Egypt, currently in the throes of major political change, will likely undergo reforms of various sorts in the next few years. Some of these reforms are likely to give local entities, including schools, greater control over education finances. In 2007, the Government of Egypt began to decentralize some non-personnel recurrent finances from the center—the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Finance (MOF)—to lower-level jurisdictions, including schools, using a number of simple and transparent enrollment- and poverty-based funding formulas. By 2010, a sizable amount of capital expenditure was also being transferred to lower levels of the system via similar equity- based funding formulas. Prior to these formula-based decentralization efforts, a large amount of education-related non-personnel recurrent finances had already been moving from the MOF to the muderiyat, education offices at the governorate level of the system. Analysis of these latter allocations reveals that they are highly inequitable on an inter-governorate per-student basis, ranging from EGP 966 per student in New Valley to EGP 25 per student in 6th of October. This paper examines the nature and potential causes of this inequity and espouses a way in which these funds could be transferred using an equity-based funding formula that holds harmless those muderiyat that would lose absolute amounts of money under such a more equitable distribution scheme.

Recent attention has focused on the existence of non-government schools that cater to children from low-income families. These schools can now be found in the majority of developing countries, many of which have a prescribed public policy to provide free public education. This raises the question, why would a low-income family choose to send a child to a fee-paying school if a place in a free school were available? This paper will report on case studies of low-fee schools in Jamaica, Kenya, Tanzania, Ghana, Indonesia and Pakistan and will assess the reasons for their increased demand. In the past, some have argued that development assistance agencies should limit assistance to public school sector. Others have argued that the public sector is inadequate and in many ways has failed in its ambitions to provide a minimum quality for every child. This paper will consider what public policy should be toward low-cost private schools, including the policy of development assistance agencies which seek to assist low and middle income countries as well as the appropriate public policy for national and local governments. The paper will conclude with several recommendations. One recommendation is that although children from low-income families attend non-government schools, they continue to be citizens; hence they should not be excluded from poverty assistance strategies. A second recommendation is to expand government statistical functions so that non-government schools are regularly included in the calculations of enrollment rates. Lastly, the paper does not recommend voucher or other program of publically financed school choice on the grounds that the public sector should remain the main conduit for public schooling. It does, however, raise questions as to the limits of the public sector in delivering high quality schooling and whether these limits should be more candidly acknowledged.

USAID/Nepal is interested in developing a program to help improve reading outcomes in the early grades of basic education. To inform the program design, a rapid education sector assessment was conducted to better understand past, current, and planned policies, practices, programs, innovations, and initiatives targeted towards early grade reading. This assessment aimed to identify strengths, weaknesses, and key leverage points to improve children’s reading outcomes within the institutional context of Nepal’s education system. The assessment was conducted over a two-month period by a team of researchers and staff from RTI International, including Mr. Joseph DeStefano, Senior Researcher; Dr. Frank Healey, Senior Researcher; Ms. Sharon Loza, Project Management Specialist; and Dr. Wendi Ralaingita, Education Researcher. Significant support was also provided by Dr. Vishnu Karki, Consultant; Dr. Yogendra Yadava, Local Language Expert; Jayanti Subba, Education Specialist, USAID/Nepal; and Mitch Kirby, USAID, Senior Education Advisor. The assessment was carried out by desk study and a two-week field visit from May 7 to May 19, 2012. This report reflects findings from the assessment.

Nepal Early Grade Reading Assessment, Education Management Efficiency Study, and Teacher Observation Study This is the final report for the Nepal Early Grade Reading Assessment, Education Management Efficiency Study, and Teacher Observation Study in 2014. The report provides findings related to the research questions of the study regarding the following topics: Education Leadership, Management, Practices, and Attitudes; Knowledge and Practices Related to the Teaching of Reading; Availability of Teaching and Learning Materials; Opportunities for Mother-Tongue-Based Multi-Lingual Education; Capacity and Readiness of Existing Teacher Professional Development System; and Teacher Motivation and Participation. The activity takes place under the EdData Task Order 15: Data for Education Programming in Asia and Middle East (DEP/AME)

Learning to read is a fundamental part of the first few years of primary education for early and sustained success in school. Yet, in many developing countries, a distressing number of students are not learning to read at all during these critical first years of schooling. On September 8, International Literacy Day, the Center for Universal Education (CUE) at Brookings and the International Reading Association hosted a discussion on how ensuring literacy in the early grades can help to fulfill the promise of quality education for all. Amber Gove of RTI International presented the findings from the attached report “Early Reading: Igniting Education for All,” which represents the work of a community of practice that has been developing and refining assessment tools, piloting interventions, and sharing practices for scaling up these proven methods of improving literacy. Following the presentation, USAID Director of Education David Barth and International Reading Association President Patricia Edwards and Jamaica Teachers Association General Secretary Adolph Cameron joined a panel discussion on the paper’s findings. This revised version, with additional data and evidence from early reading interventions, was released in May 2011.

This report, which is broadly tasked with presenting evidence on the state of teacher effectiveness in sub-Saharan Africa, represents an attempt to bridge the gap between what has hitherto been a sustained focus on teacher characteristics or student outcomes and a more holistic conceptualization of effective teaching, one that also emphasizes teachers' actual instructional practice and pedagogical moves. To do so, the report draws on data and findings germane to teacher effectiveness from international databases and assessments and critically supplements these data with recent findings from donor-funded projects and evaluations that specifically attempt to observe teachers' classroom instruction. The second section of the report presents evidence from the educational plans and policies of 11 sub-Saharan African countries and shows that these often focus on teacher characteristics, classroom inputs, professional guidelines, and (to some extent) teaching practices. A third section of the report describes four barriers to focusing more on effective teaching (as opposed to effective teachers and successful teaching) in sub-Saharan African countries. The report concludes with policy recommendations and considerations.

The purpose of this paper is to assess Mozambique’s education data and information systems’ ability to help formulate education sector plans and policies. Emphasis is put on existing policy over the last decade or so, with some attention to more recent trends. Thus emphasis is put on basic education, because basic education was the focus of policy attention in the most recent decade or two.

Synthesis of three data capacity assessments (Ghana, Mozambique, Philippines) that aimed to both to evaluate the countries’ data systems and to determine how well each country’s own data systems can: • Inform and support the development and implementation of education sector policies, plans, and strategies; • Provide the basis for coordinating and aligning external assistance in support of the education sector; • Underpin the development of USAID’s five-year country strategy, sector-specific programs, and projects; and • Generate data to evaluate and report on the performance, outcomes, and impact of USAID (and other) investments.

The objective of this sector assessment activity is to identify strengths, weaknesses, and key leverage points to improve children’s reading outcomes within the institutional context of Cambodia’s education system.

The objective of this sector assessment activity is to identify strengths, weaknesses, and key leverage points to improve children’s reading outcomes within the institutional context of Cambodia’s education system.