More time is better : an evaluation of the fulltime school program in Uruguay

This paper estimates the impact of the full-time school program in Uruguay on standardized test scores of 6th grade students. The program lengthened the school day from a half day to a full day, and provided additional inputs to schools to make this possible, such as additional teachers and construction of classrooms. The program was not randomly placed, but targeted poor urban schools. Using propensity score matching, the authors construct a comparable group of schools, and show that students in very disadvantaged schools improved in their test scores by 0.07 of a standard deviation per year of participation in the full-time program in mathematics, and 0.04 in language. While the program is expensive, it may, if well targeted, help address inequalities in education in Uruguay, at an increase in cost per student not larger than the current deficit in spending between Uruguay and the rest of the region.Tertiary Education,Education For All,Teaching and Learning,Primary Education,Secondary Education

Spending More or Spending Better: Improving education financing in Indonesia

Indonesia has made a clear commitment to education - passing a constitutional mandate to allocate at least 20 percent of the total government budget to education (the "20 percent rule"). This has led to a large increase in resources, more than doubling education spending in real terms since the passage of the constitutional amendment in 2002. The rule's mandate was fully met for the first time in 2009, when the government allocated more than 20 percent of the state budget to education. The goal of this report is to understand how these additional resources were spent and the extent to which they have translated into educational outcomes.The report provides recommendations to improve the quality of spending by improving the education financing system. \ud The"20 percent rule" has resulted in a rapid increase in the education budget, but has also complicated budget management. One of the biggest drawbacks of the 20 percent rule isthat earmarking funds reduces the incentives to optimize their use.The link between policy planning and resources isbroken; large exogenous increases to the budget (regardless of results and independent of planning) can create inefficiencies in spending. Earmarking funds also creates rigidities in the budget and limits the capacity of the government to optimize the allocation of resources across sectors. Lastly, because the rule applies to both the planned and the revised budgets, it makes the education budget unpredictable and creates large budget "windfalls": with the budget highly dependent on the price of oil due to fuel subsidies, every adjustment to oil prices results in large fluctuations in total government spending. These windfalls have proven difficult to manage, despite Government of Indonesia (GOI)'s creation of the National Education Development Fund. \ud The biggest payoff for this increase in spending has been in terms of access and equity, but access to senior secondary and tertiary education still remains extremely low for the poor. There has been rapid progress in access and equity, with children from poor families enrolling earlier and staying in school longer. The share of 15 year olds from the poorest consumption quintile who are enrolled in school increased from 60 to 80 percent between 2006 and 2010. However, beyond the age of 15, enrollment from this quintile drops dramatically, and by higher education, falls to less than 2 percent. \ud Learning outcomes are still poor and show some worrisome trends in math and science. Meanwhile, the share of top performers is extremely low. Indonesia generally scores on the bottom on international tests (TIMMS, PIRLS and PISA), including compared with other countries in the region. On the PISA, the test with the most recent result and the longest time trend, the scores are mixed: while reading scores have shown steady improvement since 2000, math and science scores have not. In math, a promising increase in scores between \ud 2000 and 2006 was set back in 2009, when scores declined for all socioeconomic deciles. In science, the trend has been flat since 2000. Equally alarming isthe small number of top performers on both the TIMSS and the PIRLS, while on PISA, no student in the sample performed at level 6 (the highest) in math or science in 2009. Given recent evidence linking PISA scores and the share of top performers with GDP growth, it isevident that increasing quality of education must be apriority

Improving Technology Adoption in Agriculture through Extension Services: Evidence from Uruguay

This paper analyzes the impact of the Farm Modernization and Development Program (PREDEG) on the technology uptake and productivity of Uruguayan farmers. Using a unique panel dataset, the authors combine propensity score matching techniques and fixed effects models to estimate the program's impact. Although the results vary according to the crops, the authors find consistent evidence that the program increased the rate of adoption of certified varieties and the density of plantation. However, there is only limited evidence of its effects on productivity, mostly derived from helping producers to cope with an illness of peach orchards. Conversely, the authors find some indications of negative lagged productivity effects for apples, which might be related to a short term cost of transitioning to new varieties or technologies. While the evidence of the effects on yields is not definitive due to the limited timeframe of the evaluation, the results indicate that PREDEG services were useful for incentivizing the adoption of specific technologies, as well as for crop-specific technical assistance like plant health

Quasi-Experimental Methods

행사명 : East Asia Regional Impact Evaluation Woksho

Information, knowledge and behavior : evaluating alternative methods of delivering school information to parents

Improving education outcomes by disseminating information to parents and thereby encouraging them to become more actively engaged in school oversight is attractive, since it can be done relatively cheaply. This study evaluates the impact of alternative approaches to disseminating information about a school grants program in Indonesia on parents' knowledge about the program in general, knowledge about the implementation of the program in their child's school, and participation in school activities related to the program as well as beyond it. Not all dissemination approaches yielded impacts, and different modes of dissemination conveyed different types of information best, resulting in different impacts on behavior. Specifically, the low-intensity approaches that were tried—sending a letter from the principal home with the child, or sending a colorful pamphlet home with the child—had no impact on knowledge or participation. On the other hand, holding a facilitated meeting with a range of school stakeholders or sending targeted text messages to parents did increase knowledge and participation. Facilitated meetings mostly increased overall knowledge and fostered a feeling of transparency on the part of parents, which resulted in greater participation in formal channels for providing feedback to the school. The text messages increased knowledge about specific aspects of the program, such as the grant amount, and tended to increase participation through informal channels

Improving technology adoption in agriculture through extension services: evidence from Uruguay

This article evaluates whether cost-sharing public interventions are successful in promoting agricultural technology uptake by small and medium farmers, and whether these changes can affect yields. Our article contributes to the debate by providing empirical evidence, which is scarce in the literature, from a programme offering extension services to fruit producers in Uruguay. Using a unique panel data set, we estimate a fixed effects model for the impact of extension services on technology adoption and yields. We find evidence that the programme increased density of plantation. Once we address small sample issues, we also find some evidence of impact on the adoption of improved varieties. However, we find no evidence of impact on yields for the period under study. Although this lack of effects on yields could be due to the limited time frame of the evaluation and does not rule out effects on other measures of productivity, it may also indicate that the practices promoted by the programme are insufficient to induce a detectable impact on productivity and, consequently, sustainable benefits for the farmers. The study, therefore, confirms the need of including the design of impact evaluations in the policy design in order to properly consider the timing of all the potential effects and produce conclusive findings and precise recommendations

Hommage à Robert Jammes

Né en 1927, Robert Jammes a été élève de l'École Normale Supérieure de la rue d'Ulm. Après quelques années passées dans les universités de Montpellier et de Grenoble, il s'est fixé à l'université de Toulouse-Le Mirail, où il a enseigné entre 1965 et 1987. Créateur et directeur d'une équipe de recherche associée au CNRS (LESO : Littérature Espagnole du Siècle d'Or), il a fondé en 1978 la revue Criticón, dont il continue d'assurer la direction, et a été, en 1985, à l'origine de l'Association internationale « Siècle d'Or ». Parmi les travaux de ce spécialiste de la poésie du Siècle d'Or, on retiendra : - ses Études sur l'œuvre poétique de don Luis de Góngora y Argote (1967), traduites en espagnol en 1987, sous le titre de La obra poética de Góngora ; - ses éditions des oeuvres de Luis de Góngora : Letrillas (édition critique française de 1963 ; édition espagnole de 1980) ; Las firmezas de Isabela (1984) ; Soledades (1994) ; - son anthologie pionnière de poèmes érotiques du Siècle d'Or, Floresta de poesías eróticas del Siglo de Oro, avec la collaboration de Pierre Alzieu et d'Yvan Lissorgues (édition française de 1975 ; édition espagnole de 1984, sous le titre de Poesía erótica del Siglo de Oro) ; - son élaboration d'outils destinés aux chercheurs et aux étudiants : glossaire, manuel de traduction, notes pour l'édition de textes du Siècle d'Or..