Secondary

Chile's scientific community garners well-deserved respect in the region and worldwide. The country has made significant and fruitful efforts to move towards a leadership position in research among industrializing countries. While progress has been substantial it has not yet matched the country's aspirations and much remains to be done. Although, there are no observed specific inequities within Chile's advanced research system, the country's education system has room for improvement.

The report intends to help the development of school health, and nutrition programs that are cost effective, and which respond to local needs. The first part of the report offers some guidelines on how to conduct a Situation Analysis, which should aim at showing: what are the challenges to the health, and nutrition of school children in a specific country; what is currently being done to improve the health, and nutrition of schoolchildren at the district, or national level; and, what opportunities there are for strengthening this response.

This study, Youth in the Northern Caucasus: from risk to empowerment, examines the socioeconomic situation of young people in the North Caucasus and the Russian Federation as a whole. The North Caucasus is the most disadvantaged region of Russia, characterized by high poverty levels, a large youth population, high youth employment, poor educational preparation for the job market, and numerous security risks.

Turkish secondary education faces a number of serious and deep-rooted problems which adversely affect its capacity to respond to the growing and changing demand from employers for educated labor market entrants. Within the Ministry of Education there is considerable resistance to change at middle and lower levels, the peoccupation being with needs for expansion in response to growing enrollments. Although senior officials tend to be more receptive to innovative thinking, and have sometimes initiated it, they seldom survive in office long enough to implement their proposals.

This report examines gender differences in the Mexican economy, with a focus on the labor market. It examines gender issues over the course of the life cycle, beginning with education and child labor, continuing with adult urban and rural labor force participation, and concluding with the situation of elderly Mexican men and women. While each chapter uses different data sources and analytical methodologies, the volume as a whole is guided by a gender perspective that examines the situations of both men and women as distinct groups and in relationship to one another.

HIV/AIDS, and violent conflicts are giving rise to a massive generation of orphans in Sub-Saharan Africa. The region currently has about 13 million orphans, most under the age of fifteen. Coping with the risks, and consequences of orphan-hood, poses immense problems: resources are limited, communities are being overwhelmed, and the realization of international development goals is being threatened. Yet, the contours of public action are unclear due to limited knowledge of the problem's magnitude, and a lack of clarity on the effectiveness of interventions.

A key objective of this report is to contribute toward developing a widely-shared vision for educational development for Madagascar based on a common understanding of the chalenges involved, and the part that each participant can play in realizing that vision. The report deals with all the main education sectors (i.e., primary, secondary, vocational/technical, and higher education), but the focus is necessarily limited by the complexity of the subject. In particular, non-formal education has been set aside.

A key objective of this report is to contribute toward developing a widely-shared vision for educational development for Madagascar based on a common understanding of the chalenges involved, and the part that each participant can play in realizing that vision. The report deals with all the main education sectors (i.e., primary, secondary, vocational/technical, and higher education), but the focus is necessarily limited by the complexity of the subject. In particular, non-formal education has been set aside.

The objectives of the paper are: to examine patterns of utilization, ownership, and affordability of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) and South Asia; to discuss applications of ICTs to the poor by the private sector, the Government, and external donors; and to suggest ways in which ICTs can best be used in poverty alleviation strategies. The paper finds that SSA and South Asia have the lowest access to ICTs resources. There are critical access gaps between urban and rural areas, and between the poorest and the richest.

The central focus on the work, Efficiency and equity in schools around the world, is how systematic policy actions of governments affect student performance. Building upon the testing and surveys of the Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), the authors consider specifically how families and schools contribute to within and between country variations in student performance. They then go beyond this to investigate whether school in the different countries work to narrow or widen performance differences.