IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/wpa/wuwpdc/0504013.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

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

Author

Listed:
  • Howard White

    (OED, World Bank)

  • Edoardo Masset

    (OED, World Bank)

Abstract

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.

Suggested Citation

  • Howard White & Edoardo Masset, 2005. "Books, Buildings and Learning Outcomes: an impact evaluation of World Bank assistance to basic education in Ghana," Development and Comp Systems 0504013, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    • Handle: RePEc:wpa:wuwpdc:0504013
    Note: Type of Document - pdf; pages: 200
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://econwpa.ub.uni-muenchen.de/econ-wp/dev/papers/0504/0504013.pdf
    Download Restriction: no

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Lavy, V. & Strauss, J. & Thomas, D. & DeVreyer, P., 1995. "The Impact of the Quality of Health Care on Children's Nutrition and Survival in Ghana," Papers 106, World Bank - Living Standards Measurement.
    2. Francis Teal, 2001. "Education, incomes, poverty and inequality in Ghana in the 1990s," Economics Series Working Papers WPS/2001-21, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
    3. Francis Teal, 2001. "Education, incomes, poverty and inequality in Ghana in the 1990s," CSAE Working Paper Series 2001-21, Centre for the Study of African Economies, University of Oxford.
    4. Holmes, Jessica, 2003. "Measuring the determinants of school completion in Pakistan: analysis of censoring and selection bias," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 22(3), pages 249-264, June.
    5. Christopher Heady, 2000. "What is the Effect of Child Labour on Learning Achievement? Evidence from Ghana," Papers inwopa00/7, Innocenti Working Papers.
    6. King, Elizabeth M. & Lillard, Lee A., 1987. "Education policy and schooling attainment in Malaysia and the Philippines," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 6(2), pages 167-181, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Impact evaluation; education; Ghana; Africa;

    JEL classification:

    • O - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth
    • P - Economic Systems

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wpa:wuwpdc:0504013. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (EconWPA). General contact details of provider: https://econwpa.ub.uni-muenchen.de .

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service hosted by the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis . RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.