Kevin Macdonald

School autonomy and accountability in Thailand: a systems approach for assessing policy intent and implementation

There is a consensus on the need for Thailand to reform its education system to be able to compete with other high performing countries in the region. In terms of learning outcomes, the most recent evidence from the Programme for International Student Assessment shows little improvement over time. This paper uses the World Banks Systems Approach for Better Education Results (SABER) approach in Thailand to contrast policy intent and policy implementation in school autonomy and accountability. The policy implementation data were obtained from a survey of school principals of the schools that participated in the Programme for International Student Assessment and merged the data sets. First, the study analyzes the gap between policy intent and policy implementation. Then it examines the effect of the gaps on various schooling outcomes while controlling for covariates. The analysis finds significant differences between the Systems Approach for Better Education Results indicators of policy intent and policy implementation in all areas assessed by the indicators. Schools in Thailand exercise more flexibility in their personnel management in practice than what is intended by policy; student assessments need to address issues of content, reliability, and validity and school accountability needs to improve the interpretation of student assessments to make schools more accountable. There is a positive association between the Programme for International Student Assessment scores and school autonomy and accountability.

A randomized evaluation of a low-cost and highly scripted teaching method to improve basic early grade reading skills in Papua New Guinea

Early grade literacy skills are crucial for childrens future education and ultimately their contribution to human capital formation and economic development. A significant challenge in development is identifying low-cost interventions to improve early literacy skills in contexts characterized by varying teacher ability and severe budget constraints. This paper evaluates the impact of Papua New Guineas randomized Reading Booster Programme, which was conducted in Madang and Western Highlands Province in 2013 and 2014, respectively. The program provided teachers with training on a highly structured teaching method that they could apply one hour per day within the teaching time allocated to reading. Using the randomized assignment of schools into the program, the paper shows that it had a substantial impact on the reading skills targeted by the program for third grade students, ranging from 0.6 to 0.7 standard deviation. Large effects on other reading skills were found for girls but not boys. The programs cost per student was approximately US

Automation and labor market outcomes : the pivotal role of high-quality education

60.

Pedagogy versus school readiness : the impact of a randomized reading instruction intervention and community-based playgroup intervention on early grade reading outcomes in Tonga

Automation will be a boon or a catastrophe depending on whom you listen to. This paper proposes an overlapping-generations model with endogenous school choice in which the quality of a countrys education system determines how well skill supply can respond to increased demand from automation and subsequently whether automation will be beneficial or detrimental. In this sense, education quality in the model offers a bridge between the optimistic and pessimistic perspectives on automation. In testing the models assumptions, the paper finds evidence that educational attainment, cognitive skills, and select noncognitive skills are associated with avoiding automation-prone occupations. Consistent with the models predictions, census data indicate that countries have historically relied most on these types of occupations at middle-income status. The model and empirical findings suggest that it is middle-income countries that are most vulnerable to automation if their education systems are unable to affect cognitive and noncognitive skills sufficiently. As a result, automation may herald a much different growth model for developing countries: one in which developing these skills is central.

Generating and Interpreting Output Tables and Graphs

: Identifying cost-effective interventions to improve early literacy is vital to developing countries, given the importance of early literacy for an individuals future education outcomes and subsequent human capital formation. This paper presents the impact on early grade reading outcomes of two low-cost randomized interventions in Tonga: a reading instruction intervention and a community play-based activity intervention. The first intervention aims to improve early grade reading outcomes specifically; estimated impacts are approximately 0.3 standard deviation, although in some reading domains impacts are substantial, ranging from 0.6 to 0.7 standard deviation. The second intervention aims to improve school readiness and subsequently early grade reading outcomes, by providing communities with support to establish a community play-based activity. Using an instrumental variables approach, the play-based activity demonstrates positive impacts of around 0.2 standard deviation in many but not all reading domains. For the domains where a statistically significant impact is measured, the community play-based activity intervention is as at least as cost effective as the reading instruction intervention. The play-based activity intervention is shown to improve test scores by 0.21 to 0.47 standard deviation per US

Within-School Tracking in South Korea: An Analysis Using PISA 2003

100, depending on the reading test domain. The reading instruction intervention improves test scores by 0.08 to 0.34 standard deviation per US

School Autonomy and Accountability

100. These findings contribute further evidence on the effectiveness of reading instruction interventions, and possibly the first estimates of the impact of play group–type interventions on primary school reading outcomes.

PV: Stata module to perform estimation with plausible values

This chapter provides detailed descriptions of the ADePT Edu output. It also presents the formulas for calculating the various indicators and explains how to interpret the indicators. ADePT Edu produces two types of tables, which appear as formatted Excel spreadsheets.1 Output information tables include tables of contents, lists of errors and warnings, and variable settings. Indicator tables provide information on school participation, school progression, school attainment, education expenditures, and labor market outcomes (table 4.1). Indicators are disaggregated by the following characteristics:

School autonomy and accountability in Thailand: Does the gap between policy intent and implementation matter?

The 2003 PISA Korea sample is used to examine the association between within-school ability tracking and mathematics achievement. Estimates of a variety of econometric models reveal that tracking is positively associated with mathematics achievement among females and that this association declines for higher achieving females. No evidence of an association between males and tracking is detected. While this association for females cannot be interpreted as a causal effect, the presence of a measurable association indicates the need for further research on tracking in Korea with a particular focus on gender differences.