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This report is on the secondary education in Ethiopia. The report analyzes the challenges of secondary education in the context of the government's growth and transformation plan and its stated goal of becoming a middle-income country by 2020-23. The education system in Ethiopia as currently organized, together with existing education policies, has served the country well as it has transitioned from a country with some of the lowest enrollment ratios in the world to one where universal primary education is within reach. The current secondary curriculum is not designed to meet the demands of universal general secondary education; it is too difficult and academic for that purpose. The report begins with an investigation of the participation rate in secondary education that would support a middle-income economy. It then examines whether the current secondary curriculum can ensure a supply of secondary graduates compatible with the needs of this economy. The report also analyzes how teacher preparation, development, and management, together with school-based management, can contribute to ensuring quality secondary graduates. Based on the quantity and quality of secondary graduates required, the report then assesses the options for ensuring sustainable financing for the subsector. It concludes with a summary of policy options for the expansion of secondary education. Ethiopia's recent economic performance has been impressive. Sustaining this performance over the coming 15 years will require significant improvements in productivity, which must be achieved through improved management, the application of technology, and the upgrading of human capital. Ensuring that its education system both imparts students with middle-level skills and facilitates improved learning achievement is probably the most critical challenge that Ethiopia faces.

This paper investigates how the reduction of barriers to migration affected the decision of middle school graduates to attend high school in rural China. Change in the cost of migration is identified using exogenous variation across counties in the timing of national identity card distribution, which made it easier for rural migrants to register as temporary residents in urban destinations. After taking care to address potential strengths and weaknesses of our identification strategy, we find a robust, negative relationship between migrant opportunity and high school enrollment that cannot be explained by geographic convergence in access to education across rural China.

Education inequality between the rural and urban areas of the People's Republic of China (PRC)—a potential bottleneck for human capital accumulation—has long been of interest to researchers and policymakers. This paper uses data from the China Family Panel Survey (CFPS) and the Rural–Urban Migration in China (RUMiC) survey to compare the education performance of rural children, children of rural-to-urban migrants, and urban children over the period 2009–2010. Results show that education performance of rural children and migrants’ children is significantly lower than that of their urban counterparts even after accounting for differences in personal attributes such as nutrition and parenting style. This provides useful insights for policymaking to reduce rural–urban education inequality and assist human capital accumulation in the PRC.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to describe the policy and trends in rural education in China over the past 40 years; and also discuss a number of challenges that are faced by China’s rural school system. Design/methodology/approach The authors use secondary data on policies and trends over the past 40 years for preschool, primary/junior high school, and high school. Findings The trends over the past 40 years in all areas of rural schooling have been continually upward and strong. While only a low share of rural children attended preschool in the 1980s, by 2014 more than 90 percent of rural children were attending. The biggest achievement in compulsory education is that the rise in the number of primary students that finish grade 6 and matriculate to junior high school. There also was a steep rise of those going to and completing high school. While the successes in upscaling rural education are absolutely unprecedented, there are still challenges. Research limitations/implications This is descriptive analysis and there is not causal link established between policies and rural schooling outcomes. Practical implications The authors illustrate one of the most rapid rises of rural education in history and match the achievements up with the policy efforts of the government. The authors also explore policy priorities that will be needed in the coming years to raise the quality of schooling. Originality/value This is the first paper that documents both the policies and the empirical trends of the success that China has created in building rural education from preschool to high school during the first 40 years of reform (1978-2018). The paper also documents – drawing on the literature and the own research – the achievements and challenges that China still face in the coming years, including issues of gender, urbanization, early childhood education and health and nutrition of students.

Contents: The conceptual framework -- Educational outcomes and their impact on labor market outcomes -- Employment outcomes and links to the broader economic context -- Conclusion : how education can improve labor market outcomes.

An alarming number of students drop out of junior high school in developing countries. In this study, we examine the impacts of providing a social-emotional learning (SEL) program on the dropout behavior and learning anxiety of students in the first two years of junior high. We do so by analyzing data from a randomized controlled trial involving 70 junior high schools and 7,495 students in rural China. After eight months, the SEL program reduces dropout by 1.6 percentage points and decreases learning anxiety by 2.3 percentage points. Effects are no longer statistically different from zero after 15 months, perhaps due to decreasing student interest in the program. However, we do find that the program reduces dropout among students at high risk of dropping out (older students and students with friends who have already dropped out), both after eight and 15 months of exposure to the SEL program.

Education is one of the major linchpins of economic, social and political development of any nation. Recent evidence suggests that higher education can produce both public and private benefits. Thus, the role of the state in making education policy, and funding education is indeed critical, and cannot be left to be determined by market forces alone. Nevertheless, the trend of inadequate government funding for universities, loss of autonomy, infrastructural decay, falling academic standards, politicization and privatization of education, etc. appear to be a worldwide phenomenon and not just restricted to the developing world. South African higher education shows much promise with respect to knowledge production and dissemination, to contributing to social equity, economic and social development and democracy, and to the development needs of the Southern African region and the African continent. However, higher education in South Africa is under considerable stress from domestic and international trends that are redefining the nature and role of public sector post-secondary education (PSE) institutions worldwide. The paper will outline the role of PSE in the knowledge economy and the impact of the neoliberal context on the evolution of higher education in South Africa and the world. Given the significant developmental implications of investment in higher education, the authors argue that relegating this important public policy issue to the market forces is likely to promote inequality in the society, along with negative consequences for socio-political stability, economic sustainability, and knowledge generation.

Aspirations for higher education by people from low socioeconomic status backgrounds are now a focus of government policy in many OECD nations. This is part of a global trend emphasising the perceived benefits of 'raising' aspirations among under-represented groups as a social inclusion strategy to widen university participation, but also ultimately as a strategy to increase national competitiveness in the global knowledge economy. Yet despite its importance, aspiration tends to carry simplistic meanings in much higher education policy and practice. This paper attempts to craft a more nuanced account of the term, informed by four concept-clusters derived from sociological and philosophical literatures and research, and with a more mutual relation of public and private interests. It complements this 'intellectual craftsmanship' or 'systematic reflection' with data drawn from a future-focused survey of secondary school students from low and low-mid socioeconomic status backgrounds in regional Australia. Results from the survey provide illustrations that help expand understandings of student aspirations for higher education, from a group presumed to be deficit in aspirations. [Author abstract, ed]

This paper presents a theory of the effects of political freedom on income inequality, with redistribution acting as a channel through which freedom affects inequality. It is tested on data for 83 countries using system GMM, the results showing freedom reduces inequality across countries. If the freedom level in a country 5 years ago were 1 % higher than another, its income inequality would be 1.33 % lower than the other. The results reveal a nonlinear inverted U-shaped relationship between freedom and inequality. The total effect evolves slowly over a long period of almost 25 years after democratisation takes place. A robust finding is that freedom reduces inequality only in democracies, not in others. Economic development, culture, and institutions cause inter-country income differences. Primary education lowers inequality, and secondary education has little effect.

The paper highlights that the education of children, and youth merits the highest priority in a world afflicted by HIV/AIDS, specifically because a good basic education ranks among the most effective - and cost-effective - means of HIV prevention. It also merits priority because the very education system that supplies a nation ' s future, is being greatly threatened by the epidemic, particularly in areas of high, or rising HIV prevalence. The paper confronts the destructive power of the epidemic, with the need to accelerate efforts towards achieving \" education for all \" goals, aiming at prioritizing education, because education is a major engine of economic, and social development, and, because education is a proven means to prevent HIV/AIDS. It aims at setting promising directions for such responsiveness, as revealed by a review of country experience to date: based on strategic planning in pursuit of educational goals, school-based prevention programs, and health education, focused on resources for effective school health (in partnership with the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), World Health Organization (WHO), the United Nations Children ' s Fund (UNICEF), and the Bank, should expand skills-based for youth peer education, and support for orphans. The broad principles of Bank support for education, underline the need to asses the impact of the epidemic vs. educational systems, to mobilize resources, reinforced by government commitments for sharing knowledge, and building capacity, within strategic partnerships.