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Tognatta, Namrata

Education Global Practice
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Education policy, Higher education, Tertiary education
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0000-0001-8127-7287
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Education Global Practice
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Last updated: June 19, 2023
Biography
Namrata Tognatta is a senior education specialist in the South Asia Region of the World Bank Education Global Practice Group. She leads or co-leads operations in school education, higher education, and skills development across the South Asia Region. She has authored or co-authored research reports and policy briefs on topics including skills measurement, digitalization in higher education, and education finance, among others. She specializes in the field of education economics. Before joining the World Bank, she worked at the Educational Testing Service in Princeton and at the Azim Premji Foundation in India. She was also lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania. She holds a PhD in education policy from the University of Pennsylvania.

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2020 - 202522000 - 20192
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    Engendering Access to STEM Education and Careers in South Asia
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-06-20) Sosale, Shobhana; Harrison, Graham Mark; Tognatta, Namrata; Nakata, Shiro; Gala, Priyal Mukesh; Brown, Sherrie; Holtz, Paul
    Building a skilled and diverse science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) workforce is crucial for economic development, cross-border trade, and social inclusion in South Asia. However, underrepresentation of girls and women in STEM education and careers remains a persistent issue. What kinds of macro and micro socioeconomic interventions are needed to increase girls’ and women’s access to and participation in STEM education and careers in South Asia?
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    Ready to Learn: Before School, In School, and Beyond School in South Asia
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2020-02-19) Beteille, Tara; Tognatta, Namrata; Riboud, Michelle; Nomura, Shinsaku; Ghorpade, Yashodhan
    Countries that have sustained rapid growth over decades have typically had a strong public commitment to expanding education as well as to improving learning outcomes. South Asian countries have made considerable progress in expanding access to primary and secondary schooling, with countries having achieved near-universal enrollment of the primary-school-age cohort (ages 6–11), except for Afghanistan and Pakistan. Secondary enrollment shows an upward trend as well. Beyond school, many more people have access to skill-improving opportunities and higher education today. Although governments have consistently pursued policies to expand access, a prominent feature of the region has been the role played by non-state actors—private nonprofit and for-profit entities—in expanding access at every level of education. Though learning levels remain low, countries in the region have shown a strong commitment to improving learning. All countries in South Asia have taken the first step, which is to assess learning outcomes regularly. Since 2010, there has been a rapid increase in the number of large-scale student learning assessments conducted in the region. But to use the findings of these assessments to improve schooling, countries must build their capacity to design assessments and analyze and use findings to inform policy.
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    Do Cognitive and Noncognitive Skills Explain the Gender Wage Gap in Middle-Income Countries?: An Analysis Using STEP Data
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2016-11) Tognatta, Namrata; Valerio, Alexandria; Sanchez Puerta, Maria Laura
    Gender-based wage discrimination is a highly researched area of labor economics. However, most studies on this topic have focused on schooling and paid limited attention to the mechanisms through which cognitive and noncognitive skills influence wages. This paper uses data from adults in seven low- and middle-income countries that participated in the STEP Skills Measurement Survey to conduct a comparative analysis of gender wage gaps. The paper uses schooling and skills measures, including reading proficiency and complexity of on-the-job computer tasks to proxy cognitive skills, and personality and behavioral measures to proxy for noncognitive skills in wage decompositions. The analysis finds that years of school explain most of the gender wage gap. The findings also suggest that cognitive and noncognitive skills affect men’s and women’s earnings in different ways, and that the effects of these skills vary across the wage distribution and between countries.
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    Are There Skills Payoffs in Low- and Middle-Income Countries?: Empirical Evidence Using STEP Data
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2016-11) Monroy-Taborda, Sebastian; Valerio, Alexandria; Sanchez Puerta, Maria Laura; Tognatta, Namrata
    Most research on the economic payoffs of skills has used individuals' level of schooling attained -- typically years or level of education or training received—as a key proxy for skills. Such research has consistently found that individual returns to schooling are positive and that returns tend to be higher in low- and middle-income countries than in higher-income countries. However, years in school is only one proxy for skills -- are these returns still observed using other measures as proxies? This study uses data from the STEP Skills Measurement Survey to examine the extent to which there is an independent association between cognitive and noncognitive skills and earnings in low- and middle-income countries. The study uses measures of reading proficiency and complexity of on-the-job computer tasks to proxy cognitive skills, and personality and behavioral measures to proxy noncognitive skills. The results demonstrate that even when controlling for schooling and background factors, these skills pay off in the labor market. This is particularly the case for the measures of cognitive skills, while noncognitive skills show some significant, but small, effects on earnings. The findings also suggest that there is significant heterogeneity across countries in how skills are valued in the labor market.