It is argued that corporal punishment produces bad outcomes in both the short run and the long run. Instead of making students more attentive or motivated, corporal punishment leads to more delinquent behavior. In most developed countries, corporal punishment is banned in schools. However, in many developing countries, even if corporal punishment…

Household income shocks in developing countries are known to have an impact on the education investments for children. In this paper, we explore the effects of various income and expenditure shocks on educational investment and cognitive outcomes of children using three rounds of household-level panel data from Young Lives survey conducted in two…

The differential patterns of grade progression have direct implications for the calculation of learning profiles. Researchers measure learning in primary school using survey data on reading and math skills of a nationally representative, population-based sample of children in India, Pakistan, Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda. Research demonstrates that…

The large-scale expansion of primary schooling in developing countries has led to the increasing use of non-civil-service contract teachers who are hired locally by the school, are not professionally trained, have fixed-term renewable contracts, and are paid much lower salaries than regular civil-service teachers. This has been a controversial…

Educational access in developing countries has improved significantly in recent years, but less evidence is available on learning and learning progress in comparative perspective. This paper employs data from Young Lives to examine levels and trends in cognitive skill development and the links to enrolment in school across the four study countries…

Performance pay for teachers is frequently suggested as a way of improving educational outcomes in schools, but the empirical evidence to date on its effectiveness is limited and mixed. We present results from a randomized evaluation of a teacher incentive program implemented across a representative sample of government-run rural primary schools…