Student attendance at school is a necessary condition for learning and for other benefits derived from schooling, yet absenteeism is a significant issue for students in many countries. Policies, programs, and research seeking to reduce absenteeism need to measure it accurately. This article describe...

Although research has established the importance of state capacity in economic development, less is known about how state capacity comes about and the role of external partners in the process. This paper estimates the impact of an external project designed to build state capacity in a low-income cou...

This study characterizes rates of physical and sexual violence against adolescent girls and compares rates of violence against girls who are enrolled versus unenrolled in school, to contribute to an understanding of the relative risks associated with school attendance. We look at rates of violence a...

Recruiting and retaining teachers for schools in rural areas or in areas with high concentrations of poverty is a challenge around the world, and many governments have implemented policies to make working in hard-to-staff schools more attractive, either to teachers overall or to the most effective t...

Many educational interventions boost outcomes for girls in settings where girls face educational disadvantages, but which of those interventions are proven to function effectively at large scale? In contrast to earlier reviews, this review focuses on large-scale programs and policies—those that reac...

Education systems regularly face unexpected school closures, whether due to disease outbreaks, natural disasters, or other adverse shocks. In this paper we evaluate the effectiveness of live tutoring calls from teachers using an RCT with 4,399 primary school students in Sierra Leone.

India lacks an authoritative estimate of the death toll from the COVID-19 pandemic. We report excess mortality estimates from three different data sources from the pandemic’s start through June 2021. Estimating COVID-deaths with statistical confidence may prove elusive. But all estimates suggest tha...