A country’s education system plays a pivotal role in promoting economic growth and shared prosperity.Sri Lanka has enjoyed high school-attainment and enrollment rates for several decades.
... See More + However, it still faces major challenges in the education sector, and these challenges undermine the country’s inclusive growth goal and its ambition to become a competitive upper-middle-income country.The authors of Sri Lanka Education Sector Assessment: Achievements, Challenges, and Policy Options offer a thorough review of Sri Lanka’s education sector—from early childhood education through higher education.With this book, they attempt to answer three questions: • How is Sri Lanka’s education system performing, especially with respect to participation rates, learning outcomes, and labor market outcomes? • How can the country address the challenges at each stage of the education process, taking into account both country and international experience and also best practices? • Which policy actions should Sri Lanka make a priority for the short and medium term? The authors identify the most critical constraints on performance and present strategic priorities and policy options to address them. To attain inclusive growth and become globally competitive, Sri Lanka needs to embark on integrated reforms across all levels of education. These reforms must address both short-term skill shortages and long-term productivity. As Sri Lanka moves up the development ladder, the priorities of primary, secondary, and post secondary education must be aligned to meet the increasingly complex education and skill requirements.
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Education is one of the most important determinants of economic performance in the modern world. This is true of both countries and individuals.
... See More + The main characteristic which distinguishes between advanced economies, middle-income economies and low-income countries, is the knowledge content of their production activities and processes. Economic activities and products have become increasingly knowledge and skill-intensive in recent years. In addition, the importance of knowledge and skills is growing at an accelerating pace. Education is at the heart of human capital accumulation and economic growth. Education increases cognitive skills and soft skills of individuals. In addition, education improves the capacity of individuals to be trained for specific occupations and to acquire job-related skills. These effects of education enable individuals to accumulate human capital, improve labor productivity and increase life-cycle earnings. In the aggregate, this process generates economic growth. Investment in education produces a broad range of social benefits. Well-educated individuals, especially women, are better able to control their fertility and family health, resulting in reduced child, infant and maternal mortality, and higher life expectancy. Education also facilitates social mobility by creating opportunities for poor and disadvantaged groups to raise their economic and social status. A broad range of further externality benefits of education have been identified in the economic literature. These cover aspects of social well-being such as better political decision making, reduced incidence of crime, and higher quality public services. Education also produces inter-generational economic and social benefits: increased education in one generation improves schooling, labor productivity and income in the next. The public goods, informational imperfections and distributive justice aspects of education provide the economic justification for state investment in the education sector.
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Working Paper (Numbered Series) 89923 MAY 01, 2014
Sri Lanka is a lower-middle income country with a per capita income of approximately US$ 2,400, and a population of around 20 million people. Sri Lanka's high rate of literacy is due to its sustained growth through the twentieth century.
... See More + Primary education spans the first five grades of schooling, grades 1-5. Student's progress automatically to lower secondary education for four years of education in grades 6-9 and then on to upper secondary education in grades 10-11 for a two year course that culminates in the General Certificate of Education Ordinary level examination (GCE O-L). The curriculum for primary education is designed separately from those for subsequent stages of education. The primary education curriculum stage is encapsulated in a primary curriculum framework that derives from extensive debate during the 1990s in connection with the recommendations in 1997 of the national education commission, the work of the technical committee on primary education appointed by the presidential task force and detailed implementation work by the primary education unit of the national institute of education. Since 2003 the National Educational Research Centre (NEREC) based at the University of Colombo has administered tests in first Language, Mathematics and English to grade 4 children in a sample of schools country-wide. In the 2009 assessments a cut-off percentage of 80 percent rather than 50 percent were 48 percent in First Language, 53 percent in Mathematics and just 19 percent in English. The budget of the national Ministry of education includes a separate budget line for primary education but this money is allocated only to the primary sections of national schools. Province, zone, division and school budget do not separate allocations and expenditure for primary and secondary. There is no reason in principle why separate budget lines could not be created for most types of expenditure.
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Working Paper (Numbered Series) 80316 JUL 01, 2013
Afghanistan's ability to enhance its human capital resources will determine the course of the nation's future economic, human and social development.
... See More + Recognizing this, the Government of Afghanistan is committed to implementing policies aimed at getting children, particularly girls, into the education system. This paper aims to inform this process by investigating a variety of characteristics of children, such as their households, educational facilities, community factors, and spatial variables that are associated with education enrollment in urban and rural Afghanistan. This paper aims to investigate the factors underlying these low school enrollment figures and is structured as follows. Section one reviews previous research in this area. Section two provides a brief description the data and the methodology used in this analysis. In section three authors present the results which are then discussed in section four. In fact this study found that while the availability of appropriate schools is significantly correlated with primary and mid-school enrollment, they have a significant impact only on the enrollment of rural girls in high school. Right now, Afghanistan appears to be in a paradoxical situation: while education and better human capital needs to power economic growth, incomes need to expand to ease the constraints on education enrollment that are currently imposed by economic backwardness. To break out of this circle of constraints against enrollment, policy makers need to aggressively pursue policies that concentrate on easing the economic costs to households of children attending school, while enhancing the supply and quality of the facilities provided.
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Working Paper (Numbered Series) 80121 JUL 01, 2013
Education is universally recognized as one of the key determinants of socio-economic security and welfare. The link between education and increased individual earnings has been widely documented: there is a large body of cross-country evidence that education enhances the employability, productivity and income earning capacity of individuals.
... See More + The impact of educational attainment on these various socio-economic indicators has been shown to vary by region, sub-region, gender, age, by income levels, and other variables. In this paper, we focus on the socio-economic impact of educational attainment in Afghanistan. Afghanistan presents a fairly unique context for examining the association between education and the socio-economic variable discussed above. It is a conflict-affected country, with strong and rich cultural and religious traditions. It also has some of the worst developmental indicators and in the world. Using data from the National Risk and Vulnerability Assessment (NRVA) survey of 2007/08, authors investigate the extent to which the educational attainment of men and women is associated with greater economic welfare and less likelihood of being poor. The analysis is divided into four parts: part one looks education and other factors associated with household economic welfare and the probability of being poor; part two focuses on the education and other factors associated with women's participation in the labor force; part three looks at the association of mother's education with health-related outcomes of children; and part four looks at the association between educational attainment of girls and women, and their perceptions of well-being. Afghanistan's education indicators are among the worst in the world and girls and rural communities are particularly disadvantaged.
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Working Paper (Numbered Series) 80122 JUL 01, 2013
Most developing countries following independence opted for strong central control and direction of the education system, partly because of limited resources and the need to plan carefully and partly because of a felt need to create a sense of national unity among diverse ethnic and linguistic groups.
... See More + This meant that key areas of control and decision making, such as management of resources and personnel, curriculum, evaluation of performance, and accountability, were under central rather than local control. The empowerment of schools has two major components: school-based management and the involvement of parents and communities in the work of schools. The emphasis given to one or other of these components depends on general national policy, local traditions, and context, with the result that almost every system is unique when one considers who makes decisions, the actual decisions that are made, the nature of those decisions, the level at which they are made, and relationships between levels. Thus, there are 'strong' and 'weak' versions of school empowerment. In some, only a single area of autonomy is granted to schools, while in others the community management of schools, even the establishment of schools, is encouraged (World Bank, 2007). In this paper, the author will briefly outline the history of school empowerment in Sri Lanka with particular reference to the Program for School Improvement (PSI), which commenced in 2006. The final section of the paper contains suggestions designed to strengthen process of empowering Sri Lankan schools and improving education outcomes.
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Working Paper (Numbered Series) 77759 MAY 01, 2013
Human capital is the central determinant of economic well-being and social advancement in the modern global economy. The key characteristic that distinguishes between advanced economies, middle-income economies and low-income economies is the knowledge content of their economic activities and production processes.
... See More + Industry, agriculture and especially services have become increasingly knowledge and skill intensive in recent years. Further, the dominance of knowledge and skills is increasing at an accelerating rate. Among advanced economies, for instance, the education levels of their populations is the single most important factor determining their economic performance [Hanushek and Welch (2006), Hanushek and Woessmann (2008)]. Among middle-income and low-income countries, too, economies that have high education attainment enjoy considerable welfare gains [Fasih (2008), Patrinos and Psacharopoulos (2011)]. Human resource development is particularly important for the economic development of small states [Martin and Bray (2011)]. Education also produces a variety of social benefits. These include healthier and better nourished families and children; the creation of the enlightened citizenry needed for a modern liberal democracy; and the promotion of social mobility [OECD (2012)]. This paper offers an overview of the general education system and the current status of access and participation in the Maldives. This is followed by a discussion of the economic and social benefits of investment in education. The paper concludes by discussing options to expand access and participation at education levels where the Maldives lags behind other comparable small island economies.
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Working Paper (Numbered Series) 68615 MAY 01, 2012
The quality of education is a major policy challenge facing the Maldives. The country achieved the first generation objective of providing universal access to basic education through rapid expansion of enrollment.
... See More + As is frequently the case with such countries, the second generation challenge is to provide education of adequate quality. Evidence from a variety of sources shows that education quality in the Maldives is weak, and needs urgent improvement. Learning outcomes in both primary and secondary education are modest. National assessments of learning outcomes at Grade 4 and Grade 7 show that learning levels are unsatisfactory. The low average scores suggest that learning levels in both primary education and lower secondary education are weak. There are several dimensions of education quality which Maldivian policy makers consider to be of vital importance. Among these, the quality of school teachers is central to the improvement of education quality. Hence, the Ministry of Education (MOE) is concerned to develop the skills, motivation and performance of teachers. A second key policy initiative is the establishment of a sound quality assurance framework for the school system. The MOE has developed a quality assurance mechanism, which now needs to be pilot tested, refined and scaled up throughout the country. A third strategic policy initiative is the development of a system of regular national assessments of learning outcomes, which can then feed into policy formulation and program development. These three strategic policy initiatives are discussed in the subsequent sections of this report. See Less -
Working Paper (Numbered Series) 67918 FEB 01, 2012
Scientific literacy is essential to stimulate an environment conducive to new knowledge generation, discovery and innovation. A quality school science education is central to building a scientifically literate population.
... See More + Science education in Sri Lanka has progressed both quantitatively and qualitatively since the 1950s. Access to science education has grown steadily. This paper addresses the challenges to providing a good science education and considers pathways to the future. Policy initiatives supporting science education at present are considered. The science programme in schools is reviewed taking into account parameters such as curriculum, teaching and learning methods, learning assessments, teaching material and deployment and training of science teachers. First, learning achievements in science are assessed in the context of test scores in national assessments administered at grade eight. It is assumed that the national examinations are a suitable instrument to test learning outcomes and that at least in part reflect the quality of education.
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Working Paper (Numbered Series) 64527 AUG 01, 2011
A well-informed and knowledgeable community is of vital importance for the economic and social development of a modem society. The knowledge and skills required for present day activities are much more complex than those required in the past.
... See More + Today, many jobs require expert thinking and non-routine analytical skills, to identify and solve problems. Mathematics education focuses on developing a person's analytical and problem solving abilities. Thus a high quality mathematics education win ensure that students develop the skills that are essential not only in science and technology, but also in everyday life and the workplace. The government of Sri Lanka, recognizing the need for a high quality mathematics education has implemented several reforms in the recent past. Although the progress achieved is commendable, there is still room for improvement in certain important aspects of the learning teaching process. The main aim of the mathematics curriculum under these reforms is to create individuals who are able to think mathematically and apply mathematical knowledge effectively and responsibly in problem solving and decision making.
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Working Paper (Numbered Series) 64526 JUL 01, 2011
The Republic of Maldives, a middle-income country of extraordinary natural beauty, is one of the most advanced nations in South Asia. The Maldives consists of an archipelago of nearly 1,200 islands and a population of approximately 400,000 inhabitants; 310,000 Maldivians and 90,000 expatriate workers.
... See More + More than 25 percent of the population live in Male', the capital, while the rest are distributed among just under 200 other inhabited islands. The Maldives had attained a national income per capita of USD 2,786 in 2009. The Government of Maldives (GOM) is seeking to accelerate human development and economic prosperity within the political framework of a modern liberal democracy. The government's reform program to achieve this goal, outlined in the policy statement 'the other Maldives' [GOM 2009a)] contains five pillars: good governance to strengthen democratic institutions and processes; expansion and development of human capital; climate change and adaptation; public sector reform to streamline the delivery of services and improve efficiency; and macroeconomic reform to promote private-sector led growth.
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Working Paper (Numbered Series) 63489 MAY 01, 2011
