In the past ten years the most striking achievement of vocational education and training (VET) has been the development of national training systems from nonformal training centres and post secondary technical education institutions. This has happened largely in middle income countries....

The authors use a Gini index to measure inequality in educational attainment. They present two methods (direct and indirect) for calculating an education Gini index, and generate a quinquennial data set on education Gini indexes for the over-15-population in 85 countries (1960-90). Preliminary...

Two cognitively oriented methods were tested in Burkina Faso to help illiterates learn to read more efficiently. These were (a) speeded reading of increasingly larger word units and (b) phonological awareness training to help connect letters to speech. Learners were given reading tests and a...

This paper examines the curriculum policies for primary schools in a wide range of developing countries in the 1980s and, to a lesser extent, the 1960s. The research covers what subjects are taught, what percentage of instructional time is allocated to each subject, and how much instructional...

Early studies of educational achievement in developing countries emphasized the effects of material inputs (such as textbooks) over teaching practices and classroom organization. This paper examines how five teaching practices affected the achievements of fifth grade students in the Philippines...

Many developing countries have relied on the varied forms of diversified secondary technical education as the main venue for training skilled workers and mid-level technicians. But there have been numerous and strong critics against this mode of technical education. As an alternative, the...

The authors describe the evolution of relative wages in five Latin American countries-Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, and Mexico. They use repeated cross-sections of household surveys, and decompose the evolution of relative wages into factors associated with changes in relative supply and...

The authors analyze the determinants of literacy and earnings in Ghana. They link literacy and earnings with various other factors, including age, gender, family educational background, distance to school, and income. Literacy and age are negatively correlated, suggesting that efforts to...

Ninety-five percent of the world’s illiterate people live in developing countries, and about 70 percent are women. Female illiteracy rates are particularly high in Sub-Saharan Africa. In Niger and Burkina Faso, for example, more than 90 percent of women are illiterate. This paper presents a...

The author investigates the extent and determinants of poor child health and nutrition in rural Guatemala, as reflected in attained height. Exploiting a rich data set on relevant social, economic, ethnic, and geographic characteristics, he estimates the role played by exogeneous individual,...