Related items
Showing items related by title, author, creator and subject.
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Secondary School Madrasas in Bangladesh : Incidence, Quality, and Implications for ReformThis report presents findings from the first ever comprehensive survey to document the incidence and quality of secondary madrasas in Bangladesh. Analysis also draws upon other publicly available administrative and household level datasets. Currently the authors have very little information on school quality in general due to no national learning assessment system and because schools from different streams are tested under different Boards. Thus it is always important to examine the quality of aided madrasas relative to aided secular schools. The report highlights new challenges: while gender equality in access has been achieved in both schools and madrasas, girls remain systematically disadvantaged in terms of learning outcomes. The female learning penalty remain is particularly pronounced in case of madrasas. Overall, the quality of mathematics and English learning is low in madrasas, but performance of students of mainstream schools is also unsatisfactory average quality remains poor across the range of rural institutions. Overall, this report represents an empirically grounded investigation into the hitherto undocumented changes Bangladesh has witnessed in the secondary madrasa school sector in the past two decades. Based on their analysis, the authors suggest a range of policy initiatives that cover the entire secondary education sector, not just the madarasa education. Given the wealth of data collected on secondary institutions and households during the survey, this report only represents the first of a series of rigorous empirical research and analysis which will be undertaken. It is hoped that the report will provide an impetus towards an evidence-based policy debate on madrasas and other critical issues in the education sector.
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Methodology for Measuring Distortions to Agricultural IncentivesThis paper outlines the methodological
 issues associated with the task of measuring that actual
 delivered direct protection or taxation to individual
 agricultural industries, as well as the direct protection or
 anti-protection to non-agricultural sectors. It begins with
 a guide to what elements in principle could be measured.
 There are two key purposes of the distortion estimates being
 generated by this project are: 1) to provide a long annual
 time series of indicators showing the extent to which price
 incentives faced by farmers and food consumers have been
 distorted directly and indirectly by own-government policies
 in all major developing, transition and high-income
 countries, and hence for the world as a whole; and 2) to
 attribute the price distortion estimates for each farm
 product to specific border or domestic policy measures, so
 they can serve as inputs into various types of partial and
 general equilibrium economic models for estimating the
 effects of those various policies on such things as national
 and international agricultural markets, farm value added,
 income inequality, poverty, and national, regional and
 global welfare.
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Pharmaceutical Reform : A Guide to
 Improving Performance and EquityThis publication, which is based on the
 unique methodology and tools developed for the World Bank
 Institute/Harvard School of Public Health Flagship Course on
 Health System Reform and Sustainable Financing, provides a
 powerful set of resources to help policy makers better
 navigate the complicated process of reforming pharmaceutical
 systems. Its problem solving approach complements technical
 resources and training curricula available on the discrete
 elements of a pharmaceutical sector. The application of the
 flagship approach to the pharmaceutical sector is both
 useful and timely. Ensuring the availability of medicines
 and the effective management of their procurement and
 distribution is central to the drive to achieve coverage and
 access to basic health care that is both universal and
 financially sustainable. Together, the methodology and case
 materials contained in this publication provide a rich
 resource from which policy makers in developing countries
 may draw to guide their efforts to meet these challenges.
 This book is designed to help participants gain a better
 understanding of all that goes on in the pharmaceutical
 sector. As noted above, it uses the flagship framework that
 we helped develop over the past decade. The essence of that
 approach is not to try to tell policy makers in detail what
 they should do. Rather it comprises a set of analytical
 tools that are combined into an overall, structured
 methodology for developing, adopting, and implementing
 reform proposals. The flagship framework also includes a
 comprehensive review of reform alternatives and a systematic
 review of their strengths and weaknesses in various
 situations. Throughout this book the authors have used the
 flagship framework to structure our analysis of
 pharmaceutical reform, continuously and explicitly applying
 its methods and concepts to the pharmaceutical sector. With
 a few minor exceptions, all the examples and all of the
 reform options come directly from pharmaceutical reform
 efforts around the world. The authors have also given
 specific attention to issues in pharmaceutical policy
 related to reproductive health.