Miscellaneous Knowledge Notes

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Sub-Saharan Africa

Sub-Saharan Africa, home to more than 1 billion people, half of whom will be under 25 years old by 2050, is a diverse ...

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  • Publication
    Mozambique: Lessons from a Pilot to Assess the Effectiveness of Performance-Based Grants in Primary Schools
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2020-06) World Bank
    Many developing countries have invested substantial resources in expanding their primary and secondary education systems, resulting in large gains in the number of students completing basic education. However, in many countries this growth has outpaced the ability of education ministries to effectively monitor the quality of their schools. This has resulted in limited progress in improving teacher attendance in the classroom and has resulted in limited learning time and poor learning outcomes. Results-based financing (RBF) has been used in to address these challenges by creating stronger incentives to achieve better results. The World Bank provided technical assistance to the ministry of education of Mozambique to design and implement a pilot to assess the effectiveness of performance-based school grants in 552 primary schools. A rigorous impact evaluation should be implemented to monitor the program’s effectiveness in securing desired education results.
  • Publication
    Nutrition Fuels Human Capital: Ghana's School Feeding Programme
    (Global Delivery Initiative, Washington, DC, 2020-05) Global Delivery Initiative
    One important step in Ghana’s effort to develop its human capital was the Ghana School Feeding Programme (GSFP). This multi-sectoral program, initiated in 2005, had multiple objectives: it was a nutrition program, an education program, and a social safety net. Ghana also linked the program to agricultural development, especially smallholder production, thus helping to create new markets for locally grown food.
  • Publication
    Tanzania: A Simple Teacher Incentive System Can Improve Learning
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2019-12) World Bank
    Tanzania devotes about one-fifth of government spending to education, focusing much of the funding on expanding school access. Primary school enrollment rates have surged, yet the quality of education services and learning outcomes remain poor, with only 38 percent of children aged 9–13 able to read or do arithmetic at the second grade level. Teachers play a critical role in helping children learn, but in Tanzania, many do not show up to teach. Poor motivation and lack of accountability have contributed to the high absenteeism and commensurate loss of instructional time. One way to strengthen teacher motivation and management is through performance pay. Teacher incentive schemes link bonuses or other rewards to specific targets, whether outputs (e.g., verified classroom presence) or outcomes (e.g., student test score improvement). Performance pay can help achieve learning results at low cost compared to teacher base salaries. In Tanzania, the Results in Education for All Children (REACH) Trust Fund supported a randomized control trial comparing two types of teacher performance pay systems and their effect on early grade learning.
  • Publication
    Cameroon - Can School Grants and Teacher Incentives be Used to Increase School Access and Improve Quality?
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2019-02) World Bank
    The Results in Education for All Children (REACH) Trust Fund at the World Bank funded a feasibility study and a pre-pilot of performance-based school grants and teacher incentives among 20 rural primary schools in Cameroon. The purpose was to assess whether these RBF mechanisms could feasibly be used to improve transparency, financial management, and monitoring at the school level, increase community satisfaction, and draw lessons from the implementation of these RBF mechanisms to enable the initiative to be scaled up throughout Cameroon. While it is not possible to draw conclusions about the effect of this RBF program on education access or quality given the short time period and small sample size, this pre-pilot demonstrated that RBF is feasible in rural primary schools in Cameroon and highlighted the importance of several critical preconditions that must be in place for RBF to be effective. These preconditions include a simple and context-appropriate design, clear communication with key stakeholders, effective monitoring tools to assess school and teacher performance, and community involvement.
  • Publication
    Mozambique: Can Information and Incentives Increase School Attendance?
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2018-03) World Bank
    Although more children than ever are starting school in Africa, in many countries dropout rates remain high and few students complete their schooling, especially girls. Results-based financing (RBF) has been used in many developing countries to attempt to incentivize various stakeholders such as students, parents, and teachers to achieve better results. RBF mechanisms work by linking financial incentives to measurable results, for example school attendance, dropout rates, or student test scores. Conditional cash transfers (CCTs) are one such RBF mechanism that has been used in many developing countries to incentivize individuals to take actions that they may not otherwise take, such as attending school or using preventive health services. CCTs work by giving individuals a cash transfer, conditional on verification that they have completed the prescribed behavior. CCTs have been shown to be effective in increasing school attendance in many countries, but their cost and complexity makes them difficult to manage for countries with limited administrative and budgetary capacity.
  • Publication
    Systems in Action: Tanzania
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2015-11) World Bank
    Education systems are large, complex organizations that encompass not only various sets of actors and inputs, but also the relationships that allow those actors and units to work together. When standards, rules, accountability relationships and financing levels are aligned towards shared education goals, the education system as a whole, in all its complexity and size, is coherent and able to perform well. Improving learning outcomes therefore requires much more than simply increasing resources; education systems must be strengthened at the component and the system level, to help equip children, youth and adults with knowledge and skills for life. The World Bank helps countries ensure ‘learning for all’ through support to countries on both the financing and knowledge fronts. The Education Global Practice within the World Bank champions a systems approach, by holistically evaluating which education policies and programs are most likely to create quality learning environments and improve student performance, especially among the disadvantaged and excluded.