Application to Education

The authors of Cash on Delivery conducted extensive research to determine how COD Aid could be applied to the education sector and concluded that such an approach would be feasible in several contexts and would likely focus on the shared interest between donor and recipient countries on achieving universal primary school completion (one of the Millennium Development Goals).

CGD developed a proposal in which donors could commit to pay $200 for each additional assessed completer, that is, each additional child who takes a standardized competency test in the final year of primary school. Defining the target as the number of assessed completers, rather than as the achievement of certain test scores, minimizes incentives progress to misreport progress. The country would report the number of additional assessed completers each year and the donor would pay for retesting in a random sample of schools to verify the numbers, after which the COD Aid payment would be made. The country could choose to use the new funds for any purpose: to build schools, train teachers, partner with the private sector on education, pay for conditional cash transfers, or for that matter build roads or implement early nutrition programs. This innovative approach would place full decision-making about the use of funds in the hands of developing country governments, letting them determine the best way to achieve the outcome that recipient and donor both want: a quality education for all.

This page includes links to research, analysis, and discussion of the application of COD Aid to education by CGD staff, external researchers and practitioners.