This book is about the threats to education quality in the developing world that cannot be explained by lack of resources. It reviews the observed phenomenon of service delivery failures in public education: cases where programs and policies increase the inputs to education but do not produce effective services where it counts - in schools and classrooms. It documents what we know about the extent and costs of such failures across low and middle-income countries. And it further develops the conceptual model posited in the World Development Report 2004: that a root cause of low-quality and inequitable public services - not only in education - is the weak accountability of providers to both their supervisors and clients. The central focus of the book, however, is a new story. It is that developing countries are increasingly adopting innovative strategies to attack these problems. Drawing on new evidence from 22 rigorous impact evaluations across 11 developing countries, this book examines how three key strategies to strengthen accountability relationships in developing country school systems have affected school enrollment, completion and student learning. The book reviews the motivation and global context for education reforms aimed at strengthening provider accountability. It provides the rationally and synthesizes the evidence on the impacts of three key lines of reform: (1) policies that use the power of information to strengthen the ability of clients of education services (students and their parents) to hold providers accountable for results; (2) policies that promote school-based management that is increase schools autonomy to make key decisions and control resources, often empowering parents to play a larger role; (3) teacher incentives reforms that specifically aim at making teachers more accountable for results, either by making contract tenure dependent on performance, or offering performance-linked pay. The book summarizes the lessons learned, draws cautious conclusions about possible complementarities across different types of accountability-focused reforms if they are implemented in tandem, considers issues related to scaling up reform efforts and the political economy of reform, and suggests directions for future work."

While public-private partnerships in education in the United States have received a lot of attention, research on such partnerships elsewhere has been limited-even though such partnerships have been steadily gaining prominence, particularly in developing countries. Aiming to fill this gap, this book presents fresh, technically sound empirical evidence on the effectiveness and cost of various public-private education partnerships from around the world, including voucher programs and faith-based schools. The evidence on the impact in terms of school performance, targeting, and cost of public-private partnerships is mixed. Some evidence suggests that voucher schools outperform public schools, but the difference between both types of schools is not as large as one might think, and is often smaller than simple statistics suggest. Evidence on faith-based schools tends to show slightly better performance than public schools, but this is not the case in all countries. While in some countries faith-based schools reach the poor better than public schools, in other countries the reverse is observed. As for the private costs of education, evidence shows that costs depend on the systems in place in each country, but that when school choice is limited, parents can still influence the performance of their children through private expenditure for tutoring. More rigorous studies on such partnerships, particularly in developing countries, are necessary.

Governments around the world, and particularly those in developing countries, face significant educational challenges. Despite progress in raising education enrollments at the basic education level, much remains to be done. Today, about 77 million children in developing countries are not in school, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. Higher education participation rates remain low in many developing countries, and public higher education institutions (HEIs) struggle to absorb growing numbers of secondary school graduates. Public universities face ongoing challenges, including a lack of teaching and research resources, and the loss of qualified staff to developed countries. The inability of public sector educational institutions, particularly in developing countries, to absorb growing numbers of students at all levels of education has seen the emergence of private schools and HEIs. This paper briefly examines the international experience concerning the regulation of private education at the school and higher education level. It begins with an overview of the private school and higher education sectors and a short discussion of the potential benefits of increased private participation in education. The remainder of the paper focuses on the following questions and sets out propositions for governments to consider.

Enhancing the role of private sector partners in education can lead to significant improvements in education service delivery. However, the realization of such benefits depends in great part on the design of the partnership between the public and private sectors, on the overall regulatory framework of the country, and on the governmental capacity to oversee and enforce its contracts with the private sector. Under the right terms, private sector participation in education can increase efficiency, choice, and access to education services, particularly for students who tend to fail in traditional education settings. Private-for-profit schools across the world are already serving a vast range of users-from elite families to children in poor communities. Through balanced public-private partnerships (PPPs) in education, governments can leverage the specialized skills offered by private organizations as well as overcome operating restrictions such as salary scales and work rules that limit public sector responses. ""The Role and Impact of Public-Private Partnerships in Education"" presents a conceptualization of the issues related to PPPs in education, a detailed review of rigorous evaluations, and guidelines on how to create successful PPPs. The book shows how this approach can facilitate service delivery, lead to additional financing, expand equitable access, and improve learning outcomes. The book also discusses the best way to set up these arrangements in practice. This information will be of particular interest to policymakers, teachers, researchers, and development practitioners.

This book documents poverty systematically for the world's indigenous peoples in developing regions in Asia, Africa and Latin America. The volume compiles results for roughly 85 percent of the world's indigenous peoples. It draws on nationally representative data to compare trends in countries' poverty rates and other social indicators with those for indigenous sub-populations and provides comparable data for a wide range of countries all over the world. It estimates global poverty numbers and analyzes other important development indicators, such as schooling, health and social protection. Provocatively, the results show a marked difference in results across regions, with rapid poverty reduction among indigenous (and non-indigenous) populations in Asia contrasting with relative stagnation - and in some cases falling back - in Latin America and Africa.

This is the first book that documents poverty systematically for the world's indigenous peoples in developing regions in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. The volume compiles results for roughly 85 percent of the world's indigenous peoples. It draws on nationally representative data to compare trends in countries' poverty rates and other social indicators with those for indigenous sub-populations and provides comparable data for a wide range of countries all over the world. It estimates global poverty numbers and analyzes other important development indicators, such as schooling, health, and social protection. Provocatively, the results show a marked difference in results across regions, with rapid poverty reduction among indigenous (and non-indigenous) populations in Asia contrasting with relative stagnation and in some cases falling back in Latin America and Africa. Two main factors motivate the book. First, there is a growing concern among poverty analysts worldwide that countries with significant vulnerable populations such as indigenous peoples may not meet the Millennium Development Goals, and thus there exists a consequent need for better data tracking conditions among these groups. Second, there is a growing call by indigenous organizations, including the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Peoples, for solid, disaggregated data analyzing the size and causes of the development gap. "