Interest in scaling promising innovations to effect systemic change in education around the world has grown over the last decade. The work of scaling education innovations (up, out, down, and into deep and lasting impact) has always required nimble attention to the unpredictability of implementation. Much has been written about the need for…

In their pledge to achieve Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 4, countries across the globe have turned their attention to improving quality education, which includes student learning assessments. For many countries, implementing learning assessments is crucial to monitoring educational outcomes by providing data for education policies and…

The PISA for Development (PISA-D) project aims to make PISA more accessible and relevant to middle- and low-income countries by introducing new features to the assessment, including tests that are specially designed to measure lower levels of performance, contextual questionnaires that better reflect the situations of 15-year-olds across a diverse…

This paper analyses poverty reduction in Bhutan between two points in time--2003 and 2007--from a multidimensional perspective. The measures estimated include consumption expenditure as well as other indicators which are directly (when possible) or indirectly associated to valuable functionings, namely, health, education, access to electricity,…

In the 1960s, the Royal Government of Bhutan began developing its modern educational system. Over time, a strategic plan was formulated to meet Education for All and Millennium Development Goals. In 2003, the Royal University of Bhutan, the country's first university, opened its doors. This paper uses comparative analysis to describe and explore…

A mid-term evaluation of a five-year UNESCO project to establish a three-year Bachelor of Education degree, a one-year Bachelor of Teaching degree for students with degrees in other fields, and expand the number of secondary school teachers in Bhutan is described. The one-year program could not be evaluated because the first students will not…

Background: For more than 30 years since 1972, the Government of Japan has contributed funds to UNESCO for implementation of the Mobile Training Team (MTT) projects. The MTT assists Member States enhance their capacity in development oriented educational innovation through intra-country study visits, training courses, workshops and technical…

Bhutan's experience with the New Approach to Primary Education (NAPE) shows what can be accomplished in a small, developing state when conditions are favorable. Curricula are more closely aligned to the nature of Bhutanese society, and NAPE is replacing passive, rote learning with a more active inquiry-based approach. Smallness assisted reform…