Publication

All children should be able to read by age 10. Reading is a gateway for learning as the child progresses through school—and conversely, an inability to read slams that gate shut. Beyond this, when children cannot read, it’s usually a clear indication that school systems aren’t well enough organized to help children learn in other areas such as math, science, and the humanities either.

Bangladesh economic expansion continued in FY19, supported by rising exports and record remittances. Inflation remained within the 5.5 percent target, supported by bumper rice harvests. Broad money growth increased marginally. Private sector credit growth was weak and bank liquidity remains constrained. Non-performing loans continued to rise in the banking sector. The current account deficit declined with higher export and lower import growth. Bangladesh Bank interventions moderated the depreciation of the taka against the US dollar, but the real effective exchange rate appreciated.

Human capital is central to the World Bank Group’s efforts to end extreme poverty by 2030 and raise the incomes of the bottom 40 percent of people in each country. The vision of the Human Capital Project is a world in which all children reach their full potential growing up well-nourished and ready to learn, attain real learning in the classroom, and enter the job market as healthy, skilled, and productive adults.

Cambodia’s education sector has faced and overcome a number of challenges in recent history. Several decades of political and social unrest caused by the Khmer Rouge regime of the 1970s and Vietnamese occupation in the 1980’s dealt a severe blow to the education system and left it in a state of disintegration. Primary and secondary enrollment through to the 1980’s fell, with school attendance dramatically lower for individuals who were teenagers in 1975 compared to previous or subsequent cohorts (de Walque, 2004).

The Results in Education for All Children (REACH) Trust Fund at the World Bank funded an evaluation that measured how two different incentive approaches affected the academic performance of grade 9 students in Zanzibar (Tanzania). The first approach allowed students to set personal goals at the beginning of the school year regarding their performance by the end of the year. The second approach combined this goal-setting exercise with non-financial rewards such as certificates or in-kind prizes for students who met their goals.

Moldova, like many other countries in the region, is facing rapid economic and demographic transitions. Employers report that inadequate levels of workforce skills hamper their productivity. Recognizing the importance of workforce development to improve the country’s socioeconomic prospects, the Government of Moldova approved the educational development strategies for 2013-2020. The main objectives are to improve the quality of education and training system and better match its outcome with the labor market needs.

This policy note is an attempt to systematically analyze and document emerging trends in the evolution of students’ learning outcomes in Tanzania’s primary schools. The note is based on two rounds of the Service Delivery Indicators Survey in Tanzania, 2014 and 2016, and provides guidance to the Government on: (1) regional, district and school-level variations in gains in pupil achievement scores; (2) student, teacher and school level factors associated with learning outcomes; and (3) key observable factors associated with highest gains in test scores.

Pakistan at hundred – Shaping the Future is the flagship report by World Bank Pakistan, focusing on long-term development opportunities for a more prosperous future. It articulates the key actions it needs to take to accelerate growth as it aspires to become an upper-middle-income country by 2047. Pakistan will need to significantly increase investment, spend more and better on education and health and ignite a transformation of its economy through increased competition and making better use of regional and global markets.

The Results in Education for All Children (REACH) Trust Fund at the World Bank funded an evaluation that measured how two different incentive approaches affected the academic performance of grade 9 students in Zanzibar (Tanzania). The first approach allowed students to set personal goals at the beginning of the school year regarding their performance by the end of the year. The second approach combined this goal-setting exercise with non-financial rewards such as certificates or in-kind prizes for students who met their goals.

The Results in Education for All Children (REACH) Trust Fund at the World Bank funded the development of a Management & Information System to monitor the quality of the education system in Colombia. This system builds on existing monitoring tools, which focus on outcome measures such as test scores but do not capture intermediate quality indicators that can shed light on how learning outcomes are achieved.