03. Journals
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These are journal articles published in World Bank journals as well as externally by World Bank authors.
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Publication
Returns to Education in Azerbaijan: Some New Estimates
(Taylor and Francis, 2021-02-05)This article estimates private and social returns to investment in education in Azerbaijan, using the 2015 Azerbaijan Monitoring Survey for Social Welfare. The private rate of return to education is 6 percent; this is the first estimate of returns to schooling in Azerbaijan since 1995. The returns to schooling are 6 percent for men and 8 percent for women, even controlling for selection. In addition, the article estimates the returns for higher education; for this level, the rate of return is 9 percent. Finally, using the full discount method, the private rate of return for tertiary education is 9 percent, and the social rate of return is 8 percent. One policy implication is to reexamine the funding of higher education and its expansion. -
Publication
Are New Secondary Schools Built Where They Are Needed Most in Uganda? Comparing Catholic with Public and Other Private Schools
(Taylor and Francis, 2020-06-16)Low income countries in sub-Saharan Africa are confronted with a major challenge in terms of expanding access to secondary education. This is also the case in Uganda. This article considers two questions. First, where should new secondary schools be built if the aim is to reduce geographic disparities in access? Second, have new schools, and in particular faith-based schools, been built in the areas that need schools the most? The analysis considers Catholic as well as public and other private schools. Results suggest that new schools are often not located in the areas that need them the most. -
Publication
Training to Teach Science: Experimental Evidence from Argentina
(Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank, 2020-06)This paper evaluates the learning impact of different teacher training methods using a randomized controlled trial implemented in 70 state schools in Buenos Aires, Argentina. A control group receiving standard teacher training was compared with two alternative treatment arms: providing a structured curriculum unit or receiving both the unit and weekly coaching. Following a 12-week intervention, there are substantial learning gains for students whose teachers were trained using structured curriculum units, as well as for those whose teachers received coaching (between 55 percent and 64 percent of a standard deviation more than those students in the control group). Coaching teachers does not appear to be cost-effective, as the unit cost per 0.1 standard deviation is more than twice the cost of using only the structured curriculum unit. However, additional coaching is particularly beneficial for inexperienced teachers with less than two years of teaching science. Coaching teachers also showed specific gains for girls, who both learned and declared to enjoy science lessons more. High-performing students especially benefited from both interventions, with students from coached teachers performing particularly well in harder questions. Using structured curriculum units and providing coaching also affected teacher perceptions: teachers expressed that they enjoyed teaching science more and taught more hours of science, and that their students developed more skills. Results from a follow-up survey suggest persistent change in teacher practice, with the vast majority reporting using the structured curriculum unit one year after the intervention. -
Publication
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. -
Publication
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. -
Publication
Financial Constraints and Girls’ Secondary Education: Evidence from School Fee Elimination in The Gambia
(Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank, 2019-02)We assess the impact of large-scale fee elimination for secondary school girls in The Gambia on the quantity, composition, and achievement of students. The gradual rollout of the program across geographic regions provides identifying variation in the policy. The program increased the number of girls taking the high school exit exam by 55%. The share of older test takers increased in poorer districts, expanding access for students who began school late, repeated grades, or whose studies had been interrupted. Despite these changes in the quantity and composition of students, we find robustly positive point estimates of the program on test scores, with suggestive evidence of gains for several subgroups of both girls and boys. Absence of learning declines is notable in a setting where expanded access could strain limited resources and reduce school quality. Our findings suggest that financial constraints remain serious barriers to post-primary education, and that efforts to expand access to secondary education need not come at the expense of learning in low-income countries like The Gambia. -
Publication
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. -
Publication
Support for Gender Stereotypes: Does Madrasah Education Matter?
(Taylor and Francis, 2018-01-11)This paper examines the influence of the institutional nature of schools on gender stereotyping by exploring contrasts between non-religious and Islamic faith (that is madrasah) schools among secondary school-going adolescents in rural Bangladesh. In particular, differences in gender attitudes across school types are explored to elucidate what about schools matters. Using a uniquely designed survey to assess the influence of school type on student characteristics, we find large differences in stereotypical gender attitudes by school type and student gender. Madrasah students in general, and unrecognized madrasah students in particular, show unfavorable attitudes about women and their abilities compared to their peers in non-religious schools. However, these differences are diminished considerably in ordered probit models suggesting that school-level differences are explained by teacher characteristics such as the nature of teacher training and average family size of teachers. These estimated effects are robust to conditioning on a rich set of family characteristics. -
Publication
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. -
Publication
The Impact of Vocational Schooling on Human Capital Development in Developing Countries: Evidence from China
(Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank, 2016-01)A number of developing countries are currently promoting vocational education and training (VET) as a way to build human capital and strengthen economic growth. The primary aim of this study is to understand whether VET at the high school level contributes to human capital development in one of those countries—China. To fulfill this aim, we draw on longitudinal data on more than 10,000 students in vocational high school (in the most popular major, computing) and academic high school from two provinces of China. First, estimates from instrumental variables and matching analyses show that attending vocational high school (relative to academic high school) substantially reduces math skills and does not improve computing skills. Second, heterogeneous effect estimates also show that attending vocational high school increases dropout, especially among disadvantaged (low-income or low-ability) students. Third, we use vertically scaled (equated) baseline and follow-up test scores to measure gains in math and computing skills among the students. We find that students who attend vocational high school experience absolute reductions in math skills. Taken together, our findings suggest that the rapid expansion of vocational schooling as a substitute for academic schooling can have detrimental consequences for building human capital in developing countries such as China.