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…

This article analyses recent World Bank interventions aimed at improving higher education and local research capacity in low-income countries. Our empirical entry point is a critical analysis of the Development and Innovation Grant (DIG) scheme the Bank rolled out in Cambodia (2010-2015), a virtual carbon copy export of its Academic Initiative…

This paper presents a new estimate that pre-primary school closures in 2020 may cost today's young children US$ 1.6 trillion in lost earnings over their lifetimes. However, most low-and-middle income countries are leaving pre-primary education out of their responses to COVID-19. This paper also draws lessons from accelerated, bridging, and…

The year 2015 was significant for the arena of international development, as UNESCO's "Education for All" agenda was replaced by "Education 2030", which would identify minimum standards of education quality. The OECD had been working on extending its existing PISA assessment into low- and middle-income countries through PISA…

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…

Building on the experience of working with middle-income countries in PISA since 2000, and in an effort to respond to the emerging demand for PISA to cater to a wider range of countries, the OECD launched the PISA for Development (PISA-D) initiative in 2014. This one-off pilot project, spanning six years, aims to make the assessment more…

This paper explores the consequences of transferring technical information on disability and inclusive education from the North to the South within the context of international development. Based on data from the author's experiences as a US-trained Indian international consultant in Cambodia, it analyses how problems with translation and…

This report reviews the collection, availability and quality of system-level data and metadata on education from countries participating in the PISA for Development project: Cambodia, Ecuador, Guatemala, Paraguay, Senegal and Zambia. PISA for Development aims to increase low income countries' use of PISA assessments for monitoring progress towards…

The McGovern-Dole International Food for Education and Child Nutrition Program (MGD Program) provides donations of U.S. agricultural products and financial and technical assistance for school feeding programs in the developing world. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), with about $200 million in funding in fiscal year 2010, the…

Open distance learning (ODL) has long been an important option for formal and non-formal education (NFE) in most developed and developing countries, but less so in post-conflict countries, including Cambodia. However, in Cambodia there is now greater awareness that ODL can complement traditional face-to-face educational approaches, particularly as…

During the past 20 years, English language teaching and learning has grown phenomenally in Cambodia as the country has opened up to the outside world following more than two decades of civil war. As a result, the standard of English spoken today in Cambodia has also risen dramatically. One feature of this context of dynamic change has been the…

The future of bilateral aid to basic education is at risk, placing the educational opportunities of many of the world's poorest girls and boys on the line. Some donor governments are reducing overall bilateral assistance, others are phasing out long-standing partnerships with particular developing countries and several are abandoning education as…

Qualitative researchers are often confronted by ethical challenges when making research decisions because current guidelines and principles guiding research ethics do not wholly cover the concerns that can arise in complex social research situations. In this article, the authors explore this dilemma in relation to our experiences of conducting…

Hole-in-the-Wall as a concept has attracted worldwide attention. It involves providing unconditional access to computer-equipped kiosks in playgrounds and out-of-school settings, children taking ownership of their learning and learning driven by the children's natural curiosity. It is posited that this approach, which is being used in India,…

Since 2001 the government of Cambodia has striven to advance policy-led education reform based on a sector-wide approach. This paper critically reviews the status and progress of Cambodia's education reform from the perspective of the aid's effectiveness. The paper looks at the performance of the sector reform in the three priority areas…