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This thematic study discusses strategies for sustainable financing of secondary education in Sub-Saharan Africa. The report provides insight into options for financing the expansion of secondary education and training in Africa. This comes with a hefty price tag and points to the need to undertake fundamental reforms swiftly. This publication messages are clear: secondary education and training in Sub-Saharan Africa faces the challenge of improved efficiency and improved quality simultaneously with a fast growing demand. Sustainable financing will also require more effective public-private partnerships, because governments have many priorities and do not have a lot of room for significant additional public funding of post-primary systems. Educational reforms are needed to expand enrollment in secondary schooling in affordable ways. These reforms will contribute to poverty reduction by increasing the levels of knowledge, skills, and capability; diminishing inequalities in access that limit social mobility and skew income distribution; and contributing to the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) that relate to education.

The countries of Europe and Central Asia (ECA) are currently emerging from the deepest recession suffered by any developing region. Post-crisis conditions are very different from those of preceding years. Financial resources are more limited and more expensive, and export growth is restrained by potentially slower growth in destination countries. Restoring and sustaining growth in this context require reforms that boost competitiveness and increase labor productivity. Such reforms are all the more important given the shrinking of the working-age population in many countries of the region. This book uses a range of different data sources to argue that the skills problem in the ECA region relates more to the quality and relevance of the education provided in ECA countries than to problems of access. A central argument of the book is that ministries of education are constrained in a number of ways from effectively managing their education and training sectors. The three most important and interrelated impediments to improving quality and relevance are the lack of systematic data on key skills-related performance issues (i.e., how much students are learning and whether they are finding jobs after they graduate), the legacy of central planning, and inefficient use of resources. Lack of data on student learning and employment outcomes makes it difficult for education ministries to address the legacy of central planning, which emphasizes centralized management based on inputs. Ministries of education in the region continue to micromanage the sector using detailed norms and regulations. This input-oriented style of management leads to the inefficient use of resources and results in a rigid education sector not the type of flexible sector needed by ECA to create modern, skilled workforces. This book highlights how these constraints manifest themselves and then presents ways of overcoming them, relying on the experience of ECA countries that have successfully addressed them, together with international experience. Recommendations are presented in separate chapters for pre-university, tertiary, and adult education.

Monitoring educational changes over many years is problematic when there are differences in curricula, the nature of the variables being measured, and the selection of participants. Rasch measurement techniques provide a procedure that enables each of these issues to be examined. Using archived and specially collected data, tests of numeracy undertaken in Tasmania over a 20-year period, from 1978 to 1997, were equated and mapped onto the same continuum through a combination of common item and common person equating. Examination of fit to the model showed that the nature of the measured construct had not changed over this period. Although test difficulty appears to have risen over the period, student achievement was relatively unchanged. The implications of these findings for longitudinal studies of achievement are discussed.

This thematic study consists of case studies of Ghana, Malawi, and Uganda, as well as, a review of studies undertaken over the past ten years on education in Africa with particular attention to girls' and secondary education. Gender equity at the primary level has been the focus of considerable attention within the Education for All Framework of Action, but much less so at the secondary level. Evidence of gender inequity and inequality in terms of access, retention and performance in secondary education in SSA raises many questions. While transition rates from primary to secondary are higher for girls than boys, and the repetition rates are lower, girls still significantly trail behind boys in graduation and enrollment rates. The purpose of this study is to document and analyze the extent and nature of gender disadvantage in junior and senior secondary education, to analyze the causes of this disadvantage, and to identify strategies that may be effective in reducing or eliminating it. This study was prepared as part of the Secondary Education and Training in Africa (SEIA) initiative which aims to assist countries to develop sustainable strategies for expansion and quality improvements in secondary education and training. All SEIA products are available on its website: www.worldbank.org/afr/seia.

In Colombia, the beginning of a new century has brought with it a palpable feeling of optimism. Colombians will need new and better skills to apply to new challenges and prospects. The past underperformance of Colombia's education system is both a cause and an effect of a system unable to provide high quality education to all. An \"education revolution\" has begun and progress is being made. Basic and secondary enrolment, quality and learning outcomes are trending upward. The government's main policy goals at the tertiary level focus on the key challenges: expanding enrolment and improving equity, increasing quality and relevance, and making governance and finance more responsive. To achieve these goals, policy makers and stakeholders must find ways to reach consensus, work together and overcome inertia. Colombia has drifted away from focusing exclusively on the needs of students, the graduates they become, and the society in which they live and work. Restoring the focus on how tertiary education can serve these needs is a good organizing principle for reform. The government developed a proposed reform of Law 30 - the main statute governing tertiary education - and vigorous national debate accompanied its dissemination. Opposition to for-profit education dominated the headlines, but, in the review team's view, other aspects of the proposed reform were and are more important. The dramatic increase in tertiary enrolment witnessed during the last decade has also resulted in a more equitable distribution of access to tertiary education. The goal of enrolling 50% of the age cohort is appropriate and achievable, but it implies new challenges for access and student finance policies. The tertiary system covers the full range of the Colombian economy's needs for skilled manpower, if not necessarily to an equal extent. The government has clear and well-founded plans and aspirations for future tertiary growth and development. The Colombian government and people are well aware that they need not only more, but also better and fairer, tertiary provision - growth in coverage must be accompanied by quality, relevance and equitable access. The Colombian system of propaedeutic cycles is a good step towards allowing students to progress up through the tertiary levels. Colombian tertiary institutions have considerable autonomy, which is valuable in many ways though limiting in others.

All countries in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) face the prospect of a substantial increase in the number of primary school completers in the coming years. Although initial conditions vary widely from country to country, this increase will inevitably intensify pressure on the education system, particularly at the secondary and tertiary levels. African countries may thus find it timely to align their education policies and strategies to the emerging challenges. A key goal is to ensure that the education system continues to develop in an efficient, equitable, and fiscally sustainable manner even as it expands to accommodate the rising numbers seeking a place in secondary and tertiary education. The rest of this report is organized as follows. Chapter two elaborates the policy context for education development in SSA. Chapter three explains the methodology and data sources. Chapter four examines the challenges and constraints posed by the sheer volume of increases in enrollments in post-primary education with which most education systems in SSA must grapple in the coming years. Taking these constraints into account, the report evaluates the scope for policy development from three perspectives in the subsequent chapters: the coverage of education systems (chapter five), the quality and cost of service delivery (chapter six), and the division of financing by public and private sources (chapter seven). The fiscal implications of plausible policy packages that SSA countries might consider are assessed in chapter eight. Chapter nine seems up the general conclusions of the report.

As in most countries worldwide, Sub-Saharan African countries are striving to build their human capital so they can compete for jobs and investments in an increasingly globalized world. In this region, which includes the largest number of countries that have not yet attained universal primary schooling, the ambitions and aspirations of Sub-Saharan African countries and their youth far exceed this basic goal. Over the past 20 years, educational levels have risen sharply across Sub-Saharan Africa. Already hard at work to provide places in primary schools for all children, most countries of the region are also rapidly expanding access to secondary and tertiary levels of education. Alongside this quantitative push is a growing awareness of the need to make sure that students are learning and acquiring the skills needed for life and work. Achieving education of acceptable quality is perhaps an even greater challenge than providing enough school places for all. Thus, Sub-Saharan African countries are simultaneously confronting many difficult challenges in the education sector, and much is at stake. This book gives those concerned with education in Sub-Saharan Africa an analysis of the sector from a cross-country perspective, aimed at drawing lessons that individual country studies alone cannot provide. A comparative perspective is useful not only to show the range of possibilities in key education policy variables but also to learn from the best performers in the region. (Although the report covers 47 Sub- Saharan African countries whenever possible, some parts of the analysis center on the region's low-income countries, in particular, a sample of 33 low-income countries). Although countries ultimately must make their own policy choices and decide what works best in their particular circumstances, Sub-Saharan African countries can benefit from learning about the experiences of other countries that are faced with, or have gone through, similar development paths. Given the large number of countries included in the analysis, the book finds that Sub-Saharan African countries have more choices and more room for maneuver than will appear if attention were focused on only one or a few country experiences. Countries can make better choices when understanding the breadth of policy choices available to them. They are well advised, however, to evaluate the applicability of policy options to their contexts and to pilot and evaluate the results for performance and subsequent improvement.

Portugal: Selected Issues.

This book diagnoses Cambodian teaching quality and presents policy options for reform. Through classroom observation, assessments of mathematics and pedagogical content knowledge, and surveys of teachers and school directors, it sheds light on content and instruction, interactions with school directors, instructional support systems, and the implementation of teacher standards. The book investigates the competencies and skills of those attracted to teaching; it assesses the extent to which preservice education in Cambodia is delivering graduates with high content mastery and exposure to a student-centered learning environment; and it examines how teacher performance has been impacted by national incentives, an evaluation system that is disconnected from classroom realities, and the extent to which opportunities to learn and share best-practice lessons with peers exists. Out of the diagnosis follow three policy pillars to reform how teachers are trained, maintained, and motivated. First, the government must make teaching a much more attractive profession. Second, it must improve how teachers are prepared. And third, it must encourage stronger classroom performance. The book contains detailed recommendations under each policy pillar and provides the platform for Cambodia to undertake its next generation of educational reform.

[The book is] designed to help build capacity in carrying out technically adequate assessments of national levels of student achievement. It introduces readers to the activities involved in the development of achievement tests, and includes developing an assessment framework, writing multiple choice and constructed response type items, pretesting, producing test booklets, and handscoring items. A section on questionnaire construction features designing questionnaires, writing questions, coding responses, and linking questionnaire and test score data. The final section covers the development of a test administration manual, selecting test administrators, and contacting sampled schools. (DIPF/Verlag).