China has made impressive strides in education in recent decades, even though the accumulation of human capital has lagged behind that of physical capital. Going forward, access to and quality of education will be key to sustain economic convergence with the most advanced economies and to offset...

The present paper measures the impact of an educational demand-and-supply side policy in a developing country, Benin. This West African country has introduced in 2006 a program to eliminate school fees, build schools and recruit teachers. The data used are the National Demographic and Health...

Pakistan's education system faces long-standing problems in access, quality, and equal opportunity at every level: primary and secondary schools, higher education and vocational education. In spite of recent encouraging trends, such as the rapid spread of private schooling and an expansion of...

Using panel data for non-OECD countries covering the period 1970-2012, this paper analyzes the impact of the duration of primary education on school enrollment, drop-outs and completion rates. The empirical results show that for children in elementary school one additional grade of primary...

Vocational training programmes, like South Africa's learnership programme, which combine classroom learning and on-the-job training seem like the type of intervention which can create skills, get young people into jobs quicker, and reduce youth unemployment. This paper uses a longitudinal...

This paper discusses the recent history of education aid policy. It highlights an important shift in policy thinking in the international aid architecture that has dominated the global education aid agenda since the early 1990s. It argues that Rawlsian principles of social justice, human rights...

We conducted a systematic review to identify policy interventions that improve education quality and student learning in developing countries. Relying on a theory of change typology, we highlight three main drivers of change of education quality: first, supply-side capability interventions that...

This paper looks at the contribution of political leaders to enhance citizens' education and investigate how the educational attainment of the population is affected while a leader with higher education remains in office. For this purpose, we consider educational transitions of political leaders...

While quota based and other affirmative action remains on the policy radar of nations faced with social inequalities, there is limited evidence informing policy choices at the national level. This paper estimates the mid-term impact of quota-based affirmative action in higher education (HE) in...

Evidence on educational returns and the factors that determine the demand for schooling in developing countries is extremely scarce. Building on previous studies that show individuals underestimating the returns to schooling, we use two surveys from Tanzania to estimate both the actual and...