Brief

[SIEF, Impact Evaluation] Educating children is a priority across the world, but low-income countries can face enormous challenges. Schools are often overcrowded and in disrepair. Teachers don't always show up or may not be qualified or interested in teaching. Parents hesitate to send children, especially girls, to schools that aren't close by or they may want to keep them at home to help with housework.

[SIEF, Impact Evaluation] Giving children access to quality early education can help prepare them for primary school by strengthening their physical, cognitive and socio-emotional development. But many children, especially those from poor and otherwise disadvantaged families, don't have the opportunity to attend preschool. Their families may not be able to afford to send them, may not recognize the importance of early education or may not have access to a quality program.

Weak implementation of Mozambique’s public financial management (PFM) systems and procedures adversely affected its health and education sectors, particularly the medical supply chain and school performance. Medications were unavailable, damaged, or expired, and patients couldn’t be adequately treated. In education, insufficient school governance led to limited community participation, ineffective supervision, high absenteeism, and school funding that was delayed or diverted.

The Results in Education for All Children (REACH) Trust Fund at The World Bank funded an evaluation that assessed the early impact of a performance-based school grants program on student learning in Indonesia. While all Jakarta government schools receive a fixed grant per student, under the new program top performing schools also receive a bonus. This evaluation focused on two separate effects in the first two years of the new program: the effect of announcing the performance-based incentive to schools, and the effect of receiving the bonus for top performing schools.

[Impact Evaluation, SIEF] Improving the classroom effectiveness of teachers is a key part of improving student learning. How to get this right is a core challenge for education systems. Teacher quality varies widely and teachers may not know the best teaching practices and how to keep students on task and engaged with the material. Especially in low-income countries or regions, teachers may not have the resources, knowledge or motivation to teach effectively.Governments and development partners invest heavily in teacher training.

Messages that promote the idea that intelligence is a skill that can be improved through practice and effort significantly increased student achievement in Peru.

Standard skills indicators leave an information gap on workforce skill characteristics, job skill requirements, and quality of worker-job matches that prevents policymakers from making informed and timely decisions on training and education for current and future employees. Thus, there is growing interest on measures of cognitive, socio-emotional (non-cognitive), and technical skills to analyze determinants of skills formation, economic decisions and labor market outcomes.

Education is an area in which Haryana has made significant progress. More adults in Haryana have completed secondary school than in many other states. And children’s learning outcomes are among the highest in the country. On health, however, there is mixed progress. On a positive note, Haryana records lower rates of open defecation than many other states. And infant mortality, which is close to the national average, is declining. Nonetheless, malnutrition levels in the state remain high, even among the richer households.

The scale of the global education challenge is staggering, even after a decade and a half of historic and encouraging progress. About 75 million children and adolescents who need educational support live in countries facing war and violence. With this book, the global partnership for education (GPE) offers a glimpse into the lives of these children. The children and teachers who appear here have all benefited from the funding and know-how that GPE has marshaled since 2002.

This note provides a rapid summary of a first set of eight notes 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 to 25, 2017. Despite substantial progress over the last two decades, girls still have on average lower levels of educational attainment than boys in West and Central Africa.