Learning profiles, that track changes in student skills per year of schooling, often find shockingly low learning gains. Using data from three recent studies in South Asia and Africa, we show that a majority of students spend years of instruction with no progress on basics. We argue shallow...

The case studies in this book were developed as part of a year-long learning process initiated by the World Bank in 2003-4 to examine large scale poverty reduction programs in a wide range of developing countries around the world. This volume presents 12 of the case studies from South Asia. ....

DEVELOPMENT CANNOT BE IMPOSED FROM THE OUTSIDE. IT HAS TO HAPPEN FROM WITHIN. This groundbreaking book from South Asia shows how homegrown experiments can be scaled up to transform the lives of millions of poor women and men in the developing world. Here are stories of development ideas that...