects) of schooling, through its redefinition of the schooling tiers. The policy is also interesting due to its large spillover effects on post-compulsory schooling as well as its remarkable overall effect; for instance, we find that the completed years of schooling by age 17 increases by 1.5 years for rural women. The policy equalizes the educational attainment of urban and rural children substantially. The urban-rural gap in the completed years of schooling at age 17 falls by 0.5 years for men and by 0.7 to 0.8 years for women. However, there is no evidence of a narrowing gender gap with the policy. On the contrary, the gender gap in urban areas in post-compulsory schooling widens.

This paper uses three waves of longitudinal data to examine the impact of expanding access to preschool services in rural areas of Indonesia on two cohorts of children. One cohort was children aged 4 at the start of the project and was immediately eligible for project-provided services when they began operation in 2009. The other cohort was children aged 1 at the start of the project and became eligible for project-provided services two years later. The paper presents intent-to-treat estimates of impact in the short term (first year of the project) and medium term (three years after the project started), using experimental and quasi-experimental methods. For the cohort of 4-year-olds, while the magnitude of the enrollment impact is similar across children from different backgrounds, the impact on child outcomes is larger for children from more disadvantaged backgrounds in the short and medium terms. However, for this cohort of children, it seems that project-provided playgroups encouraged substitution away from existing kindergartens, suggesting that future interventions should incorporate such possibilities into their design. For the average child in the younger cohort, the project led to improvements in physical health and well-being as well as language and cognitive development. For this cohort, there is little evidence of differential impact. This can be explained by the fact that children who enrolled soon after the centers opened (the older cohort) were generally poorer, compared with children who enrolled later (the younger cohort). This may be because of fee increases in project centers as project funding ended.

There have been many initiatives to improve education outcomes in South Asia. Still, outcomes remain stubbornly resistant to improvements, at least when considered across the region. To collect and synthesize the insights about what actually works to improve learning and other education outcomes, this paper conducts a systematic review and meta-analysis of 29 education-focused impact evaluations from South Asia, establishing a standard that includes randomized control trials and quasi-experimental designs. It finds that while there are impacts from interventions that seek to increase the demand for education in households and communities, those targeting teachers or schools and thus the supply-side of the education sector are generally much more adept at improving learning outcomes. In addition, interventions that provide different actors with resources and those that incentivize behavioral changes show moderate but statistically significant impacts on student learning. A mix of input- and incentive-oriented interventions tailored to the specific conditions on the ground appears most promising for fostering education outcomes in South Asia.

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.

Countries throughout Latin America and the Caribbean are reforming their education systems with the view of adding more hours to the school day. This paper examines the existing evidence on the relationship between instructional time and student learning, and reviews 15 studies measuring the effects of longer school days. It draws on examples throughout the region to characterize differences in the implementation of extended school day programs, and provides one detailed case study and cost-effectiveness exercise (for Uruguay). While the evidence suggests positive impacts across a range of outcome variables, including gains in student learning, reductions in repetition and dropout, and reductions in teenage pregnancy, there is considerable heterogeneity across programs and studies. Even using the most optimistic impact estimates, a cost-effectiveness exercise suggests that there are likely many more cost-effective reforms to achieve similar effects. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications for policy makers and practitioners considering an extension of the school day.

The Haitian education system made substantial improvements in access over the last decade, such that today the majority of Haiti’s children are in school. Despite improvements, the primary education system is highly inefficient: children start primary school 2 years late on average, and fewer than 60 percent will reach the last grade of the cycle. At each school, classroom observations were conducted using the Stallings Classroom Snapshot instrument, and questions about the school calendar and daily schedule asked. The results provide a representative picture of class time and teacher classroom practice in the Nord and Nord Est departments, and while not representative of Haiti as a whole, do provide a starting point for better understanding the major constraint to achieving a high-quality education for all children: the quality of teacher instruction. Section two describes the sample of schools and the stallings instrument; sections three and four present the main results of the classroom observations on teacher time use and pedagogical practices; section five provides estimates of overall class time that students receive; and section six concludes.

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.

This report presents an analysis of the early childhood development (ECD) programs and policies that affect young children in Albania and recommendations to move forward. This report is part of a series of reports prepared by the World Bank using the systems approach for better education results (SABER) - ECD framework and includes analysis of early learning, health, nutrition, and social and child protection policies, and interventions in Albania, along with regional and international comparisons.

Honduras has experienced moderate economic growth in the past decade, in line with the rest of the region. Despite this growth track record, limited opportunities for decent jobs for the majority of workers have resulted in stagnant poverty and inequality rates that are still the highest in Central America (CA). In parallel, progress in human development indicators has also been mixed in the last decade. In education, while primary enrollment has significantly increased, low coverage at all other levels of education, inequalities in access and low quality persist. In health, Honduras is close to achieving the 2015 child mortality Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), but maternal mortality, non-communicable diseases (NCDs), and violence pose additional challenges. And despite advances in setting up a social protection system, fiscal sustainability and lack of coordination among interventions prevail, undermining poverty reduction efforts. The ability of the Honduras government to expand safety nets, to increase the access and quality of public education and health services, to engage in active labor market policies, and to improve human development indicators in general, remains limited for a number of reasons. First, overall real social public spending has been on the decline in the last few years. Second, low revenues and fiscal deterioration pose challenges to adequately financing needed social sector improvements. Third, challenges in budget formulation and execution (mainly due to institutional factors) also diminish the impact of social spending. But more importantly, Honduras needs to significantly improve the effectiveness and efficiency of its social spending. This note argues that moving forward Honduras should prioritize three main aspects: a) to rationalize and increase the effectiveness of social public spending by enhancing the pro-poor features of targeting mechanisms; b) to significantly redress the imbalance between recurrent spending, especially the wage bill, and capital expenditure; and c) to continue strengthening information systems tools, legislation, and institutions in an effort to consolidate programs into fewer and higher impact interventions.

The objective of this report is to analyze the state of early childhood education (ECE1) provision and the policy framework for delivering ECE in Sri Lanka, and suggest policy options for the future. The report is intended to serve several purposes. First, drawing upon the international literature in the field of early childhood development, it provides the rationale for investing in early childhood education in Sri Lanka. Second, it provides an understanding of the current policy framework and delivery system for ECE in the country. This policy analysis specifically looks at the extent to which there is an enabling environment for ECE, what provisions exist for monitoring and quality assurance, and how widely the policy is being implemented. Third, it presents a situation analysis of ECE provision in Sri Lanka, discussing the issues of access, equity, and quality in the delivery of ECE services. The discussion on equity focuses mainly on understanding disparities in access, and the analysis of quality looks at the quality of inputs, processes and outcomes, including cognitive and non-cognitive outcomes. And fourth, the report presents policy and program options based on the findings of the above analyses.

This report presents results of the application of SABER teachers in three administrative divisions of Russia. It describes the performance of Tomsk oblast, Ivanovo oblast, and St.Petersburg in each of the eight teacher policy goals, alongside comparative information from education systems.

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.

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.

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.

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.

This study reports evidence from an unusual policy intervention- The Reaching Out of School Children (ROSC) project in Bangladesh where school grants and education allowances are offered to attract hard-to-reach children to schools comprised of a single teacher and a classroom. The operating unit cost of these schools is a fraction of that of formal primary schools. Panel data is used to investigate whether ROSC schools are effective in raising enrolment and learning outcomes. The findings suggest that there is a modest impact on school participation: ROSC schools increase enrolment probability between 9 and 18 percent for children in the two age cohorts 6 to 8 and 6 to 10. They perform as well as non-ROSC schools in terms of raising test scores, and even have positive impacts on academically stronger students. There is also strong evidence of positive externalities on non-ROSC schools in program areas. These results point to the effectiveness of a new model of non-formal primary schools that can be replicated in similar settings. This paper consists of following sections: section one gives introduction. The context for the country and the program description is provided in section two, and the data is described in section three. The impacts of the ROSC project on education outcomes as measured by student enrolment and test scores are discussed in section four and other program effects are considered in section five, with the empirical estimation frameworks being respectively detailed in each section. The relative efficiency of ROSC schools versus non-ROSC schools is discussed in section six and section seven gives conclusion.

Conditional cash transfer (CCT) programs are becoming a popular tool for alleviating short-term poverty and reducing the inter-generational transmission of poverty. More than 30 developing and transition countries have implemented these programs, providing incentives to poor households to make investments in the human capital of their children. Programs vary in scale, transfer size, conditionality's, eligibility, and implementation features. This report is structured around five chapters as follows: the first chapter gives an overview of the program, the context in which it was implemented and available evidence on the impacts of the Female School Stipend Program (FSSP) as well as other CCTs. Chapter two focuses on the questions this evaluation sets out to answer and the methods and information used to answer them. The third chapter presents the results from the analysis and is structured around three evaluation questions regarding average impact, heterogeneity of impacts, and spillover effects. Chapter four performs the robustness checks of the findings, examining whether they are sensitive to preprogram trends, measurement error, endogenous compositional changes, and crowding-out effects. Finally, the conclusion discusses the implications of the results, some limitations of this evaluation, and areas that require further work.

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.

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 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.

This report is a part of larger welfare and social policy work agenda which the Turkish State Planning Organization and the World Bank are carrying out collaboratively. The work agenda includes the preparation of a number of conceptualized, and in part of co-authored, analytical studies on topics ranging from examines the equity determinants to investigating the links between poverty, employment creation, and growth. Further, the work agenda comprises a number of human development dialogues for which we are inviting international experts and practioners to share their experiences about social policy reforms with the Turkish government and the wider academic and non-governmental public. This report examines life chances. Life chances for today Turkish people, most importantly future generation, today's children. The results presented in this report show that life chances differ in important dimensions today, and that Turkey could immensely improve its human and economic development potential by maximizing such opportunities.

This paper uses research from neuroscience and the psychology of mathematics to arrive at useful recommendations for teaching mathematics at primary level to poor students in developing countries. The enrollment rates of the poorer students have improved tremendously in the last decade. And the global Net Enrollment Ratio (NER) has improved since 2001 from 83.2 percent to 90-95 percent except in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. Making teaching of math and other subjects efficient for the poor in developing countries is a great challenge, particularly in south Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. Many developing countries have explored new means of teaching math and other subjects. Mongolia changed its mathematics education, aiming to build a new set of priorities and practices, given the abandonment of earlier traditions. Similar to international trends of the time, South Africa in the 1990s extensively applied the constructivist learning philosophy which relied on exploration and discovery, with little emphasis on memorization, drill, In conformity with a belief that teachers could develop their own learning programs, there was virtual absence of a national or provincial syllabus or textbooks. Students were expected to develop their own methods for arithmetic operations, but most found it impossible to progress on their own from counting to actual calculating. This study integrates pertinent research from neuroscience and the psychology of mathematics to arrive at recommendations for curricular and efficient means of mathematics instruction particularly for developing countries and poor students at primary level. Specifically, the latest research in neuroscience, cognitive science, and discussions of national benchmarks for primary school mathematics learning, form the basis of our recommendations. These recommendations have a reasonable chance of working in the situational contexts of developing countries, with their traditions and resources.

The objective of this rapid assessment is to inform the design of an Urban Youth Empowerment Project by providing information on youth and youth serving initiatives. Terms of reference crime and violence in Port Moresby and the National Capital District (NCD) are widespread and costly. In 2004, 68 percent of households reported that they had been victims of crime at least once in the past year and 51 percent had been victims of multiple crimes. Violence against women is pervasive, with domestic violence and rape, including gang rape, routine. By 2005, there had been small decreases in reported victimization; however, 61 percent of households still reported being victims of at least one crime and 46 percent reported being victims of multiple crimes. At the same time, costs associated with security and theft amounted to an estimated 15 percent of business turnover and law and order problems serve as a deterrent to investment. Young people account for the greatest share of crime and violence, so tackling the problem means addressing the underlying causes of youth crime and violence. This report provides a rapid assessment of youth and youth serving institutions in Port Moresby. The report relies on extensive consultations held in Port Moresby from July 23, 2008. Meetings were held with over 100 young people, their parents, community leaders, government officials, researchers, youth workers, leaders of youth groups and youth serving agencies, and representatives of the international non-governmental and donor agencies.