Financing Basic Education in Bangladesh

This paper presents education finance trends for Bangladesh since 2000. It shows that while government spending on education as a proportion of national income has stagnated, it has increased in real terms. Real increases in education spending have resulted in substantial increases in per student spending in basic education. At primary, enrolment declines have reinforced these trends and in 2005 per student spending in government primary schools was 30% higher, in real terms than in 2001. Despite these increases, per student spending on education in Bangladesh remains low compared to other countries in the region and countries at similar levels of development. Levels of government funding also vary enormously across different providers of basic education although these differences do not appear to have a significant impact on education outcomes at the primary level. At secondary, there appears to be a closer correlation between levels of public funding and outcomes although the socio-economic status of student intakes also appears to play an important role. To achieve equitable access to basic education, it is important to narrow these public funding differences. However, given the comparatively low levels of funding across the basic education system it is perhaps more important to increase overall levels of funding if the quality and overall efficiency of the system is to be improved

Financing basic education in Bangladesh

This paper presents education finance trends for Bangladesh since 2000. It shows that while government spending on education as a proportion of national income has stagnated, it has increased in real terms. Real increases in education spending have resulted in substantial increases in per student spending in basic education. At primary, enrolment declines have reinforced these trends and in 2005 per student spending in government primary schools was 30% higher, in real terms than in 2001. Despite these increases, per student spending on education in Bangladesh remains low compared to other countries in the region and countries at similar levels of development. Levels of government funding also vary enormously across different providers of basic education although these differences do not appear to have a significant impact on education outcomes at the primary level. At secondary, there appears to be a closer correlation between levels of public funding and outcomes although the socio-economic status of student intakes also appears to play an important role. To achieve equitable access to basic education, it is important to narrow these public funding differences. However, given the comparatively low levels of funding across the basic education system it is perhaps more important to increase overall levels of funding if the quality and overall efficiency of the system is to be improved.Education; education finance; Bangladesh; basic education

Achieving education for all: How much does money matter?

This paper explores the extent to which differences in the resources allocated to education explain differences in educational access and performance across countries. Cross-country regression analysis shows that the link between educational access and performance and public education expenditure is weak.. The paper suggests that levels of household spending, the effectiveness of the public expenditure management system and the composition of public education spending are important factors explaining this weak link. The results imply that the achievement of the education millennium development goals will require more than just increases in expenditure on primary education. This does not imply that resources are unnecessary, but that increasing resources alone is unlikely to be sufficient. The composition of resources and institutions that govern the use of these resources play a central role in translating resources into better schooling outcomes. A stronger focus on these aspects of education systems will be required if the Millennium Development Goals in education are to be achieved.education; public expenditure; millennium development goals

Education, Employment and Earnings of Secondary School-Leavers in Tanzania: Evidence from a Tracer Study

The extent of information on labour market outcomes and the earnings of educated groups in Tanzania, and Sub-Saharan Africa more generally, are limited. This is particularly so for individuals who fail to gain access to wage employment and are required to rely on exploiting self-employment opportunities. The current paper, using a recently completed tracer survey of secondary school completers, analyses the impact of education and training on individual welfare through the estimation of earnings equations. Our empirical evidence suggests that the rates of return to educational qualifications are not negligible and, at the margin, provide an investment incentive. However, we find little evidence of human capital effects in the earnings determination process in the self-employment sector. Information contained in the tracer survey allowed the introduction of controls for father’s educational background and a set of school fixed effects designed to proxy for school quality and potential labour market network effects. The analysis shows that the inclusion of these controls tends to reduce the estimated rates of return to educational qualifications. This emphasizes the potential confounding role of school quality/network effects and parental background for rate of return analysis. We would argue that a failure to control for such background variables potentially leads to an over-statement in the estimated returns to education. A comparison of our results with evidence from other countries in the region shows that despite an extremely small secondary and university education system the private rates of return to education in the Tanzanian wage employment sector are relatively low.

Medicine in the Margins: Access, resistance and health care utilization among the Tuareg of Niger

This thesis explores the historical, cultural and social reasons for the wariness that the nomadic Tuareg of Niger have towards Western medicine and medical practitioners. I give a historical account of their interactions with and resistance to the French colonial administration and the postcolonial state of Niger and how this resistance to Western medicine and health clinics was an embodied form of political and social resistance to governmentality and state attempts at sedentarization. I provide historical example of when health care delivery was successful and was embraced rather than resisted as well as the ways in which the Tuareg have not only integrated Western medicines into their lives but the ways in which these often scarce medicines are distributed to the community as a whole. I performed a systematic review of the medical, public health, and social science literature examining published and unpublished documents and doctoral dissertations on the health of the Tuareg and history of Niger. I also conducted interviews with journalists, anthropologists, humanitarian aid workers and a physician that have worked with the Tuareg in Niger. Despite this resistance and physical remoteness there are also success stories of how trust can be achieved and health care successfully delivered to the Tuareg. This research demonstrates that even with enormous cultural, social and political resistance and under circumstances of poor infrastructure and limited resources, Western medicine is not only desired but can be delivered to remote populations. In my conclusion, I discuss the differential impact that sedentarization and recent famines have had on the way of life of the Tuareg and their access to health care

The role of agricultural cooperatives in economics and social development in Iraq

The study reported herein is based on an investigation of the available literature in both Arabic and English on the role of agriculture cooperatives in economic and social development in Iraq. The study reveals that agriculture cooperative movement is multi-purpose and is supported, encouraged and directed by the national government. Throughout its development, the agriculture cooperative movement faced numerous problems of both social and economical nature. But after 1968, the government devoted much effort in an attempt to eliminate or lessen the burden of these problems. In all its plans, government policy aimed to assist cooperatives in overcoming the problems. This support was based on two main objectives: 1. To increase agricultural production. 2. To bring about social and economic changes for rural areas in which the majority of citizens earning low incomes reside. The performance of agricultural cooperatives has not solved all prob-lems, but the performance in the last several years has progressively improved. Thus, for cooperatives to reach the goal set by the government reevaluation, expansion of the present cooperative programs is urgently needed. The basic thrust of this thesis is to outline applied research procedures including data needs, to use in attaining the general economic goals of cooperatives engaged in marketing activities

Household Constraints on Schooling by Gender: Empirical Evidence from Ethiopia

Using data collected during school-based surveys in two regions in Ethiopia, bivariate and multivariate analysis has been carried out to identify some of the important constraints to primary schooling. Problems in obtaining a representative sample of children not in school for this type of analysis are identified, and allowances are made for these problems, where possible. The results provide some evidence that well-nourished children from wealthier households whose mother and father are literate are more likely to attend and complete primary school. Furthermore, starting school at the official starting age of seven years and not repeating a grade increases the chances of completion. For children living within the vicinity of the school, opportunity costs do not appear to have a significant impact on the probability of attending or completing school, although girls in and out of school have a heavier work burden, relative to boys. Whilst similar factors are found to influence the probability of both boys and girls attending and completing school in the sample, their impact on girls is greater – undernourished girls from households lacking possessions, whose parents are illiterate, are 20 per cent less likely to attend school and 16 per cent less likely to complete school compared to a boy with these characteristics. Starting school above the official age and repeating a grade are also shown to reduce the chances of girls completing school by a slightly greater amount than boys. Statistical analyses of the kind used in this paper are not able to control adequately for cultural constraints to schooling, although these are recognised as potentially providing an additional important explanation for the gender gap

Road traffic noise and its prediction by computer simulation with particular reference to signalised intersections

Interrupted or congested traffic flow situations increase the number of possibly relevant variables over the free flow case and it becomes virtually impossible to obtain enough uncorrelated measured data to establish the regression coefficients for all these variables. [Continues.