The authors use propensity score matching to evaluate the effectiveness of CONAFE, a compensatory education program in Mexico, in improving student test scores and lowering repetition and failure rates. They find that CONAFE is most effective in improving primary school math learning and...

Given its modest position as a lower-middle-income country, Vietnam stands out from the rest of the world with its remarkable performance on standardized test scores, school enrollment, and completed years of schooling. This paper provides an overview of the factors behind this exemplary...

The number of countries that regularly participate in international large-scale assessments has increased sharply over the past 15 years, with the share of countries participating in the Programme for International Student Assessment growing from one-fifth of countries in 2000 to over one-third...

The authors report results from a randomized evaluation comparing three school-based HIV/AIDS interventions in Kenya: (1) training teachers in the Kenyan Government's HIV/AIDS-education curriculum; (2) encouraging students to debate the role of condoms and to write essays on how to protect...

This paper seeks to find an empirical explanation of Vietnam's outstanding performance on the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) in 2012. Only a few developing countries participate in the assessment. Those who do, with the unique exception of Vietnam, are typically clustered...

The authors use a nationally representative household survey to estimate returns to schooling in Venezuela from instrumental variables based on a supply-side intervention in the education market. These estimates apply to a subgroup of liquidity-constrained individuals, in the spirit of the Local...

This paper sheds light on the impact of improving employment and education conditions on poverty and social exclusion indicators. More specifically, it answers the following question: Will achieving the Europe 2020 national targets on employment and education lead countries to achieve the Europe...

This paper uses data from a post-hoc evaluation of a performance-based teacher incentive program in the Kyrgyz Republic to examine the opinions of teachers receiving different pay bonuses based on their performance as assessed by external evaluators. Overall, teacher opinions of the program were...

This study experimentally evaluates the short-term impacts of public per-student subsidies to partnering local entrepreneurs to establish and operate tuition-free, coeducational, private primary schools in educationally underserved villages in Sindh province, Pakistan. Two subsidy structures...

Educators believe that they are adequately preparing youth for the labor market while at the same time employers lament the students’ lack of skills. A possible source of the mismatch in perceptions is that employers and educators have different understandings of the types of skills valued in...