Education Notes

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Education Notes is a series produced by the World Bank to share lessons learned from innovative approaches to improving education practice and policy around the globe. Background work for this piece was done in partnership, with support from the United Kingdom’s Department for International Development (DFID).

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    Decentralizing Education in Guatemala : School Management by Local Communities
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2005-02) Rojas, Carlos ; Valerio, Alexandria ; Demas, Angela
    Guatemala set out in 1992 to increase access to education in remote areas. Its National Community-managed Program for Educational Development (PRONADE) has evolved from a small, innovative pilot program in 19 rural communities, to a nationwide program reaching over 4,100 communities and 445,000 children. PRONADE is one of the most proactive managerial, administrative, and financial decentralization measures taken in Latin America. Isolated rural communities have been truly empowered to administer and manage the schools. Following are some remaining challenges to be resolved for PRONADE continued success : quality issues and students learning outcomes must be dealt more systematically; PRONADE teachers have not received consistent training in multi-grade and bilingual classroom practices; impact evaluation are needed to determine how PRONADE is affecting student achievement, repetition, and drop-out rates, as well as teacher effectiveness; finally, there have been frequent delays in payment of teacher salaries, as well as transfer of funds for school snacks, educational and teaching materials.
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    Big Steps in a Big Country : Brazil Makes Fast Progress Toward EFA
    (Washington, DC, 2003-05) World Bank
    By the year 2000, Brazil had almost achieved universal primary enrollment for Grades 1-4, and more than 50 million Brazilians were enrolled in the country's education system. From 1970 to 2000, 32 million additional students entered school, two-thirds of them during the last two decades. Over a five-year period (1996-2000), while primary schooling continued to make important gains, enrollments in secondary and tertiary education in Brazil grew at the astonishing rate of 43% and 44% respectively. Many developing countries face problems with age-grade distortion. Largely because of high repetition rates, age-grade distortion in Brazil is about 10 percent country-wide, and almost 40 percent in the northeastern part of the country. An innovative program called Accelerated Learning has been implemented to address this issue. Under this program, the federal government finances the creation of special classes for over-aged students with the objective of reducing the age-grade distortion and freeing up space in public schools. By year 2000 there were already 1.2 million students enrolled in accelerated learning programs in all Brazilian states.