Disaster risk management is essential in the fight against poverty. Disasters can, in an instant, wipe out decades of hard-fought poverty reduction and development gains and push countless households into poverty. Disasters disproportionately affect the poor: Vulnerable and marginalised groups, including women, children, the elderly, and people with disabilities, are at particular risk. East Asia and the Pacific is the most disaster-stricken region in the world, suffering from both small recurrent and rare high-impact events. East Asia is rapidly urbanising, and cities are becoming disaster hotspots. Unplanned or poorly planned urbanisation, which puts more people and assets in harm's way, is the single largest driver of disaster risk. There is much uncertainty about future disaster and climate risks, challenging the region's ability to adapt to new developments and the changing physical and natural environment. Decision makers can make a significant difference by effectively managing disaster risk and building resilience. Strong, Safe, and Resilient: A Strategic Policy Guide for Disaster Risk Management in East Asia and the Pacific helps them to identify the key challenges, best practices, and priorities in the short, medium, and long term. With communication, preparedness, and investments, urbanisation can be channeled as a positive force for development. By decreasing disaster exposure and vulnerability through systematic assessments and communication of risks, better land-use planning, and many other practical measures, the impacts of natural hazards can be reduced significantly. At the same time, it is necessary to recognise that disaster risks cannot be entirely eliminated, and countries need to plan for failure by considering different scenarios, especially within complex systems and networks. Preventive investments in risk reduction and emergency preparedness can be cost-effective and can greatly reduce the impact of natural hazards. By mainstreaming systematic risk assessments into relevant public investment planning processes, governments can prioritise actions based on informed decisions about the level of risk. Public investments, such as early-warning systems and retrofitting of critical infrastructure at risk, planned and implemented together with communities and stakeholders, including the private sector, can help to reduce poverty and promote sustainable economic growth. Strong, Safe, and Resilient: A Strategic Policy Guide for Disaster Risk Management in East Asia and the Pacific presents a comprehensive disaster risk management framework that offers practical opportunities for targeted policy action and investments, stretching across sectors and jurisdictions and reaching all the way to communities at risk and the most vulnerable populations. The World Bank supports countries around the world in developing a comprehensive and integrated approach to disaster risk management by providing analytical and advisory services, helping to build climate and disaster resilience into core investments across sectors, and offering unique financial solutions to better manage the contingent fiscal risks from disasters.

The Uganda school system has expanded over the years resulting from mass education reforms at the primary since 1997, and the lower secondary level since 2007. This has enabled provision of key inputs to schools by Government which include tuition, trained teachers, school infrastructure, and learning materials. The curriculum for the primary level was also reviewed. However, completion rates and learning outcomes are still low which points to inefficiency and low quality of education provided. Current discourse on education is focused on the need to improve efficiency and quality of education. This study is therefore, an attempt to provide a comprehensive analysis of learning outcomes and teacher effectiveness, drawing from the nationally owned and multi-year assessment data sets for Uganda between 2006-2011. This book provides some answers to questions like: What are the performance levels of learners over the years? What are the curriculum areas that learners find most difficult as measured by their performance and have these been the same over the years? What determines learners performance? What is the content knowledge level of the teachers? What are the teacher characteristics that determine learners performance? How effective are the teachers? Guidance on next steps is also provided. The main contribution of this book is three fold: (a) It explores learners performance by curriculum area; (b) It links learners performance with teachers competency levels by curriculum content area, making it one of the very few materials available in the Africa region. It therefore, amplifies the importance of focusing on what learners find a problem in the teaching-learning process in the quest for quality. The findings also reveal that teacher effectiveness is very low and efforts to improve instructional methods have to be prioritized by Government; and (c), it provides insights on the various dimensions to the education quality and efficiency challenge that many developing countries are grappling with today, and the depth of analysis that have to be undertaken."