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This report finds that in developing countries over the past 15 years, high priority was accorded to increasing enrolments in primary schools, but much less attention was directed to the crucial issue of whether children are learning adequately. The report recommends that countries, the World Bank and development partners give the same emphasis to learning outcomes as to access, so that the world's increasing investments in primary education have a far greater impact on poverty reduction and national development. The World Bank is the largest provider of external financial support to education in developing world. Since 1963, it has transferred about US$36.5 billion for education, over $14 billion of which has been for primary education. Its current lending portfolio consists of about 143 operations in 88 countries amounting to US$8.4 billion. (DIPF/Orig.).

Community involvement in the management of schools--community empowerment--is a growing phenomenon in the developing world. Many see it as a way to increase the relevance of schools, school attendance, and ultimately to improve learning outcomes. Increasingly, World Bank lending for basic education includes growing support for community empowerment in one form or another. To date, however, there is not a strong body of evidence linking community empowerment to improved learning outcomes or even many of its prerequisites. In fact, in many cases countries appear to be adopting such strategies without field testing them in the local context. This article looks at the growth of community empowerment activities in Bank-supported programmes and examines a small, but growing body of evidence on their development effectiveness. It focuses particularly on programmes created to empower poorer or marginalized communities and examines their impact on learning outcomes or the necessary conditions for them. After a brief conceptual clarification, the article discusses the World Bank policy objectives with respect to management decentralization down to the community level, and describes some of the ways these have been put into practice and assessed. It then examines a set of 12 country case studies on primary education used in a recent World Bank Independent Evaluation Group evaluation of primary education projects for evidence of community empowerment efforts and for any evaluation findings that have been produced. The small body of evaluation findings identified was then mined to show both areas of promise and remaining challenges. The article concludes with a discussion of findings, including some preliminary ideas, based on the evidence so far, of appropriate ways forward. (Contains 1 table and 6 notes.)

Governments around the world have increasingly used distance education (DE), both preservice and inservice, to overcome conventional, campus-based programme constraints in funding, access and student places. DE programmes have shown that they can expand assess to teacher education, but still need to demonstrate that they can produce teachers of the quality needed for today's schools. Quality assessment systems have been developed, using either examinations or impact studies, to demonstrate programme effect on graduate outcomes related to good teaching. Quality assurance systems have been designed, based on the concept of the 'learning organisation', to assure continuous improvement in programme conditions related to the desired outcomes. Quality assessment and assurance systems are reviewed and some examples of quality DE programmes presented.

The social-psychological adjustment of 1,750 high school students with different exploration preferences was examined in classrooms with different social exploration climates. Exploration preference was assessed by the Edwards-Kelly Exploration Questionnaire; exploration climate by the Moos and Trickett Classroom Environment Scale (CES). Overall, students reported higher levels of in-class satisfaction and socio-emotional adjustment in high social exploration climates. Among students in the high exploration climates, those high in exploration preference were more satisfied and better adjusted than those low in exploration preference. Among students in the low exploration climates there was no statistical difference between those high and low in exploration preference.