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Education

CGD's work in this area seeks to better understand the sources of global learning gaps and to identify solutions to help close these gaps.

While primary school enrolment levels have increased dramatically in recent decades, this progress has not been matched by equivalent gains in learning. Millions of children in the developing world leave school without basic literacy and numeracy skills. CGD seeks to better understand what causes this learning gap and to identify policies and ideas to help end the global learning crisis. 

 

Featured Work

September 7, 2017
Publication
Can a Public-Private Partnership Improve Liberia’s Schools?
Mauricio Romero, Justin Sandefur and Wayne Aaron Sandholtz
February 27, 2017
Publication
Girls’ Schooling and Women’s Literacy: Schooling Targets...
Lant Pritchett and Justin Sandefur
ruler
February 5, 2018
Blog Post
India: Massive Expansion in Schooling, Too Little...
Lant Pritchett


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October 31, 2011
Publication
Data Set for Working Paper 271: "Why Did Abolishing Fees...
Mwangi Kimenyi, Germano Mwabu and Justin Sandefur

This set includes the household survey data, standardized test score data, and the Stata files to replicate the results in CGD Working Paper 271, "Why Did Abolishing Fees Not Increase Public School Enrollment in Kenya?"

October 31, 2011
Publication
Why Did Abolishing Fees Not Increase Public School...
Mwangi Kimenyi, Germano Mwabu and Justin Sandefur

Previous studies suggest that abolishing user fees would increase enrollment in public schools, but the results of this research show that the opposite is true in Kenya.

July 5, 2011
Blog Post
In School Not Learning
Lant Pritchett and Matt Andrews

This post originally appeared on Owen Abroad.

George Bush famously asked, ‘Is our children learning?’. That’s also the question by Uwezo, a coalition of NGOs working in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania. Their report published today makes dismal reading about the quality of schools.

First, a word about the report. This is not a study by the World Bank, or a group of donors. It is a study by Uwezo, an East African initiative hosted by three NGO networks: TEN/MET in Tanzania, WERK in Kenya and UNNGOF in Uganda, with overall quality assurance and management support from Twaweza. They conducted their own survey (standardized across the countries) to test the literacy and numeracy of more than 100,000 children, the largest ever survey of its kind in the region. When citizens themselves are telling us about whether their public services work, we should be paying attention.

May 3, 2011
Blog Post
The New Education Strategy at the World Bank: Time for a...
Abhijit Banerjee et al.

Last Friday I spoke at this event “

April 21, 2011
Blog Post
The New Education Crisis
Charles Kenny et al.

Last year, the Center for Global Development convened a roundtable of education experts to discuss global education p

April 18, 2011
Publication
Averting the Looming Global Education Crisis (Open Letter...
cgdev

Desmond Bermingham recaps the consensus from a CGD discussion about what to do about a hidden crisis in global education. He offers his top-12 tasks for delivery on global commitment to give all children a good education.

February 27, 2011
Publication
Solow’s Return: Inventions, Ideas, and the Quality of Life
Charles Kenny

In his latest essay, Charles Kenny seeks to revive Solow's model of exogenous growth; growth driven by the global diffusion of new technologies and ideas. He suggests that when it comes to quality of life improvements, institutions may be less important than exogenous factors, like new vaccines, oral re-hydration therapies, or improvements in hygiene and education practices.

February 25, 2011
Publication
Getting Better in Pictures
Charles Kenny

Charles Kenny attempts to dispel development pessimists' fears in this essay summarizing his latest book Getting Better: Why Global Development Is Succeeding - And How We can Improve the World Even More (Basic Books). According to Charles, better health, education, greater access to civil and political rights, infrastructure and even beer, are all signs historic progress being made in the developing world.

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