Ratings for the Fourth Global Partnership for Education Project for Tajikistan were as follows: outcome was satisfactory, Bank performance was satisfactory, and monitoring and evaluation (M and E) quality was high. Some lessons learned included: sustained and continuous external funding over time, in a coordinated framework, and with full government commitment, can have a strong impact not only on results, but on institutional capacity building, as well. Government commitment and ownership, together with coordination among donors (when applicable) are fundamental for curriculum reform, and implementation requires advance planning and an adequate implementation period. On-the-ground implementation support that is continuous over time can be extremely effective, especially in a low capacity environment. Per capita funding for education can work without school autonomy, but when schools have autonomy in decisions on their budget allocation, per capita funding can have an important impact on school efficiency. Early learning centers (ELCs), or other forms of community-based early childhood education (ECE) programs, are a viable model to expanding preschool education, especially in a resource-constrained environment. Building good M and E in project, and working with government through implementation support to show the value and use of information obtained can help develop a solid culture of M and E in the country. (Tajikistan)
The Disease Control Priorities (DCP) series established in 1993 shares this philosophy and acts as a key resource for Ministers of Health and Finance, guiding them toward informed decisions about investing in health. The third edition of DCP rightly recognizes that good health is but one facet of human development and that health and education outcomes are forever intertwined. The Commission report makes clear that more education equates with better health outcomes. And approaching this reality from the other direction, this year’s volume of DCP shows that children who are in good health and appropriately nourished are more likely to participate in school and to learn while there. The Commission report raises the concept of progressive universalism or giving greatest priority to those children most at risk of being excluded from learning. Here, too, the alignment with DCP is clear as health strides are most apparent when directed to the poorest and sickest children, as well as girls. It is fitting that one of the Commission’s background papers appears as a chapter in this volume. A key message of this volume is that human development is a slow process and it takes two decades or 8,000 days for a human to develop physically and mentally. So the world needs to invest widely, deeply, and effectively across education, health, and all development sectors during childhood and adolescence. And while individuals may have 8,000 days to develop, there is a need to mobilize our resources today to secure their tomorrow. The current generation of young people will transition to adulthood in 2030, and it will be their contribution that will determine whether the world achieves the Sustainable Development Goals. (World)
Child stunting due to chronic malnutrition is a major problem in low- and middle-income countries due, in part, to inadequate nutrition-related practices and insufficient access to services. Limited budgets for nutritional interventions mean that available resources must be targeted in the most cost-effective manner to have the greatest impact. Quantitative tools can help guide budget allocation decisions. The Optima approach is an established framework to conduct resource allocation optimization analyses. The authors applied this approach to develop a new tool, ‘Optima Nutrition’, for conducting allocative efficiency analyses that address childhood stunting. At the core of the Optima approach is an epidemiological model for assessing the burden of disease; we use an adapted version of the Lives Saved Tool (LiST). Six nutritional interventions have been included in the first release of the tool: antenatal micronutrient supplementation, balanced energy-protein supplementation, exclusive breastfeeding promotion, promotion of improved infant and young child feeding (IYCF) practices, public provision of complementary foods, and vitamin A supplementation. To demonstrate the use of this tool, we applied it to evaluate the optimal allocation of resources in 7 districts in Bangladesh, using both publicly available data (such as through DHS) and data from a complementary costing study. Optima Nutrition can be used to estimate how to target resources to improve nutrition outcomes. Specifically, for the Bangladesh example, despite only limited nutrition-related funding available (an estimated dollar 0.75 per person in need per year), even without any extra resources, better targeting of investments in nutrition programming could increase the cumulative number of children living without stunting by 1.3 million (an extra 5 percent) by 2030 compared to the current resource allocation. To minimize stunting, priority interventions should include promotion of improved IYCF practices as well as vitamin A supplementation. Once these programs are adequately funded, the public provision of complementary foods should be funded as the next priority. Programmatic efforts should give greatest emphasis to the regions of Dhaka and Chittagong, which have the greatest number of stunted children. A resource optimization tool can provide important guidance for targeting nutrition investments to achieve greater impact. (World)
The development objective of the Investing in Nutrition and Early Years Program for Results for Indonesia is to increase simultaneous utilization of nutrition interventions by 1,000-day households in priority districts. Some of the negative impacts and mitigation measures include: (1) ensuring adequate capacity of safe handling and disposal of medical and pharmaceutical waste in primary health care (PHC) is the focus of other relevant Government of Indonesia (GOI) program; (2) ensuring that new sanitation installations have the minimum safe distance between latrines and water sources should be maintained as per standard practice; (3) the use of human development worker (HDW) and social mapping exercise, if well trained, should ensure the participation of all groups within the village; (4) to effectively address child stunting and malnutrition, the review of literature, including evidence from Indonesia, suggests the need to combine nutrition‐ specific interventions with measures for empowerment of women and men’s participation; (5) the village convergence scorecard is presented as the system though which feedback and complaints can be identified, handled, and monitored; and (6) capacity can be strengthened through training and ensuring that the information, education, and communication activities associates with vaccination campaigns inform people of their rights. (Indonesia)
The effect of demographics on poverty measurement based on per capita consumption is well known. The size and composition of the household can affect the well-being of everyone in the household, with respect to total consumption within that household. Failure to address this issue may often lead to an underestimation or overestimation of poverty, especially for children. Many studies have tried to address the issue, using the generic approach of equivalence scales. However, the choice of scale is controversial and may lead to comparability problems between countries because of the different demographic structures and choice of the pivot household for establishing the per capita poverty line. Based on the World Bank's African poverty database, this study estimates poverty rates for African children using the new international poverty line of $1.90 a day defined in terms of 2011 purchasing power parity. The equivalence scales approach (Food and Agriculture Organization/World Health Organization) is used with the adjustment suggested by Deaton after the identification of the pivot household, which is defined as the household whose per capita consumption is around the international poverty line. This study shows that taking account of demographics results in downward adjustments of child poverty, adult poverty, and child-adult poverty gaps. Moreover, breakdowns by country show that poverty may vary significantly depending on demographics, which may cause some reranking when comparing poverty between African countries. Finally, sensitivity analyses reveal that child poverty is not sensitive to the child discount factor, unlike adult poverty, but, overall, taking account of demographics is helpful for better identifying poor children. (Africa)
This report examines one of the most influential forces in any society, one that can contribute both to bridging differences or to deepening divides among people: skills. The skills that people have when they enter the workforce and that they can build on later in their work life determine to a large extent their ability to thrive, to raise families, and to feel vested in their country’s economic and political future. Skills gaps and their formation, mirror and exacerbate social divides as well. In the European Union (EU), this issue has new urgency: changes in the labor market have made human capital an increasingly important divider between those how thrive on the labor market and those who not. Importantly, education systems in the EU are not becoming more successful in ensuring that all students acquire the skills needed. This report takes an in-depth look at socioeconomic disparities in educational opportunity and achievement, to aid policymakers in identifying where and how changes can be made to bring more educational equity, ultimately, into the future employment and well-being of Europe’s more vulnerable populations. This report explores the extent to which education systems across the EU succeed in providing equal opportunities for all Europeans to build the relevant foundational skills required to thrive in the 21st century economies. The World Development Report 2018, Learning, showed there is a learning crisis around the world. Today, more children are in school than ever before, but there are still millions of children who are not learning, 60 percent of primary school children in developing countries still fail to meet minimum proficiency. Europe is no exception to this learning crisis. While European countries have much higher levels of learning among their students than many other countries, many education systems across Europe have become less successful in ensuring that all students acquire the skills that they need. In other words, just when skills became more important, schools became worse–or at least not any better-at providing equal opportunities to developing them. The WDR 2018 states that schooling without learning is not just a wasted opportunity, but also a great injustice. This report shows that the big education quality challenge in Europe is fundamentally one of equity. Education poverty and inequality have widened in many countries in Europe over the last 15 years. (Europe and Central Asia)
The development objectives of the Education Quality Reform in Afghanistan Project are: to increase equitable access to primary and secondary education in selected lagging provinces, especially for girls, and to improve learning conditions in the education sector in Afghanistan. Some of the negative impacts and mitigation measures include: proper drainage outlets must be installed connected to main sewer system or local drainage; program construction activities so that the area of exposed soil is minimized during times of the year when the potential for erosion is high, for example during summer when intense rainstorms are common; cultivating the cut surface will increase infiltration of rainfall and decrease the velocity of water across the slope during rain and therefore reduce erosion; stabilize the site and install and maintain erosion controls so that they remain effective during any pause in construction; keep vehicles to well-defined haul roads, mark areas for preservation and instruct workers to honor those areas; keep haul roads off sloping terrain wherever practical; protection of most susceptible soil surfaces with mulch; protection of drainage channels with berms, straw or fabric barriers; installation of sedimentation basins, seeding or planting of erodible surfaces as soon as possible; ensure that smooth surfaces are deep ripped and left rough and cloddy to reduce the wind velocity at the soil surface; and construct wind fences if this is appropriate for the site. (Afghanistan)
The development objective of Social and Economic Inclusion Project for Kenya is to enhance access of poor and vulnerable to integrated social and economic inclusion as well as shock-responsive social protection. some of the negative impacts include: (i) fragile and hazardous location; (ii) lack of access to resources and services; (iii) disintegration of social patterns; (iv) disinheritance of land and other livelihood related resources; (v) exclusion from the political and socioeconomic activities of the country; (vi) lack of access to information and knowledge; (vii) lack of public awareness; and (viii) limited access to political power and representation. Some of the mitigation measures include: (i) limited access to political power and representation; (ii) training and civic education of the recruited VMG groups should be undertaken to enhance understanding of their rights and entitlements; (iii) women and youth groups recruited and trained for economic inclusion activities should be disclosed and displayed at the Assistant Chief’s office; and (iv) ensure that barriers to inclusion are addressed for eligible population, including minority groups. (Kenya)
Senegal has a reputation for having one of the most effective and far-reaching nutritionservice delivery systems in Africa. Chronic malnutrition has dropped to less than 20 percent, oneof the lowest in Sub-Saharan Africa. The reduction in stunting in particular has been deemed a success in Senegal with the prevalence of child stunting one of the lowest in Sub-Saharan Africa in absolute terms (Nene 2017). This success has at least in part been attributed to broad-based government commitment to nutrition, which has grown from US$0.3 million per year in 2002 to US$5.7 million per year in 2015, increasing from approximately 0.02 percent to 0.12 percent of the national budget. Yet concerns remain regarding whether the level of government support for nutrition is sufficient and the degree to which nutrition has been as effectively “mainstreamed” across major line ministries, such as agriculture, education, water and sanitation, socialprotection and health, to support both nutrition-specific and nutrition-sensitive interventions. Moreover, the nutrition field as a whole is characterized by a myriad of actors (international donors, NGOs, and technical support agencies) whose interventions are not well coordinated, leading to duplications of effort and inefficiencies in the provision of services. A series ofexternal shocks, including food shortages stemming from drought, the global financial crisis, and the instability of prices for local foodstuffs since 2007, has revealed the continued need for additional investment in nutrition and better intersectoral coordination of activities to counter cyclical attention to nutrition and a predominant focus on food insufficiency rather than abroader focus on nutrition. To this end, the government of Senegal, through the CLM, is in the process of drafting the new PSMN to develop a reform agenda for the sector. The PSMN will lay out a framework and timeline for the development of a nutrition financing strategy that will requirespecific analysis of the sector spending and financial basis, linking it to the coverage and quality of nutrition services and assessing the contribution of different sectors and actors to the budget. As part of the Analysis & Perspective: 15 Years of Experience in the Development of Nutrition Policy in Senegal series, the World Bank commissioned this report to elaborate the specific political challenges to and opportunities for further raising the profile ofnutrition on the government’s agenda and secure a sustainable effort to reduce maternal and child malnutrition. The nutrition agenda is often prone to political economy challenges when it competes for government support, as the impact of nutritional intervention is neither immediate nor tangible. Though the benefits of proper nutrition are life-long and are foundational to proper growth and development, nutrition can fall by the wayside in policymakers’ inevitably shorter-termoutlook. With this in mind, the objective of this report was to identify the policy and political levers that can be used to foster government leadership and galvanize intersectoral coordination that mainstreams nutrition into government policies and programs and effectively, efficiently, and sustainably delivers nutrition interventions in Senegal. (Senegal)
The development objective of the Women's Economic Empowerment Rural Development Project is to increase social and economic empowerment of poor rural women in selected communities of Afghanistan. Some of the negative impacts are include: (i) production or trade in any product or activity deemed illegal under host country laws or regulations or international conventions and agreements; (ii) investments detrimental to the environment; (iii) any activity on land that is considered dangerous due to security hazards or the presence of unexploded ordnance (mines, bombs); (iv) child labour should be discouraged as much as possible and where children are asked to contribute to the household income, assurance must be made that schooling and child health is not adversely affected; (v) crop and soil biocides (pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, miticides) delivered manually or with machinery that are shown to have toxic or noxious effects on humans (soaps; diatomaceous earth; and non-toxic applications may be used after hazard training); (vi) production or trade in pharmaceuticals and pesticides/ herbicides subject to international phase outs or bans; (vii) fishing in the marine environment using electric shocks and explosive materials; (viii) production or trade in wood or other forestry products from unmanaged forests including purchase of logging equipment (e.g. chainsaws) for use in cutting forest; Some of the mitigation measures are include: (i) education and awareness for related disease vectors; (ii) safe water sedimentation basins before disposal in channels, well away from springs and water storage areas; (iii) traps will be provided at fuelling points to prevent water contamination; (iv) identification of spoil disposal areas in consultation with locals, preferably in waste lands; (v) plan for tree plantations & landscaping; (vi) preventive and precautionary measures against disease spread; (vii) careful stacking of top soil and its re-application after work completion; (viii) fuel storage and refuelling will be kept away from water channels; (ix) all construction camps will be located away from built-up areas, in consultation with local; (x) trees requiring removal will be paint-marked; (xi) All construction machinery and equipment will be stationed in designated areas to prevent vegetation compaction. (Afghanistan)
