Making Schools Work

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A new World Bank book entitled Making Schools Work focuses on the threats to education quality that cannot be explained by lack of resources. It reviews a decade of research on how to improve school performance in developing countries and argues that the weak accountability that schools and teachers have to supervisors, parents and students is a major cause of low quality and inequitable public schools. It then examines impact evaluations carried out around the world and uses the findings to develop practical guidance for policy makers.

The book includes chapters on three key types of reforms: 1) using information to increase accountability, 2) improving school-based management, and 3) teacher incentives (linking pay and/or tenure to performance). It concludes with a discussion of possible complementarities among the reforms, issues in scaling up reform initiatives, and the political economy of reform.

The book is available online here.