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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.).

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.

'Language, Literacy, and Learning in Primary Schools' is a synthesis of the findings arising from four years of policy research and development in Nigeria's primary schools that focused on the gap between what teachers should know and be able to do, and the realities of teaching and learning in classrooms. It begins by critically examining the outcomes of primary schooling as measured by learning achievement results from national assessments, and by identifying some core learning problems for Nigerian primary school children. It reviews the findings from recent research reports that studied teaching and learning processes in primary school classrooms, and it identifies the pedagogical issues in primary classrooms that contribute to poor learning achievements. This report describes a research and development program that set out to improve teaching and learning in core learning skill areas of the curriculum. This study identifies priority areas for teachers' professional development. It suggests a policy framework for the continuing professional development of primary school teachers, including the initial preparation of teachers and their induction into teaching. It proposes medium and long-term strategies to bring about the desired changes in teaching and learning through school-based approaches to teacher development.

  Conocer el propio cuerpo es fundamental para mejorar el estilo de vida, de modo que es importante promover unos hábitos saludables desde la etapa infantil, para obtener beneficios en la edad adulta. Para ello, en el presente trabajo se realiza una investigación científica con el fin de desarrollar las habilidades científicas de los estudiantes de ciclo superior de educación primaria a partir de una dinámica de cuatro sesiones basada en la actividad física de los estudiantes. En este estudio, se ha diseñado e implementado una estrategia didáctica utilizando el uso del vídeo como soporte para guiar una indagación científica que permitirá estudiar cómo la actividad física semanal influye en la capacidad cardiorrespiratoria del alumnado. Para recoger los datos, se ha realizado un cuestionario de actividad física semanal y una prueba para valorar la capacidad cardiorrespiratoria del alumnado. Los resultados de la investigación indican que los vídeos proporcionan al alumnado una estructura del proceso de indagación y tienen una relación positiva sobre la mejora de las habilidades científicas. En concreto, conllevan una mejora de las preguntas investigables, de la identificación de las variables, permitiendo un mejor diseño experimental, así como la representación de datos que genera unas explicaciones científicas más elaboradas. Asimismo, se ha observado que realizar actividades indagadoras relacionadas con la actividad física promueve el interés y curiosidad de los estudiantes hacia esta disciplina. Abstract. Knowing your body is essential to improve your lifestyle, so it is important to promote healthy habits from childhood, to obtain benefits in adulthood. For this, in the present work a scientific investigation is carried out in order to develop the scientific skills of the students in the upper cycle of primary education from a dynamic of four sessions based on the physical activity of the students. In this study, a didactic strategy has been designed and implemented using the use of video as a support to guide a scientific inquiry that allows studying how weekly physical activity influences the cardiorespiratory capacity of students. To collect the data, a weekly physical activity questionnaire and a test have been carried out to assess the cardiorespiratory capacity of the students. The research results indicate that the videos provide students a structure of the inquiry process and have a positive relationship with the improvement of scientific skills. Specifically, they entail an improvement in the research questions, in the identification of the variables, allowing a better experimental design, as well as the representation of data that generates more elaborate scientific explanations. Likewise, it has been observed that carrying out inquiring activities related to physical activity promotes the interest and curiosity of students towards this discipline.

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.

In the last 5 years, there have been several literature reviews or meta-analyses investigating various aspects of STEM education; however, they have investigated a specific aspect of STEM, e.g. robotics, or digital games, or Early childhood, or Teacher perspectives. In addition, a broad-reaching review on STEM integration has not been conducted in the past 10 years. This article reports findings from a Systematic Qualitative Literature Review concerning STEM education for children aged 4–12 in formal education contexts. To provide context, the article initially presents descriptive findings (date and country of research, age of participants, research setting, and research methodologies used) in the 60 research articles that are included for analysis. The article then answers three research questions regarding the: (1) level of integration evident in the studies; (2) role of engineering in any such integration; and (3) teaching approaches used in the studies. Findings from this research suggest that there is still much work to be done to move from scenarios where STEM integration is claimed but is not evident in practice. To do so we encourage educators and researchers to (a) focus on authentic interdisciplinary approaches rather than the siloed approaches evident in the existing research; and (b) use a teaching approach such as problem-based or project-based learning that provide opportunities for authentic integration.

Background Training can significantly improve the knowledge and skills of pharmacists. Previous study showed that there is a large gap in the training of pharmacists across countries. Primary healthcare workers did not have enough opportunities to trainings in China. This study aimed to explore the current status of training content, training approaches and unmet training needs from the perspective of primary care pharmacists. Method A multi-stage sampling method was used to conduct a questionnaire survey to collect the basic characteristics of primary medical institutions and pharmacists, the current status of primary care pharmacists’ training content and training approaches, and the unmet training needs. Descriptive statistics was used to report characteristics of the sample and paired chi-square test was used to test whether the training contents and training approaches meeting the needs of primary care pharmacists. Results Most of primary care pharmacists enter the field of pharmacy by receiving pharmaceutical education in colleges and universities, and have obtained professional title qualification and licensed pharmacist qualification certificate. The annual income and proportion of the pharmacists of bachelor degree or above in eastern and western parts are higher than the central region, and the difference was statistically significant. About 67.9% of the surveyed pharmacists received training less than once a year. There was statistically difference between current and expected training content and approach of primary pharmacists, showing that the group is still obviously has unmet training demands. The training contents of “clinical pharmacy knowledge, ability to deal with and analyze problems, and skills to provide pharmaceutical services” and the training mode of “further education in school” are the direction of development of the future training of primary care pharmacists. Conclusion The education and training of primary care pharmaceutical professionals in China have achieved initial success. This study identified the basic parts and future direction of development of training content and training form for primary care pharmaceutical professionals. The results of this study can be used as a basis for further development and research into the requirements of on-the-job training and continuing education for pharmacists.

Background Improving primary health care (PHC) physician’s capacity has been identified as an important area in the healthcare reform. The continuing medical education (CME) training programs are conducive to enhancing competence of PHC physicians. But few studies have explored PHC physicians’ needs and preferences for CME training programs. This study aimed to explore the preferences for CME training programs from the perspective of PHC physicians, and to understand the willingness, tendency, and needs in CME. Methods A Discrete Choice Experiment (DCE) was developed based on literature review and semi-structured interviews with 4 general practitioners to identify key attributes of CME programs. The DCE survey was administered to 360 PHC physicians in Jiangsu Province, China, in August 2023, to elicit preferences for: training frequency, training time, training duration, training location, training content of basic medical services, and training content of basic public health services. A total of 281 valid responses were included after the quality control test, which involved checking completion time and consistency in repeated choice tasks. DCE data were analyzed using Mixed Logit, and Latent Class Models to explore preference heterogeneity and class membership. Results PHC physicians showed strong preference for CME training programs that were conducted during working hours on weekdays, once a year, at a local meeting place and training on health management of patients with multiple chronic diseases. Latent class analysis identified 2 preference classes, with half (51.2%) of the respondents focused only on training frequency and time while the rest considered training logistic arrangement as well as training content. These preferences could be explained by some observed characteristics of PHC physicians such as age and professional level. Conclusions Overall, PHC physicians valued the convenience of participation in CME training programs and training on health management of patients with multiple chronic disease. Our findings can be used to inform the design of CME training programs for PHC physicians in China.

Although early diagnosis of autism is critical for promoting access to early intervention, many children experience significant diagnostic delays. Shortages of healthcare providers, limited capacity at autism centers, and geographic and socioeconomic challenges contribute to these delays. The current pilot study examined the feasibility of a new model for training community-based primary care providers (PCPs) in underserved areas in screening and diagnosis of young children at highest risk for autism. By combining hands-on training in standardized techniques with ongoing virtual mentorship and practice, the program emphasized both timely diagnosis and appropriate referral for more comprehensive assessment when necessary. Results indicated improvements in PCP practice and self-efficacy, and feasibility of the model for enhancing local access to care.

As artificial intelligence (AI) becomes increasingly prevalent, it has become a topic of interest in education. The use of AI in education poses complex issues, not only in terms of its impact on teaching and learning outcomes but also in terms of the ethical considerations regarding personal data and the individual needs of each student. Our study systematically analyzed empirical research on the use of AI in primary education, specifically for children aged 4–12 years old. We reviewed 35 articles indexed in SCOPUS, filtered them according to the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines, analyzed them, and categorized the findings. The research focused on the studies’ objectives, learning content, learning outcomes, learning activities, and the pedagogy of activities or the AI tools. Our categorization resulted in three main categories of research objectives regarding the creation, implementation, and evaluation of AI tools and five categories for learning content: AI and ML (machine learning) concepts in STEM and STEAM, language learning, mathematics, arts, and various other subjects. The learning activities were split into four categories: apply, engage, interact, use; project-based learning with multiple activities; experience and practice; and students as tutors. The learning outcomes were split into three levels: cognitive, affective, and psychomotor. The pedagogy of AI tools falls into four categories: constructivism, experiential learning, AI-assisted learning, and project-based learning. The implications for teacher professional development are discussed.