Equity and Inclusion

Children with disabilities are often the most marginalized and excluded from educational opportunities, limiting their opportunities to build independent lives free from poverty. Fifteen percent of the world’s population is estimated to have a disability. The exclusion of children with disabilities is severe globally and especially in low-income countries and regions. The problem is not limited to attending school.

Ensuring girls can go to school and complete their education is critical for improving lives. Girls who benefit from a quality education become healthier, more productive adults. They’re less likely to marry at an early age and more likely to be formally employed and to have higher earnings. But poverty remains the key factor for determining whether a girl goes to school.

Inequalities in the opportunity to obtain a good education in low-income countries are widely understood to be related to household resources and schooling quality. Yet, to date, most researchers have investigated the contributions of these two factors separately. This paper considers them jointly, paying special attention to their covariation, which indicates whether schools exacerbate or compensate for existing household-based inequalities.

This note provides a rapid summary of a first set of eight notes in this series on girls’ education and child marriage in West and Central Africa. The eight notes were prepared ahead of the High Level Meeting on Ending Child Marriage in West and Central Africa held in Dakar on October 23-25, 2017. Several notes in this first set look at the economic impacts of girls’ education and child marriage on a range of other development outcomes.

Although more children than ever are starting school in Africa, in many countries dropout rates remain high and few students complete their schooling, especially girls. Results-based financing (RBF) has been used in many developing countries to attempt to incentivize various stakeholders such as students, parents, and teachers to achieve better results. RBF mechanisms work by linking financial incentives to measurable results, for example school attendance, dropout rates, or student test scores.

Too many girls drop out of school prematurely, especially in low income countries. Low educational attainment for girls has negative consequences not only for them, but also for their children and household, as well as for their community and society. This study documents the potential impacts of educational attainment for girls and women in six domains: (1) earnings and standards of living; (2) child marriage and early childbearing; (3) fertility and population growth; (4) health, nutrition, and well-being; (5) agency and decision-making; and (6) social capital and institutions.

Fair Progress? Economic Mobility across Generations around the World looks at an issue that has gotten much attention in the developed world, but with, for the first time, new data and analysis covering most of the world, including developing economies. The analysis examines whether those born in poverty or in prosperity are destined to remain in the same economic circumstances into which they were born and looks back over a half a century at whether children’s lives are better or worse than their parents’ in different parts of the world.

This edition includes a focus topic that discusses how 15 years of education reforms have helped to improve education outcomes and human capital in Indonesia, and what challenges remain. The outcomes from 15 years of educational reform have been mixed, with a significant expansion inaccess, but a large deficit in quality. In 2002, Indonesia embarked on a series of policy reforms to strengthen access to and the quality of education, both key determinants of human capital development. After 15 years, however, the results of the reforms have been mixed.

This report is an assessment of the relevance of the CodeBus Africa project from the perspective of local partners. CodeBus Africa organized beginner level computer programming workshops in collaboration with 15 African partners in 10 Sub-Saharan African countries in 2017. The overall purpose of the project was to promote and inspire equal participation of girls and boys in technology education, to build local capacity for teaching student-centered beginner-level programming and to boost collaboration between Finnish and African innovators.