In 2010, World Bank statistics report that Guinea-Bissau had a youth literacy rate of 72%. That means seven in ten people aged 15-24 were estimated to be able to read and write a simple paragraph. The estimate was probably made on the basis of that many kids having been in school long enough that they should have easily mastered such a basic skill. The official net enrollment rate was 74% --about three quarters of primary-age kids were enrolled in school.
Last week CGD released a new working paper that I’ve been working on—together with my co-authors Tessa Bold, Mwangi Kimenyi, Germano Mwabu, and Alice Ng’ang’a—since I was a grad student in 2007. “Scaling Up What Works: Experimental Evidence on External Validity i
The Millennium Development Goal of universal primary-school completion has been successful. By 2011, 90 percent of countries had already met the goal; only 19 of 212 countries are unlikely to meet it by 2015.
This is a joint post with Christian Meyer.
Over the last decade, Latin America has seen solid economic growth combined with decreasing (but still very high) income inequality – lifting millions of people out of poverty and fueling the rise of a not-poor-but-not-rich “middle” class.
Colleagues and friends of CGD:
This week I started leave from CGD for three-plus months, to teach at Williams College. For those of you from the US west coast and outside the United States, Williams is among America’s most selective (and expensive!) small liberal arts colleges. It’s nestled in a tiny town in the Berkshire mountains in western Massachusetts.
It’s that time of year when again when university students and their professors return to classrooms around the world, and CGD has a wealth of materials to help educators and students interested in development make the most of their studies.
My guest on this week’s Wonkcast is Justin Sandefur, a research fellow at CGD whose recent work has focused on education in Kenya. One study examines the returns of private schooling, while another looks at the effects of contract teachers on student test scores. The results of these studies highlight shortcomings in public education, including failures of accountability and a dense bureaucracy.
The gap between schooling and learning is under the spotlight of late –and a new book by CGD’s own Lant Pritchett (draft chapters available here) is sure to increase the wattage. The story that Lant has to tell is not the happiest –widespread evidence from across the developing world that many kids who sit in classrooms for years often learn almost nothing for their time.
This post originally appeared on Owen Abroad.
George Bush famously asked, ‘Is our children learning?’. That’s also the question by Uwezo, a coalition of NGOs working in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania. Their report published today makes dismal reading about the quality of schools.
First, a word about the report. This is not a study by the World Bank, or a group of donors. It is a study by Uwezo, an East African initiative hosted by three NGO networks: TEN/MET in Tanzania, WERK in Kenya and UNNGOF in Uganda, with overall quality assurance and management support from Twaweza. They conducted their own survey (standardized across the countries) to test the literacy and numeracy of more than 100,000 children, the largest ever survey of its kind in the region. When citizens themselves are telling us about whether their public services work, we should be paying attention.
Last Friday I spoke at this event “What Works in Education”, a research colloquium sponsored by the World Bank, J-PAL, and USAID (which, like the World Bank, has recently released a new education strategy).