Howard White

Books, Buildings and Learning Outcomes: an impact evaluation of World Bank assistance to basic education in Ghana

This paper demonstrates that the delivery of hardware inputs to Ghana’s basic education system – building classrooms and supplying textbooks – has had a substantial impact on higher enrollments and better learning outcomes. The Bank’s support for school building has been a major factor behind Ghana being on track to achieve the Millennium Development Goal of Universal Primary Education. The context for these improvements was a government strongly committed to implementing a program of educational reform that refocused government resources away from secondary and tertiary education and onto the basic sector. But the Bank’s support played a critical role in allowing the government to carry out its plans. Partly because of increased reliance on community contributions, a gap is opening up between the majority of schools and those in poorer communities, particularly in off-road rural areas. Facilities in schools in poorer areas are usually inferior and teacher absenteeism high, so that little learning can take place. Special attention needs to be paid to these least-privileged schools if Ghana is to remain on track to meet the education MDG.

Theory-Based Evaluation: The Case of Social Funds:

The theory-based evaluation approach documents the assumptions implicit in program design and points to the data required to test these assumptions. Collecting and analyzing such data through quantitative and qualitative techniques enhances understanding of the validity of the assumptions and the relevance of key program processes. This article lays out the application of a theory-based approach to the evaluation of social fund projects, with a focus on the issues of subproject sustainability and institutional development impact. It shows the processes at work especially at the community level and tests the assumptions underlying social fund subproject sustainability and institutional development impact.

Social funds : assessing effectiveness

This study is the first independent evaluation of social fund projects by OED. It reviews the development effectiveness of social fund projects and draws implications for future Bank support to them. It responds to the interest of the World Banks Board of Executive Directors for an independent evaluation of this fast-expanding portfolio. The review is based on an examination of existing data and literature, and brings to bear new information relating to the participatory process in social fund projects and their institutional development impacts at the government, nongovernment, and community levels. The report finds that social fund projects have been highly effective in delivering small-scale infrastructure, but much less so in achieving consistently positive and significant improvements in outcomes and welfare impacts. While social fund projects have delivered slightly more than proportional benefits to the poor and the poorest, there have also been a significant number of non-poor beneficiaries. Most social fund beneficiaries are satisfied with the financed subprojects, but the greatest community problems have not necessarily been addressed and there is no assurance that the selected subprojects ensure the highest net benefits to the community.

Tackling childhood undernutrition

www.thelancet.com Vol 371 February 16, 2008 539 increased the exsorption of intravenous paracetamol and carbamazepine (7% and 3% of the dose within 3·5 h, respectively). The yield in the intestinal lumen was higher with physiological bile fl ow (20% and 15%, respectively). These experiments highlight the fact that the decrease in enterohepatic circulation of a drug might be more important than the trapping of poisons from the vascular–enteric secretion. From this, one might expect that oleander glycosides would be particularly amenable to trapping by multidose activated charcoal during enterohepatic circulation. Unfortunately, important pharmacokinetic and binding data for activated charcoal are lacking, but the analysis of a subgroup with oleander poisoning in Eddleston and colleagues’ earlier study indicated no diff erences in the 24-h area under the curve for oleander cardenolids in the three study groups. Similarly, there is no fi rm evidence that multidose activated charcoal improves clinical outcomes in poisonings with other cardiac glycosides. With anticholinesterase pesticide formulations, there is another concern: how do the organic solvents (mostly xylene) and emulsifi ers aff ect the adsorption charac teristics of the pesticides to activated charcoal? There are only a few in-vitro data to show that binding characteristics are aff ected by solvents and detergents. The results of Eddleston and colleagues’ study are relevant for the setting of a developing country, where most of these specifi c poisonings occur. This peculiarity should be kept in mind and not uncritically translated to regions with a diff erent spectrum of poisons, resources of antidotes, intensive care units, and medical staff . There is an obvious need for robust toxicokinetic studies to select those poisons that are potentially amenable to multidose activated charcoal. Clinical science should meet basic science and vice versa. *Peter Eyer, Florian Eyer Walther Straub Institute of Pharmacology and Toxicology, University of Munich, Munich, D-80336, Germany (PE); and Toxicological Department of 2nd Medical Clinic, Technical University, Munich, Germany (FE) peter.eyer@lrz.uni-muenchen.de

An impact evaluation of India's second and third Andhra Pradesh irrigation projects : a case of poverty reduction with low economic returns

Irrigation has made a major contribution to poverty reduction in the past decades, enabling higher yields and better nutrition. Despite these achievements, large-scale irrigation schemes have usually yielded low returns and attracted negative publicity because of their adverse environmental and social impacts. This study analyzes these issues through an impact evaluation of Indias Second and Third Andhra Pradesh Irrigation Projects (AP II and AP III).

Assessing Impact with Limited Outcome Data: Experience from a Theory-Based Approach to the Evaluation of Social Funds

Social fund agencies channel resources to small-scale subprojects1 proposed by central or local governments, NGOs, or community groups and screened against eligibility criteria. Unlike a typical project implementation unit, social fund agencies usually have a high degree of independence from line ministries and sectoral budgets and make decisions on allocation of resources among alternative investments—both across and within sectors. The term “social fund projects” refers to World Bank support to social fund agencies and their activities. The distinguishing characteristic of social fund projects compared to other World Bank projects is that they formally invite subproject proposals from local stakeholders rather than specifying the project components at design. Box 5.1 summarizes the origin and evolution of social funds and their key characteristics, and discusses some evaluation challenges.