School quality and grade completion by students are shown to be directly linked, leading to very different perspectives on educational policy in developing countries. Unique panel data on primary school age children in Egypt permit estimation of behavioral models of school leaving. Students perceive differences in school quality, measured as…

This Policy Brief describes and explains patterns of access to schools in Ghana. It outlines policy and legislation on access to education and provides an analysis of access, vulnerability and exclusion. It is based on findings from the Country Analytic Report on Access to Basic Education in Ghana (Akyeampong et al, 2007) [ED508809] which can be…

Malawi and Ghana are among the numerous Sub-Saharan Africa countries that have in recent years introduced Free Primary Education (FPE) policy as a means to realizing the 2015 Education for All and Millennium Development Goals international targets. The introduction of FPE policy is, however, a huge challenge for any national government that has…

Finding the right fit between students' reading ability and textbooks is very important for comprehension. Readability studies aim to analyse texts to find the right fit between students and texts. In this literature review, readability studies are classified under quantitative, qualitative and combined quantitative-qualitative readability…

In recent years, the mathematics achievement of Peruvian students has been evaluated in three national and two international studies. The results in all cases suggest very poor learning. A similar situation is found in many developing countries. In this study, we analyzed the opportunities to learn (OTL) mathematics of sixth grade students from…

Quality is high on the education agendas of developing countries. Much time, effort, and finance have been poured into various initiatives and reforms in an effort to improve quality in these countries. However, so far success has been limited and the quality of education in many developing countries remains poor. Efforts to explore the reasons…

This paper is an examination of the pedagogical and cultural impact of the PROPELCA (Operational Research Project for the Teaching of Cameroonian Languages) mother-tongue education program being implemented in the Bafut, Kom and Nso' language communities of the Northwest Province of Cameroon. Using research carried out in 2002-2003, the author…

Multimedia is increasingly being used in computer-based learning, and the general indication is that this trend will persist for a while to come. One rationale for this trend the assumption that multimedia has properties that can aid learning, particularly the learning of abstract subjects. One area which has long been seen as a target for the use…

This note series is intended to summarize lessons learned and key policy findings on the World Bank's work in education. "Fast Track Initiative" ("FTI") was launched in 2002 as a partnership between donor and developing countries to accelerate progress towards the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) of universal primary education. "FTI" is built on…

This study is concerned with the organization of education in rural areas and the advantages of a strategy based on multigrade classes, i.e. classes having a single teacher but pupils of several grade levels studying different curricula. This strategy made a substantial contribution to the achievement of universal primary education at reasonable…

Educational theorists and researchers have long considered time a key component of individual learning. Caroll, in his classic model of school-based learning, conceptualized achievement as an outcome of two time variables: first, the amount of time a learner is engaged in learning; and second, an individual's learning rate. Caroll's ideas…

This analytical review aims at exploring trends in educational access and delineating different groups, which are vulnerable to exclusion from educational opportunities at the elementary stage. This review has drawn references from series of analytical papers developed on different themes i.e. regional disparity in education, social equity and…

Inspired by the 1990 Jomtien World Conference on Education for All and by the experience of non-governmental organisations such as BRAC, Save the Children/USA established a community schools project in southern Mali, working with 777 villages to establish and run their own primary schools between 1992 and 1998. These schools enrolled over 45,000…

This article examines the interplay between school factors and teacher job satisfaction that influences educational outcomes by comparing two Non-governmental Organisation (NGO) schools in Cambodia. This small-scale qualitative case study was conducted over a period of eight weeks in 2005 in two NGO schools in a suburb of Phnom Penh. The findings…

The challenges to teacher educators in sub-Saharan Africa are acute. This paper describes how the Teacher Education in Sub-Saharan Africa (TESSA) consortium is working within institutional and national policy systems to support school-based teacher professional development. The TESSA consortium (13 African institutions and 5 international…