Using data from the survey of the Ministry of Education, Nepal-2005 for school leaving certificate (SLC) exam, this paper attempts to estimate the impact of private school competition on public school performance for the case of Nepal. The study uses the number of private schools in the neighborhood as a measure of competition. The identification…

In recent years there has been a debate over the alleged superiority of achievement tests over aptitude tests on the grounds that the first would be fairer for college admissions and less influenced by family background. The switch from aptitude tests to achievement tests in Chile presented a unique opportunity to examine this claim. Regression…

Over the past 15 years, a range of alternative education programs have been launched in Burkina Faso. The programs have been developed primarily by international or national NGOs, within a supportive policy space provided by the national government. They aim to respond to the widely recognized inadequacy of the French-language ecoles classiques to…

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, China's Ministry of Education embarked on an ambitious program of primary school mergers by shutting down small village schools and opening up larger centralized schools in towns and county seats. The goal of the program was to improve the teacher and building resources in an attempt to raise the human capital of…

This article presents a model for research on the effects of school organizational heath factors on primary school academic achievement in Trinidad and Tobago. The model can be applicable for evaluating schools in other developing countries. As proposed, the model hypothesizes relationships between external factors (exogenous variables),…

The purpose of the present study is to explore the relationship between family socioeconomic status and mathematics performance on the base of a multi-level analysis involving a large sample of Chinese primary school students. A weak relationship is found between socioeconomic status and performance in the Chinese context. The relationship does…

Although most Guatemalan rural students currently have access to primary school, there are large differences in the levels of learning that take place among different populations and in different contexts. This paper uses multiple data and methods to examine the interrelated factors underlying achievement disparities in Guatemalan primary schools.…

The employability of university graduates constitutes a major policy concern in both developed and developing nations. In this context, the present study uses self-reported data to compare the earnings and employment expectations of university students, and the realised earnings and employment paths of recent graduates. The sample consisted of 476…

The aim of this study is to explore the ways in which lower tracked, "normal technical" students unpack academic requirements and expectations to achieve academic success. Set in Singapore, the study documents the lived experiences of four individuals from the "normal technical" course who have succeeded academically. The results show the…

Although the results of quantitative studies often indicate that students of male teachers perform worse on achievement tests than those of female teachers, it is not clear that men are less effective teachers. Instead, male teachers may work in more difficult environments. This study uses longitudinal data from Mexico's national teacher incentive…

This paper analyzes the socioeconomic stratification of achievement in the Chilean voucher system using a census of 4th and 8th graders, a multilevel methodology, and accounting for unobserved selectivity into school sector. Findings indicate that the association between the school's aggregate family socioeconomic status (SES) and test scores is…

Attendance at cram schools is an experience that the majority of Taiwanese have while growing up. However, the incidence and impact of cram schooling are still understudied and have yet received much attention. In this paper, I first illustrate the development of cram schools in Taiwan, and demonstrate the important changes on institutional…

This paper aims at explaining the academic performance of a sample of children starting their first year at public schools in Montevideo, Uruguay, during 1999. We are mainly interested in the effect of pre-school education on the children's academic results. Previous probit and OLS estimations suggested that pre-school education has a positive…

In the past decades, most of the countries in Sub-Saharan Africa have been affected by armed conflicts. By means of a time-series cross-sectional (TSCS) database, we attempt to measure the impact of war on a sample of 43 countries in Africa from 1950 to 2010. These conflicts, and especially civil wars, are shown to have a strong negative effect on…

This paper explores how the concept of linguistic citizenship can be applied to the Tanzanian situation in terms of the delivery of bilingual education as well as addressing issues of equity and quality in education. It starts by a brief overview of how the concepts "linguistic human rights" and "linguistic citizenship" are theorized. It then goes…