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Research universities enable students to have a unique learning environment and other experiences. This article aims to analyze student engagement in one research university in Brazil, the effects of student socioeconomic and academic characteristics and their associations with university structures (curriculum), and student trajectories. The data comes from the Student Experience in the Research University, an international survey administered in 2012 at the University of Campinas and longitudinal academic registers. The study used both Principal Component Analysis and also Multiple Linear Regression Models. Five modes of engagement were found: two related to curricular engagement (engagement with faculty and engagement outside the classroom), social and leisure engagement, curricular disengagement and co-curricular engagement. The main effects are associated with the disciplines. Regarding student trajectories, there was a negative association between academic engagement and dropout students and those still enrolled seven years after the survey application. The results align with other studies that associate disciplines with student engagement and student engagement with student success.

Principals (policy makers) have debated the progress in U.S. student performance for a half century or more. Informing these conversations, survey agents have administered seven million psychometrically linked tests in math and reading in 160 waves to national probability samples of selected cohorts born between 1954 and 2007. This study is the first to assess consistency of results by agency. We find results vary by agent, but consistent with Flynn effects, gains are larger in math than reading, except for the most recent period. Non-whites progress at a faster pace. Socio-economically disadvantaged white, black, and Hispanic students make greater progress when tested in elementary school, but that advantage attenuates and reverses itself as students age. We discuss potential moderators.

Though schools do not track in Brazil, I find that black/white classroom segregation in Brazil is greater than recent estimates from North Carolina high schools (Clotfelter et al., 2020). How does race-based classroom segregation occur without tracking, and in a supposed "racial paradise," no less? Using national, student-level data spanning from 2011 to 2017, I describe racial classroom segregation among Brazilian 5th and 9th graders and assess potential mechanisms identified in the literature. The findings are consistent with a segregation by chance regime in which (1) schools typically assign students to classrooms arbitrarily, producing initial assignments that are sometimes segregated by chance, and (2) schools choose to move forward with the racially segregated "draws" rather than make race-conscious adjustments.

Public spending on education has increased significantly in Latin America over the last several decades. Yet, the question remains as to whether greater spending translates into a more equitable distribution of resources. We address this issue by measuring inequality in per-pupil spending between regions of varying socioeconomic status (SES) within five different countries: Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru. The results show that while Brazil's funding gap has narrowed over time, this federal nation has the widest socioeconomic spending divide, due to large inequalities in local revenues between high and low SES regions. School funding in Colombia has become more regressive over time, though its gap is half the size of Brazil's. Meanwhile, the distribution of school funding in Peru has changed, shifting from regressive (benefiting the richest regions) to progressive (benefiting the poorest regions). Education spending in Chile and in Ecuador have instead been consistently progressive. However, while the progressiveness of funding in Ecuador is driven by transfers targeting disadvantaged rural areas, the funding formulas in Chile address socioeconomic inequalities beyond the rural-urban gap.

As a result of its direct link to the labour market, technical and vocational education and training (TVET) plays an important role in equipping the modern workforce with in-demand skills. This discussion paper aims to inspire the introduction of entrepreneurial learning in TVET towards a fully mainstreamed approach, whereby entrepreneurial learning is integrated into the role, function and delivery of TVET systems for the benefit of all learners. The paper provides insight into the different approaches to mainstreaming entrepreneurial learning and illustrates the contribution of the key pillars that make up the entrepreneurial learning ecosystem. This is supported by a series of practical examples from TVET systems around the world, illustrating how entrepreneurial learning is being transformed into reality by governments, TVET systems, communities, networks, institutions, teachers, trainers and TVET learners. This paper explores five elements of the entrepreneurial learning ecosystem: (1) Developing policy for entrepreneurial learning; (2) Curricula and pedagogies; (3) Supporting teachers and trainers; (4) Learning modes other than formal curricula; and (5) Career paths and start-ups.

Affirmative action in higher education can lead to mismatch, where students admitted through preferential treatment struggle academically due to inadequate preparation before college. Although some students may face initial challenges, by providing access to quality education for talented individuals who might have otherwise been overlooked due to systemic disadvantages, these programs may enable students to bridge the gap and catch up to their peers. In this study, we examine the effects of a quota-type affirmative action policy on gaps in college outcomes between potential beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries. Using comprehensive administrative data from a leading Brazilian university which implemented affirmative action in 2005, we find that compared to their non-quota peers, potential quota beneficiaries are less likely to progress smoothly through college and less likely to graduate, a result that is mostly driven by those who would not be admitted to the university otherwise. Notably, however, most of these differences shrink as the students progress through college, suggesting a catch-up effect between those groups. While potential quota students initially face challenges, resulting in a reduced course load in their early college years, they compensate by taking more credits in later years to ultimately graduate. [Additional funding for this report was provided by the Heinz College at Carnegie Mellon University, the Federal University of Bahia (UFBA), and the World Institute for Development Economics Research (UNU-WIDER).]

How do labor income shocks affect household investment in upper secondary and tertiary schooling? Using longitudinal data from 2005-15 for Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico, this paper explores the effect of a negative household income shock on the enrollment status of youth ages 15 to 25. The findings suggest that negative income shocks significantly increase the likelihood that students in upper secondary and tertiary school exit school in Argentina and Brazil, but not in Mexico. For the three countries, the analysis finds evidence that youth who drop out due to a household income shock have worse employment outcomes than similar youth who exit school without a household income shock. Differences in labor markets and safety net programs likely play an important role in the decision to exit school as well as the employment outcomes of those who exit across these three countries.

The global spread of COVID-19 has led to unprecedented disruptions in schooling around the world that have animated increased interest among policymakers, educators, researchers and the general public in knowing about how education systems have responded to the pandemic and how students' learning experiences have changed. The PISA Global Crises Module was developed to address this need. 62 student questionnaire items (grouped into 11 questions) and 68 school questionnaire items (grouped into 14 questions) were developed following a process that involved input from leading questionnaire development experts, PISA National Centres, as well as small-scale cognitive interview studies in three countries. While all countries were affected by the pandemic in some way, the module seeks to illuminate differential effects on student learning and well-being, and the degree of interruption or changes to education across different education systems. Governing bodies, organisations and researchers can use the instruments and the descriptions of the underlying constructs for adaptation and broader implementation.

The worldwide school closures in early 2020 led to losses in learning that will not easily be made up for even if schools quickly return to their prior performance levels. These losses will have lasting economic impacts both on the affected students and on each nation unless they are effectively remediated. While the precise learning losses are not yet known, existing research suggests that the students in grades 1-12 affected by the closures might expect some 3 percent lower income over their entire lifetimes. For nations, the lower long-term growth related to such losses might yield an average of 1.5 percent lower annual GDP for the remainder of the century. These economic losses would grow if schools are unable to re-start quickly. The economic losses will be more deeply felt by disadvantaged students. All indications are that students whose families are less able to support out-of-school learning will face larger learning losses than their more advantaged peers, which in turn will translate into deeper losses of lifetime earnings. The present value of the economic losses to nations reach huge proportions. Just returning schools to where they were in 2019 will not avoid such losses. Only making them better can. While a variety of approaches might be attempted, existing research indicates that close attention to the modified re-opening of schools offers strategies that could ameliorate the losses. Specifically, with the expected increase in video-based instruction, matching the skills of the teaching force to the new range of tasks and activities could quickly move schools to heightened performance. Additionally, because the prior disruptions are likely to increase the variations in learning levels within individual classrooms, pivoting to more individualised instruction could leave all students better off as schools resume. As schools move to re-establish their programmes even as the pandemic continues, it is natural to focus considerable attention on the mechanics and logistics of safe re-opening. But the long-term economic impacts also require serious attention, because the losses already suffered demand more than the best of currently considered re-opening approaches.

Are teachers and principals aligned in their perceptions of the core components of the theory of Leadership for Learning across countries, or are there subgroups of schools in which there is misalignment? The purpose of this study is to examine the extent to which a congruency-typology model of leadership for learning is distributed across countries/economies using the TALIS 2018 dataset through examining the interaction of significantly different subgroups of teacher and principal responders through using multilevel latent class analysis (LCA) with a cross-level interaction. I analyse data from lower secondary schools of n=152 635 teachers in 9 079 schools and their principals across 47 countries/economies. Currently in the research literature on school leadership, leadership for learning has emerged as a framework to bring together managerial, transformational, distributed, and instructional leadership. Yet little is known about leadership for learning across national contexts. This study 1) maps the TALIS 2018 survey items to the current literature and surveys for leadership for learning, 2) then details the methods and analysis framework to examine if there are multiple significantly different types of teachers, principals, and schools from a leadership for learning theory framework. The final model 3) identifies a three-group teacher typology and a three-group principal typology, linking these types to school context, covariates, as well as teacher and principal training and experience. Results relate directly to the intersection of research, policy, and practice for training and capacity of school leaders across 47 countries/economies globally.

Short-cycle higher education programs (SCPs) can play a central role in skill development and higher education expansion, yet their quality varies greatly within and among countries. In this paper we explore the relationship between programs' practices and inputs (quality determinants) and student academic and labor market outcomes. We design and conduct a novel survey to collect program-level information on quality determinants and average outcomes for Brazil, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, and Peru. Categories of quality determinants include training and curriculum, infrastructure, faculty, link with productive sector, costs and funding, and other practices on student admission and institutional governance. We also collect administrative, student-level data on higher education and formal employment for SCP students in Brazil and Ecuador and match it to survey data. Using machine learning methods, we select the quality determinants that predict outcomes at the program and student levels. Estimates indicate that some quality determinants may favor academic and labor market outcomes while others may hinder them. Two practices predict improvements in all labor market outcomes in Brazil and Ecuador--teaching numerical competencies and providing job market information--and one practice--teaching numerical competencies--additionally predicts improvements in labor market outcomes for all survey countries. Since quality determinants account for 20-40 percent of the explained variation in student-level outcomes, estimates indicate a role for quality determinants to shrink the quality gap among programs. These findings have implications for the design and replication of high-quality SCPs, their regulation, and the development of information systems.

For-profit colleges and universities in the US have been growing at a staggering pace in enrollment, in profits, and in the corporate value of those traded on the New York Stock Exchange. From 2000 to 2010, the sector grew by some 235 percent in enrollment, increasing its market share from 3 to 9.1 percent of all tertiary enrolled students. What accounts for this rapid growth in the For-Profit (FP) sector in the US? How will such growth influence educational opportunity and degree attainment rates in a country that first pioneered a mass higher education built largely around expanding public colleges and universities? As discussed in the following essay, there are specific characteristics of the FP sector that are peculiar to the US; others reflect global trends largely seen in developing economies. Simply put, in the US as in other parts of the world, the FP sector is a modern feature of changing market dynamics related to demand and supply--or the lack thereof. As discussed in this essay, the current US experience is a version of what I call the "Brazilian Effect": when public higher education cannot keep pace with growing public demand for access and programs, governments often allow FP's to rush in and help fill the gap, becoming a much larger and sometimes dominant provider. This is the pattern in many developing economies such as Brazil where some 50 percent of student enrollment is in profit-like private institutions also found in Korea, Poland and many other parts of the world. Despite concerns about the economic model of For-Profits which rely heavily on taxpayer funds, their low degree completion rates, the quality of those degrees, their high tuition and fee levels, the high levels of debt and poor employment record of graduates, and new federal regulations and a series of lawsuits, my prediction is that the FP sector will continue to grow over the long-term not so much because it meets societal demands for diverse forms of higher education, but because of the inability of the public sector to return to the levels of public subsidies and program growth they had in the past--the Brazilian Effect. The result now, and in the future, is a kind of policy default: the future tertiary market will not be the result of a well thought out policy at the national or state levels, but a quasi-free market result that will foster lower quality providers and fail to meet national goals for increasing the educational attainment level of Americans. As this paper discusses, higher education policy is about broad issues of socioeconomic mobility and economic competitiveness, but it is also about money, big business, and political influence. (Contains 4 figures and 2 tables.)

This paper describes important issues in the promotion of the development of children 0 to 6 years of age in Brazil, particularly in education, health, children's rights and public policy. Brazil exhibits tremendous disparities and some of the worst welfare indicators in Latin America. Much of the population faces poverty, limited educational opportunities, and inequitable access to services and basic protections. The youngest children are disproportionately affected. Indicators of malnutrition remain high. Despite the efforts of dedicated teachers and officials, the public education system is not providing an adequate foundation so that children from low-income families may one day rise out of poverty. Education has been a key area of public policy under several government administrations, but early childhood development has not been underscored. Nonetheless, there are reasons for optimism. This paper includes numerous examples of good practice in early childhood education in Brazil, including children's participation, progressive pedagogies that build on local cultures and well-designed, publicly funded early childhood education strategies. (Contains 4 figures and 26 footnotes.)

It is estimated that approximately 3 million students are enrolled as international students, and it is possible to project that this number may reach more than 7 million by 2025. As global demand exceeds the supply, competition is building for the best of these students. Some countries (or regions) clearly envisage the opportunity this represents and have been strongly stimulating student mobility. There is a race for "brains", be it for professors at the end of their careers looking for new professional opportunities and/or the opportunity to return to their native countries, or for researchers at the beginning of their careers, looking for a place that might offer them a better future, or even for students, who seek more appealing alternatives. How will Brazil fare in this competition for talent? If it is to internationalize its higher education study programs, Brazil must deal with a number of practical problems, including a lack of specific policies and guidelines. Bureaucracy, for instance, is one major problem. A foreigner who comes to live in Brazil faces many obstacles, mainly due to the bureaucracy involved in everything from getting a Visa through the Federal Police office, to opening up a bank account, renting an apartment, registering at school, amongst many other processes and regulations that make it difficult for anyone to come and live in Brazil. One rarely finds a course offered in English or Spanish in a Brazilian university and the selection of faculty are normally held in Portuguese. Currently, there are no plans or projects at either the federal or state level, to address these obstacles. This should be a major concern to all who hold positions of responsibility in the educational process, as Brazil is not keeping pace with higher education reforms found globally. The internationalization movement is growing, and Brazil must actively seek reforms to keep pace with economic competitors.

Until recently, Higher education (HE) in Brazil had been, identified with colleges and universities running traditional academic undergraduate programs, with expected graduation time of 4 years or more. The universities in the state of Sao Paulo are at the top of international rankings among Brazilian HEIs, accounting for about half of all indexed research done in Brazil and responsible for 40% of all PhD degrees granted in the country. They have a total enrolment of almost 200,000 students, about 1/3 of those in graduate programs. However, by 2000, with pressure for expansion of the HE system in Brazil and in Sao Paulo increasing, it became clear that the singular model of the research-oriented HE institution was no longer a viable one to meet enrollment demand and labor needs. In 2001, Sao Paulo's state government initiated its first attempt at a "Master Plan" focused on how to expand its network of Higher Education institutions. The main target was to achieve a net enrollment rate of 30% for the whole system (private sector included) by 2020, twice the 2005 figure of 15%. At first, plans were made to create a new 2-year college system similar to that of the United States. But that proved infeasible. By 2005 a new plan emerged to expand the existing system of public State Technological Colleges (FATECs) composed of local or regional, colleges which offer 3-year programs, usually related to the economic and development needs of a particular area. Thus far, this program of expansion been a success, while preserving the function of the universities as more selective and research oriented enterprises. A relatively quiet revolution is under way in Brazilian HE, reflecting a global trend in many emerging economy countries where institutional diversification, including the development of a strong system of HEIs offering vocational programs, has played a key role in expanding HE access. (Contains 3 figures and 4 footnotes.)

In Brazil, electronic technicians are increasingly being asked to perform a number of technical and nontechnical tasks, for which they need complex education and training or multiskilling. The typical tasks faced by electronic technicians require a relatively high level of abstraction and symbolic learning. Required skills cover a broad range of intellectual and technical abilities. Electronics is expected to keep changing, and technicians should be able to keep up with these developments and to learn how to learn. Employers value technicians with general abilities and knowledge subsumed under the general term of trainability. They are also concerned with two major categories of theoretical knowledge: the basic principles behind the functioning of electronic systems and equipment and the specific disciplines that impart knowledge, information, and technical skills in electronics, automation, pneumatics, and mechanics. Both employers and students expect electronics to be a lifelong experience. An analysis of 30 years of curriculum change in the electronics school of Santa Rita do Sapucai shows that pure theory in the 1960s became applied in the 1970s. The critical challenge of multiskilling is to overcome the tension between the employer's demand for increasingly highly qualified technicians and the immediate realities of the workplace where repetitive jobs predominate and limit the extent to which higher skills can be used and developed. (YLB)

Brazilian environmental education and training experience is recent but has a concrete base of generating awareness among all levels of the population and also aims to train people to protect, control and manage the use of environmental resources. Several visits were made by the author to organizations, enterprises and institutions from federal, state and municipal governments that are directly and indirectly involved with environmental affairs. Contacts were also made with non governmental organizations (NGOs) and private environmental initiatives to analyze and compare alternative paths in the Brazilian environmental education and training process. This study surveyed the institutions dealing directly or indirectly with environmental concerns of the Brazilian states of Minas Gerais, Parana, Rio de Janeiro, Rio Grande do Sul, and Sao Paulois including the Federal District of Brasilia. The institutions were mainly environmental agencies, federal universities, state or federally-owned enterprises, research and scientific financing agencies, schools, research centers, and alternative initiatives. The report is organized in seven chapters containing a description of activities developed by the organizations including illustrative schemes and drawings, statistical data and concluding remarks. (Author/MDH)

Higher education institutions (HEIs) have experienced increasing pressures to provide accountability data and consumer information on the quality of teaching and learning. Existing ratings and rankings of HEIs tend to neglect information on student learning outcomes. Instead, they focus on inputs, activities and research outputs, such as resources used, classes taught, and articles published. Such indicators provide no indication of the degree to which HEIs actually develop the knowledge and skills of their students. In most countries, hardly any comparable information is available on the educational quality of different programmes and institutions. In some countries, approaches to assess higher education learning outcomes have been developed, but little cross-country information is available on the characteristics of the instruments used. This paper provides an overview of experience gained in this domain across OECD and partner countries. Based on illustrative evidence collected for 18 assessment instruments, it examines conceptual, organizational and methodological aspects of existing assessments. It proposes a typology of higher education learning outcomes and reviews the ways in which these have been assessed across countries. Examples are drawn from Australia, Brazil, Mexico, the United Kingdom and the United States. (Contains 2 footnotes and 7 tables.)

This paper provides an overview of the available information concerning selected policy instruments intended to promote employer-provided training, including the stated rationale and objectives, the target groups and operational design as well as a at a summary of the evaluative evidence regarding their operation. The analysis focuses on policy instruments providing financial assistance or incentives, specifically, subsidies (including tax incentives and grants) and levy schemes that devote a least some share of their resources to continuing training. Training leave regulations are considered only to the extent that they can be treated as a form of subsidy or a levy scheme, depending on the main financing mechanism involved. Instruments that focus solely on improving the quality of training or enhancing transparency in the training market are not addressed. In addition to offering a description of different instruments, the paper discusses the strengths and weaknesses (or risks and opportunities, respectively) of different types of instrument or particular elements of instrument design. It also specifies principles of successful instrument design that have been put forth in the literature and concludes with some remarks regarding the choice of policies. Training funds in combination with levy schemes in OECD and non-OECD countries are appended. Individual sections contain endnotes. (Contains 1 figure and 1 table.)

What drives governments with similar revenues to publicly provide very different amounts of goods for which private substitutes are available? Key examples are education and health care. This paper compares spending by Brazilian municipalities on pre-primary education--a good that is also provided privately--with spending on public infrastructure like parks and roads, which lacks private substitutes. Panel data from 1995-2008 reveal how the distribution of income affects public investment. Revenue is endogenous to investment outcomes, and the analysis addresses this problem by exploiting a 1998, nationwide education finance reform and several revisions to the policy. The author constructs a variable that captures exogenous variation in revenue generated by nonlinearities of the law to instrument for observed revenue. Municipalities with higher median income and more inequality are less likely to allocate revenue to education or to expand pre-primary enrollment. They are more likely to allocate revenue to public infrastructure. There is suggestive evidence that this occurs for two reasons, hypothesized in two separate literatures. In rich and unequal municipalities, fewer total people support public education spending (the collective choice channel), and also, any given poor person wanting public education has less influence over policymakers there (the political power channel). Appendices include: (1) Appendix Tables; (2) Institutional Detail: Pre-Primary Education in Brazil, FUNDEF, and FUNDEB; (3) Mathematical Appendix; and (4) Construction of Simulated Instrumental Variables. (Contains 15 tables, 5 figures and 45 footnotes.)

This paper examines the financing of tertiary education in Brazil, Colombia, Mexico and Peru, comparing the affordability and accessibility of tertiary education with that in high-income countries. To measure affordability, the authors estimate education costs, living costs, grants, and loans. Further, they compute the participation rate, attainment rate, and socio-economic equity index in education and the gender equity index as indicators of accessibility. This is the first study attempting to estimate affordability of tertiary education in Latin America within a global context. The analysis combines information from household surveys, expenditure surveys, and administrative and institutional databases. The findings show that families in Latin America have to pay 60 percent of per-capita income for tertiary education per student per year compared with 19 percent in high-income countries. Living costs are significant, at 29 percent of gross domestic product per capita in Latin America (19 percent in high-income countries). Student assistance through grants and loans plays a marginal role in improving affordability. Moreover, the paper confirms previous findings of low access to tertiary education in the region. One policy implication of the findings is that Latin American governments could take steps to make tertiary education more affordable through student assistance. (Contains 25 tables, 16 figures, and 25 notes.) [This paper is a product of the the World Bank's Education Sector Unit in the Human Development Sector at the Latin America and Caribbean Region.]

Do some forms of student (and school) assessment hinder the introduction of innovative educational practices and the development of innovation skills in education systems? This report focuses on the impact of high-stake summative assessment on innovation and argues that it is possible to reconcile high-stakes assessments and examinations through innovative approaches to testing. While necessary, assessment based on high-stake examinations often acts as an incentive to teach or study "to the test". It may thus limit risk-taking by teachers, students and parents, for instance. The problem may be amplified if a system of accountability and incentives uses the results of these examinations and tests to assess teachers and schools. What should be done to ensure that the systems used to assess education systems do not stifle the risk-taking inherent to innovation--and that they foster innovation skills in students? This study proposes three main ways of combining assessment and innovation: 1) developing a wide range of performance measurements for both students and schools; 2) rethinking the alignment of standards and assessment; 3) measuring the impact of assessments on teaching and learning. One way of influencing teaching and learning might be to modify high-stake testing. Systems will adapt to this, and both teaching and learning will focus on acquiring the right skills. Rather than testing the content of learning, standards could relate to cognitive skills such as problem-solving, communicating and reasoning--with test/examination developers adapting those skills to subjects such as mathematics, science or literary analysis. Similarly, more use might be made of innovative assessment methods based on information and communication technologies, inasmuch as these may feature simulation or interactivity, for instance, at a reasonable cost. Focusing the assessment on cognitive processes rather than content would leave more scope for teachers to put in place innovative teaching/learning strategies. This does, however, assume a high standard of professionalism in teachers and an adequate system of continuing training and knowledge management. As a single type of assessment cannot fully capture student learning, one effective strategy might also be to multiply the number of measurements and thus relieve the pressure on students and teachers to perform well in a single, high-visibility, high-stake test. At the same time, this larger number of measurements could provide the necessary input for systems based on accountability, diagnosis and assessment of the effectiveness of innovative practice. Finally, assessing the technical standard of tests and examinations is an integral part of their development, but it is less common to address the impact they have on teaching/learning or the validity of how their results are used. Since assessment is an integral part of the education process, it is just as important to assess tests and examinations as it is other educational practices in order to achieve improvements and innovation in educational assessment, but also in educational practice. (Contains 12 notes.)

For many years, Brazil lagged behind other middle-income countries in terms of school enrolment rates. But since 1998 policies have aimed at bridging this gap, in particular, with the implementation of FUNDEF, a fund for financing sub-national spending on primary and lower-secondary education. Using state- and municipality-level data during 1991-2002, this paper shows that FUNDEF played a key role in the increase in enrolment rates over the period, particularly in small municipalities, which rely more heavily on transfers from higher levels of government as a source of revenue. These findings underscore the importance of FUNDEF in eliminating supply constraints to the improvement of education attainment. Enrolment rates are now nearly universal for primary and lower-secondary education. Emphasis should therefore be placed on policies to improve the quality of services and to remove supply constraints to the expansion of enrolment in upper-secondary and tertiary education. (Contains 6 tables and 6 figures.)