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This report, produced with the help of Madagascar’s national education team in 2006-07, is designed to contribute to ongoing education reform discussions. It analyzes the constraints to system expansion and presents possible next steps for an appropriate course of action. This report aims to encourage discussion among policymakers, stakeholders and donors, and does not promote one approach over another. To promote a more competitive economy in Madagascar in the 21st century, the government expects to increase the average years of schooling from the current 4.5 years to about 9-10 years by 2015 for the relative age groups. This report discusses the ongoing reform and its impact and provides suggestions for implementation. This report is intended to be used as a discussion instrument and to be disseminated among Madagascar’s stakeholders in education. We hope this report will contribute to improved implementation of the secondary education reform in Madagascar.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.

The report opens with a brief description of the conceptual framework that guided the analysis as well as the data used. The next chapter presents the analysis of changes in household behavior and educational outcomes related to the implementation of the reforms, at both the primary and secondary levels. The descriptive nature of this analysis does not allow for inferences regarding the effects of the reforms on enrollment and demand for education. The following chapter presents the results of an econometric impact analysis of the reforms to quantify the magnitude of the effects on enrollment. In considering priorities for the future, the Government is paying increasing attention to the impact of the investments in education on growth, jobs, and poverty reduction, as measured by increased earnings from employment, and particularly by improving opportunities for the labor force to move to higher productivity activities and livelihoods. The next chapter presents the results on the changing structure of employment in Mozambique between 2003 and 2008, the impacts of education on employment opportunities, and the implications of these changes for education policy. The final chapter integrates the education and labor force analyses and provides strategic recommendations as Mozambique continues to improve educational outcomes, particularly for those population groups that have had the most difficulty entering and remaining in school.

Aiming to increase the gender-sensitivity of budget support, the inclusion of sex-disaggregated indicators in Performance Assessment Frameworks (PAFs) and the set up of joint gender (sector) working groups have been proposed as possible remedying incentives. This article explores whether and in which (aid and country) contexts these measures have contributed to increasing female enrolment in primary education, by studying a sample of 14 Sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries. The findings of our QCA-analysis demonstrate that particularly a combination of both types of incentives contributes to high performance in increasing female primary enrolment. Additionally, both types of measures prove to be especially effective in highly aid-dependent countries. If aid dependency is combined with a supportive country context, the presence of a gender working group seems to be sufficient; in a less enabling country, setting the inclusion of sex-disaggregated indicators in the PAF is necessary, although not sufficient.

This working paper discusses equity and efficiency issues in secondary education transitions in Sub-Saharan Africa. Its main purpose is to identify and analyze national, regional, and local measures that may lead to the development of more efficient and seamless transitions between post-primary education pathways.

In the past 30 years, China has reached the target of lifting 500 million people out of poverty. The rate of increase in human development indicators has become the second fastest in the world, allowing China to enter the ranks of middle-income countries. As the most populous country, accounting for one-fifth of the world's population, its transformation has been unprecedented in human history. Scientific evidence and international experience in the past 10 years have found that early child development (ECD) is key to human development, as it lays the foundation for the rest of life. Early child development includes physical, psychological, emotional, language, behavioral, and social development. Experience in the early years of life will determine healthy development and happiness in the rest of life. Research has found that investment in ECD is the most cost effective strategy to improve human development. In China's demographic transition, the population of children and youth is declining in absolute numbers, and the investment of raising them can increase on a per capita basis. This study has been in the making since 2009. It was prepared during a time when China was charting its course of development under the 12th Five-Year Plan (2011-2015). The study began with an agreement between the World Bank and China's National Population and Family Planning Commission (NPFPC) for a collaborative study on ECD. Concurrently, China's Ministry of Education invited the World Bank to conduct an overall review of the education sector, in order to provide it with inputs and suggestions as it prepared China's national plan for medium- and long-term education reform and development (2010-2020). In reviewing achievements and challenges in the education sector, the Bank found that there was much room for expanding and improving preprimary education for children ages 3-6. The Ministry of Education appreciated the Bank's identification of this need and set ambitious goals for preprimary education in the national education plan.

Enhancing the role of private sector partners in education can lead to significant improvements in education service delivery. However, the realization of such benefits depends in great part on the design of the partnership between the public and private sectors, on the overall regulatory framework of the country, and on the governmental capacity to oversee and enforce its contracts with the private sector. Under the right terms, private sector participation in education can increase efficiency, choice, and access to education services, particularly for students who tend to fail in traditional education settings. Private-for-profit schools across the world are already serving a vast range of usersâ€\"from elite families to children in poor communities. Through balanced public-private partnerships (PPPs) in education, governments can leverage the specialized skills offered by private organizations as well as overcome operating restrictions such as salary scales and work rules that limit public sector responses. 'The Role and Impact of Public-Private Partnerships in Education' presents a conceptualization of the issues related to PPPs in education, a detailed review of rigorous evaluations, and guidleines on how to create successful PPPs. The book shows how this approach can facilitate service delivery, lead to additional financing, expand equitable access, and improve learning outcomes. The book also discusses the best way to set up these arrangements in practice. This information will be of particular interest to policymakers, teachers, researchers, and development practitioners.

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.).

With the end of civil war in 1991, Ethiopia’s government launched a New Education and Training Policy in 1994 which, by the early 2000s, had already produced remarkable results. The gross enrollment ratio rose from 20 to 62 percent in primary education between 1993-94 and 2001-02; and in secondary and higher education it climbed, respectively, from 8 to 12 percent and from 0.5 to 1.7 percent. Yet the government can hardly afford to rest on its laurels. Primary education is still not universal, and already there are concerns about plummeting educational quality and the growing pressures to expand post-primary education. Addressing these challenges will require more resources, both public and private. Yet money alone is insufficient. Focusing on primary and secondary education, Education in Ethiopia argues for wise tradeoffs in the use of resources—a result that will often require reforming the arrangements for service delivery. These changes, in turn, need to be fostered by giving lower levels of government more leeway to adapt central standards—such as those for teacher recruitment and school construction—to local conditions, including local resource constraints; and by strengthening accountability for results at all levels of administration in the education system.

School Construction Strategies for Universal Primary Education in Africa' examines the scope of the infrastructure challenge in Sub-Saharan Africa and the constraints to scaling up at an affordable cost. It assesses the experiences of African countries with school planning, school facility designs, and construction techniques, procurement and implementation arrangements over the past thirty years. It reviews the roles of the various actors in the implementation process : central and deconcentrated administrations, local governments, agencies, social funds, NGOs, and local communities. Drawing upon extensive analysis of data from over 200 250 projects sponsored by the World Bank and other donor agencies, the book draws lessons on promising approaches to enable African countries to scale up the facilities required to achieve the EFA goals and MDGs of complete quality primary education for all children at the lowest marginal cost.

This book gathers in one volume all the information needed to use ADePT Edu, the software platform created by the World Bank for the reporting and analysis of education indicators and education inequality. It includes a primer on education data availability, an operating manual for the software, a technical explanation of all the education indicators generated, and an overview of global education inequality using ADePT Edu. The World Bank developed ADePT Edu to fill the need for a user-friendly program designed to give everyone the ability to organize and analyze education data from households. ADePT Edu can be used with any household survey with the aid of its user friendly interface, generating education tables and graphics that comply with international standards for performance indicators. Because this volume is a compendium its chapters can be consulted independently of each other, depending on the need of users.