Impact Evaluation and Policy Research

It is recognized by both private and public sectors that an adequate education plays an important part in stemming the spread of HIV. While the topic of sex education among primary and secondary schools remains a contentious issue for a predominantly Catholic country like the Philippines, teaching health professionals about HIV/AIDS is a vital part of the subject of infectious diseases. At present, there is a need to evaluate the current curriculum of health professionals in terms of the adequacy of the teaching about HIV/AIDS.

This paper tests how migrants' willingness to remit changes when given the ability to direct remittances to educational purposes using different forms of commitment. Variants of a dictator game in a lab-in-the-field experiment with Filipino migrants in Rome are used to examine remitting behavior under varying degrees of commitment. These range from the soft commitment of simply labeling remittances as being for education, to the hard commitment of having funds directly paid to a school and the student's educational performance monitored.

This paper aims to estimate the impact of school-based management on students' test scores in the Philippines. Estimation results using double differencing combined with propensity score matching show that school-based management increases the average national achievement test score by 4.2 points over three years. The increase in mathematics reached 5.7 points.

Over the last decade, the Government of the Philippines has embarked on an ambitious education reform program to ensure that all Filipinos have the opportunity to obtain the skills that they need to play a full and productive role in society. The government has backed up these reforms, particularly over the last five years, with substantial increases in investment in the education sector. Between 2010 and 2015, spending on basic education increased by 60 percent in real terms, and per student funding levels has increased considerably.

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.

Myanmar has an important opportunity to improve the health status and education outcomes of its people after decades of underspending and institutional neglect in the social sectors. Low access to health, education and social protection services has severely worsened human development outcomes, which ranked among the lowest in the region. Since 2011, there has been a sea change in public policy with rapidly rising social spending to expand access to services and protect families from poverty.

This study presents evidence from a randomized control trial (RCT) in Mongolia on the impact of in-service teacher training and books, both as separate educational inputs and as a package. The study tests for the complementarity of inputs and non-linearity of returns from investment in education as measured by students' test scores in five subjects. It takes advantage of a national-scale RCT conducted under the Rural Education and Development project. The results suggest that the provision of books, in addition to teacher training, raises student achievement substantially.

This report sheds light on information sources and on gaps in educational and occupational choices in Moldova by presenting findings based on original data collected in 2015. To support the government in reinforcing Moldova?s career guidance and information systems for education and jobs, individual interviews and focus group discussions were conducted during the 2015 school year with secondary and tertiary students, graduates, parents, and teachers.

Despite sustained economic growth since the mid-1980s, Lao PDR's education system faces challenges in meeting its goals of providing all students with access to education and improving learning outcomes. To further the country's economic development, the Government of Lao PDR has placed a priority on improving its education sector. However, as of 2012, Lao PDR was not on track to achieve its Millennium Development Goal (MDG) of universal primary education.

Few would contest that teachers are a very important determinant of whether students learn in school. Yet, in the face of compelling evidence that many students are not learning what they are expected to learn, how to improve teacher performance has been the focus of much policy debate in rich and poor countries. This paper examines how incentives, both pecuniary and non-pecuniary, influence teacher effort.