C. Journal articles published externally
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These are journal articles by World Bank authors published externally.
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Publication
Delivering Education to the Underserved through a Public-Private Partnership Program in Pakistan
(MIT Press, 2020-12-20)We evaluate a program that recruited local entrepreneurs to open and operate new schools in 200 underserved villages in Sindh, Pakistan. School operators received a per-student subsidy to provide tuition-free primary education, and in half the villages received a higher subsidy for females. The program increased enrollment by 32 percentage points, and test scores by 0.63 standard deviations, with no difference across the two subsidy schemes. Estimating a structural model of the demand and supply for school inputs, we find that program schools selected inputs similar to those of a social planner who internalizes all the education benefits to society. -
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Enhancing Young Children’s Language Acquisition through Parent–Child Book-Sharing: A Randomized Trial in Rural Kenya
(Elsevier, 2020-01)Worldwide, 250 million children under five (43%) are not meeting their developmental potential because they lack adequate nutrition and cognitive stimulation in early childhood. Several parent support programs have shown significant benefits for children’s development, but the programs are often expensive and resource intensive. The objective of this study was to test several variants of a potentially scalable, cost-effective intervention to increase cognitive stimulation by parents and improve emergent literacy skills in children. The intervention was a modified dialogic reading training program that used culturally and linguistically appropriate books adapted for a low-literacy population. We used a cluster randomized controlled trial with four intervention arms and one control arm in a sample of caregivers (n?=?357) and their 24- to 83-month-old children (n?=?510) in rural Kenya. The first treatment group received storybooks, while the other treatment arms received storybooks paired with varying quantities of modified dialogic reading training for parents. Main effects of each arm of the trial were examined, and tests of heterogeneity were conducted to examine differential effects among children of illiterate vs. literate caregivers. Parent training paired with the provision of culturally appropriate children’s books increased reading frequency and improved the quality of caregiver-child reading interactions among preschool-aged children. Treatments involving training improved storybook-specific expressive vocabulary. The children of illiterate caregivers benefited at least as much as the children of literate caregivers. For some outcomes, effects were comparable; for other outcomes, there were differentially larger effects for children of illiterate caregivers. -
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Implications of Demographic, Religious, and Enrollment Trends for the Footprint of Faith-Based Schools Globally
(Taylor and Francis, 2019-11-25)Faith-based schools play an important role today in the provision of education globally. Are the schools likely to continue to play such a role in the future? If so, where is that role likely to be most prominent? This paper considers these questions on the basis of long-term demographic, religious, and school enrollment trends. The trends suggest that enrollment in faith-based schools will continue to grow rapidly, as has been the case over the last few decades. But there will also be a fundamental shift, with a rising concentration of students in faith-based schools located in Africa. This may have implications given the learning crisis affecting the continent. -
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Pluralism, the Public Purse, and Education: An International Estimate of Savings to State Budgets from K-12 Catholic Schools
(Taylor and Francis, 2019-05-24)According to Church statistics, the Catholic Church has 35 million children enrolled in its primary schools globally, and 20 million children enrolled in its secondary schools. At both levels, enrollment has increased over time globally. While there are debates on whether Catholic schools perform better than public schools, they clearly generate savings for state budgets in many countries since parents choosing these schools often pay for most of the cost of their children’s education. This paper estimates budget savings for states from Catholic schools in Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and selected partner countries. In the 38 countries for which estimates are computed, total annual savings are valued at US$ 63 billion in purchasing power parity terms. -
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Teaching English as a Second Language in Sri Lankan Primary Schools: Opportunity and Pedagogy
(Taylor and Francis, 2019)Policy guidelines in Sri Lanka prescribe how and for how long English should be taught as a second language in primary education but practices on the ground may deviate. Opportunities for teaching and learning and pedagogy are key aspects of the process of learning. Using a large-scale survey this paper addresses (i) how much time is allocated to the teaching of English and how much time is lost, (ii) how English teachers use their time in primary education classrooms and (iii) the factors associated with student-centred learning and on academic learning in general. Around a quarter of the class time is lost through timetabling, teacher absenteeism, lesson start and finish times and teacher off task activity. Teachers who spend more time teaching in class are more likely to be in rural or estate schools and in schools with more facilities, and to have attended the Primary English Language Programme in the past. Teachers who spend more time on student-centred activities are more likely to be teaching Grade 3 than Grade 5, using remedial methods and holding an official ‘appointment’ as an English teacher. Policy implications for Sri Lanka are considered and points of comparison with policies and practices elsewhere raised. -
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Girls' Education and Child Marriage in West and Central Africa: Trends, Impacts, Costs, and Solutions
(Taylor and Francis, 2018-04-26)Within the context of women’s lack of empowerment, the issues of child marriage and low educational attainment for girls are prominent, especially in West and Central Africa. Using survey data for 21 of the 25 countries in West and Central Africa, this article analyzes trends over time in educational attainment for girls and child marriage. Over the last two and a half decades, not accounting for differences in population sizes between countries, according to the latest DHS and MICS surveys available in each country, completion rates increased on average by 24 points, 14 points, and 8 points at the primary, lower secondary, and upper secondary levels, respectively. The prevalence of child marriage decreased by about 8 points over that period. Clearly, progress at the secondary level has been weaker than at the primary level, probably in part due to the persistence of high rates of child marriage in many countries. The article suggests that ending child marriage should improve girls’ educational attainment, and conversely, improving girls’ educational attainment should help reduce child marriage. This, in turn, could have major impacts toward contributing to empowering women more broadly. A review of impact evaluations for pilot interventions suggests how ending child marriage and improving educational attainment for girls could be done, with potentially large economic benefits not only for girls and their future household, but also for the region as a whole. -
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Performance of Primary Education in Burkina Faso: A Multi-Output Stochastic Frontier Analysis
(Taylor and Francis, 2018)Primary education plays an important role in the development of human capital in developing countries. Consequently, Burkina Faso has taken steps to ensure both access to, and better quality of, primary education. However, comparisons between the different provinces of Burkina Faso reveal that there is a greater disparity between provinces in terms of access to, and the quality of, education, than there is in the provision of resources. Therefore, the objective of this study is to examine the efficiency of the resources used in providing primary education in Burkina Faso. We apply a stochastic frontier model in order to estimate the efficiency with which the 45 provinces of Burkina Faso provide primary education. The proposed model not only allows two outputs for primary education to be included, but also provides for an assessment of the factors that may affect inefficiency. Our results indicate that, overall, the primary education system in Burkina Faso operates at an efficiency level of approximately 63%. In addition, the living conditions of the population, as well as some factors internal to the education system, appear to have a relationship with the efficiency of primary education in the various provinces of Burkina Faso. -
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Inequality of Educational Opportunity: The Relationship between Access, Affordability, and Quality of Private Schools in Lagos, Nigeria
(Taylor and Francis, 2018)Using data from a census of private schools in one of Lagos, Nigeria’s administrative jurisdictions, this paper explores the linkages between a heterogeneous sector of private schools and issues of school access, affordability, quality, and ultimately social mobility for households at the bottom of the income distribution. Although a large private education market has buoyed Lagos’s growth towards near-universal primary enrolment, this heterogeneous school sector appears to be providing socially stratifying paths towards educational attainment. We apply Lucas’s theory of effectively maintained inequality to assess the extent to which access to higher quality education services within the private sector is determined by cost. We find that higher-cost private schools provide students with greater opportunities to study in institutions with higher quality inputs and increased potential for progression within the educational system. As such, it is highly likely that these schools are primarily accessible to students at the upper ends of the income distribution. -
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Predicting School Dropout with Administrative Data: New Evidence from Guatemala and Honduras
(Taylor and Francis, 2018)School dropout is a growing concern across Latin America because of its negative social and economic consequences. Identifying who is likely to drop out, and therefore could be targeted for interventions, is a well-studied prediction problem in countries with strong administrative data. In this paper, we use new data in Guatemala and Honduras to estimate some of the first dropout prediction models for lower-middle income countries. These models correctly identify 80% of sixth grade students who will drop out within the next year, performing better than other commonly used targeting approaches and as well as models used in the United States. -
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Well Begun, but Aiming Higher: A Review of Vietnam’s Education Trends in the past 20 Years and Emerging Challenges
(Taylor and Francis, 2018)Given its modest position as a lower-middle-income country, Vietnam stands out from the rest of the world with its remarkable performance on standardized test scores, school enrollment, and completed years of schooling. We provide an overview of the factors behind this exemplary performance both from an institutional viewpoint and by analyzing several different data sources, some of which have rarely been used. Some of the highlights are universal primary school enrollment, higher girls’ net enrollment rates, and the role of within-commune individual factors. We further discuss a host of challenges for the country – most of which have received insufficient attention to date.