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This report focuses not only on the gaps facing Latin America in both education and technology, but especially on the interactions between the two. The central premise of the report is that skills and technology interact in important ways, and this relationship is a fundamental reason for the large observed differences in productivity and incomes across countries. This report argues that skills upgrading technological change, and their interaction are major factors behind total factor productivity growth. Skill-biased technological change is indeed being transferred today at faster speeds to LAC countries, as elsewhere. Technological change has been complementary with skill levels in Latin America in the last two decades. It is further estimated that firms have substantially increased the demand for educated workers in the region, particularly workers with tertiary education. This technological transformation appears to be intimately related to patterns of integration in the world economy. Firms in sectors with higher exposure to trade are subject to more competitive pressures. Adopting and adapting more advanced technologies and hiring and training more educated workers is one way to respond to this pressure to become more productive. The increased potential demand for education offers the possibility to accelerate productivity growth in the economy by closing the educational and technological gaps that Latin American countries exhibit with respect to their peers.

This study aims to investigate the impact of women empowerment and free senior high school on secondary school enrolment in Ghana. The Autoregressive Distributed Lags (ARDL) estimation method, which examines both short- and long-term effects, was utilized to analyze data obtained from the World Bank database and the ILO database covering the period 1992-2021. Employing the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) modeling technique, it was observed that the proportion of women to men in parliament, the FSHS policy, and pre-secondary school enrollment all have positive effects on secondary school enrollment in both the short and long run. Again, though we observe a negative impact of FSHS on female secondary school enrollment in the short run, in the long run, it increases the enrollment by large, while we observe that women to men in parliament and presecondary school enrollment also increase female secondary school enrollment in the long run. These findings have important implications for policymakers and stakeholders in Ghana's education sector.

Tight labor markets driven by resource booms could increase the opportunity cost of schooling and crowd out human capital formation. For oil-producing economies such as the Province of Alberta, the OPEC oil shocks during the period from 1973 to 1981 may have had an adverse long-term effect on the productivity of the labor force if the oil boom resulted in workers reducing their ultimate investment in human capital rather than merely altering the timing of schooling. The authors analyze the effect of this decade-long oil boom on the long-term human capital investments and productivity for Alberta birth cohorts that were of normal schooling ages before, during, and after the oil boom. Their findings suggest that resource booms may change the timing of schooling but they do not reduce the total accumulation of human capital.

In a context of increased primary school enrollment rates, secondary education is appearing as the next big challenge for Latin American and East Asian countries. This report seeks to undertake a detailed diagnostic of secondary education in these two regions, understand some of the main constraints to the expansion and improvement of secondary education, and suggest policy options to address these constraints, with focus on policies that improve the mobilization and use of resources.

Despite the belief that education is the great equalizer in American society, previous research has shown that the promises of educational accomplishments have not extended equally across racial/ethnic groups as minorities are less likely to matriculate to post-secondary education. Using data from the second follow-up and base year of the Educational Longitudinal Study of 2002, we examine the impact of GPA and students’ expectations on the probability of post-secondary enrollment. Specifically, we assess the impact of low achievement on the probability of post-secondary enrollment across racial/ethnic groups. We find that low achievement acts as less of a barrier to post-secondary enrollment for minority students compared with their non-Hispanic white counterparts. Moreover, students with high expectations and low achievement experienced higher probabilities of post-secondary enrollment than students with low expectations and high achievement. Given that minority students are said to have higher expectations, we examine whether the interaction of expectations and achievement varies across racial/ethnic groups. While we did not uncover racial/ethnic differences for low-achieving students with high expectations, our findings suggest that expectations help propel all low-achieving students with high expectations into post-secondary enrollment. This study moves beyond the traditional black/white differences by including a number of racial/ethnic groups.

The report offers policy options to support developing countries and transition economies in adapting their secondary education systems to the demands arising from the successful expansion of primary education and the socio-economic challenges presented by globalization and the knowledge-based economy. The work is the result of an extensive consultative process that involved education specialists worldwide.

The education system in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has proved remarkably resilient in the face of economic crisis and armed conflict. Enrolment has grown at all levels but has been most rapid in higher education. During this period of conflict, the education sector was financed almost entirely by household contributions. The DRC is now faced with critical policy choices as it moves to a more efficient and equitable balance between public and private financing and in expanding and upgrading the quality of the system. Education in the Democratic Republic of Congo presents a comprehensive analysis of the current status of the education system in the DRC. Using data from a variety of sources, including government sources, special school surveys of public and private schools as well as parents, and achievement tests, the book presents analyses of student flows, public and private expenditures and student learning. The difficult trade-offs in sectoral objectives and strategies are highlighted through illustrative financial simulations that show the financial requirements by sub-sector and sources of financing.

The main objective of this regional report is to provide an in-depth diagnosis of where Central American countries stand along several education dimensions, underscoring the most urgent and serious challenges, and suggesting policy options to address them. This is the first attempt at providing a comprehensive quantification of educational outcomes in four comparable Central American countries: El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, and Nicaragua. The report identifies three urgent priorities for improving Central American education systems: improving learning, reaching universal primary completion, and expanding secondary coverage. In response to identified barriers to learning, the report details some key areas of policy intervention, which include the improvement of national assessment systems, the enhancement of teacher performance, and the diversification of teaching methodologies. The main policy recommendations for improving completion are to strengthen and improve the existing supply-side interventions (multigrade schooling, school-based management, bilingual education, and so forth), while also applying effective demand-side policies and broader interventions. Finally, when analyzing specific policy options to increase secondary coverage, the report concludes that only a comprehensive policy package (including higher budget shares for secondary education and interventions such as flexible delivery mechanisms, demand-side subsidies, and basic education centers) will successfully overcome the range of constraints facing secondary enrollment.

This study is based on research on secondary textbook and school library provision in Botswana, Cameroon, Cote d'Ivoire, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Togo, as well as existing recent country reports on textbook provision and an extensive desk research. Considerable variations exist in Sub-Saharan African textbook requirements needed to meet secondary curriculum specifications just as significant differences exist between and within countries in regard to the average price of recommended textbooks. Some countries have no approved textbooks list. This World Bank Working Paper aims to discuss the textbook situation in Sub-Saharan Africa with a special focus on secondary textbook availability, cost and financing, distribution and publishing, and the status of school libraries. Its objective is to analyze the issues in secondary textbook and school library provision and to provide some options and strategies for improvement.

Unlock the potential of public-private partnerships in education. This groundbreaking study offers fresh empirical evidence on the effectiveness and cost of various educational models in developing countries across Africa, Latin America, and Asia. Delve into rigorous case studies examining voucher programs and faith-based schools, uncovering key insights into school performance, targeting, and cost-effectiveness. Discover how these partnerships impact student achievement, literacy, and numeracy, and learn what factors drive success or failure. Emerging Evidence on Vouchers and Faith-Based Providers in Education is essential reading for policymakers, researchers, and practitioners seeking innovative solutions to improve educational outcomes and promote social mobility in developing nations. Explore the challenges and opportunities of these partnerships and gain a deeper understanding of how to create more effective and equitable education systems.