One of the eight Millennium Development Goals is that all children in developing countries should complete primary education. Much progress has been made toward this goal, but completing primary school does not ensure that students attain basic literacy and numeracy skills. Indeed, there is...

Could the simplifying assumptions made in project appraisal be so far from the truth that the expected benefits of public investments are not realized? Using data for Vietnam, commonly used estimates of the benefits from irrigation investments based on means are compared with impacts assessed...

This paper examines two education programs in Sri Lanka: the Programme for School Improvement (PSI), which decentralizes decision-making power, and the School Report Card Programme (SRCP), which was designed to provide parents and other community members with information on the characteristics...

This study employs a pseudo-panel approach to estimate the returns to education among income earners in Sri Lanka. Pseudo-panel data are constructed from nine repeated cross sections of Sri Lanka's Labor Force Survey data from 1997 to 2008, for workers born during 1953–1974. The results show...

A country’s education system plays a pivotal role in promoting economic growth and shared prosperity. Sri Lanka has enjoyed high school-attainment and enrollment rates for several decades. However, it still faces major challenges in the education sector, and these challenges undermine the...