The Medium Term Plan (MTP) identifies the key policy actions and reforms, as well as programs and projects that the Grand Coalition Government in Kenya intends to implement. The overall objective is to realize a higher and sustainable growth of the economy in a more equitable environment,...

This Joint Staff Advisory Note reviews the first full Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) prepared by the government of Guinea-Bissau. The PRSP was prepared within a participatory process, and builds on grassroots consultations at the national level that involved all segments of society. The...

The achievements in the third year of the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper implementation have been satisfactory, given the difficult development environment resulting from the violent conflict and continued political instability. Nepal’s macrolevel indicators remain stable, despite...

This paper discusses implementation of the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) in Mauritania. The second phase of the PRSP is accompanied by a Medium-Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF) for 2006–10. MTEF determines the overall cost of the action plan in terms of both current and capital...

The Philippines has achieved a relatively high standard of education. Previous researches, most of which deal with Luzon Island, have indicated that rural poverty alleviation began partly due to the increased investment in education. However, the suburban areas beyond Luzon Island have rarely...

Although there is a general agreement in the literature of the importance of social-emotional skills for labor market success, there is little consensus on the specific skills that should be acquired or how and when to teach them. The psychology, economics, policy research, and program...

As opposed to many other school inputs, textbooks have frequently been demonstrated to significantly foster student achievement. Using the rich data set provided by the 'Program on the Analysis of Education Systems' (PASEC) for five francophone, sub-Saharan African countries, this paper goes...

Since the development of human capital theory, countless estimates of the economic benefits of investing in education for the individual have been published. While it is a universal fact that in all countries of the world the more education one has the higher his or her earnings, it is...

Despite modest economic growth over the past decade, the Philippines have made little progress in reducing poverty. In this regard, the Philippines is an outlier in the region, seemingly unable to translate economic growth into meaningful poverty reduction. This underscores the fact that...

A combination of school mismanagement, weak financial situation and low student attainments led to a permanent closure of primary schools in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, in 2007. This study examines if the school closure positively affected the test scores that children achieved on a standardized...