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Juxtaposed against literature that views mothers' role for their daughters' education as a human capital this paper reimagines their role by foregrounding Pakistani mothers' agency in contexts with limited opportunities. This is achieved by theorising negative capability (NC) as an analytical framework drawing on available theorisations of the concept and define it as an agentive passive refusal to be intellectually paralysed by disadvantage. We demonstrate how the concept can be applied for empirical analysis. The paper takes an ethical stance that researchers should acknowledge that regardless of contextual difficulties people's agentive and intellectual faculties remain intact. Structural inequalities need to be challenged but their agentive potential also recognised. With a firm commitment that opportunities need to be made equal this paper builds on the second point to argue that even in the face of extreme disadvantage mothers' intellectual capacities to progress towards goals remain functional. We challenge the objectification of the marginalised and propose an analytical approach to understand difficulties faced as well as agency exercised by mothers facing socio-economic constraints. This work has implications for the capability approach that falls short of addressing issues of power, and policy that fails to understand the context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In many low- and lower-middle-income countries, key barriers to girls' secondary school access and learning include poverty, school inaccessibility, poor school quality, and lack of gender-sensitive practices in the classroom. The nongovernmental organization, Campaign for Female Education (CAMFED), provides a range of financial, pedagogical, and community-supported interventions aimed at removing these barriers in government secondary schools in Tanzania and Zimbabwe. Using longitudinal data, we adopt quasi-experimental methods to examine the impact of the CAMFED program on reducing secondary school dropout and improving test scores in English and mathematics. Results suggest that the CAMFED program has a significant effect on both improving access and learning for the most disadvantaged adolescent girls. However, low-performing learners remain particularly at risk of dropout, necessitating further consideration and support for these girls. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Globally, access to higher education has increased, but inequalities by socio‐economic background remain. This article explores the relationship between early schooling opportunities (and learning) and progression into higher education in four low and middle‐income countries. We analyse data from the Young Lives longitudinal study, following cohorts of young people from age 5 to 22 in four country settings: Ethiopia, Peru, Vietnam and India. We reveal wide variability in higher education participation between the four countries, with a common pattern of a very strong association between early learning and later higher education participation, even after allowing for a range of demographic characteristics. Whilst early learning is important in predicting later higher education participation, we also find that significant barriers to higher education participation remain for low socio‐economic status groups, even if they initially show good levels of learning. We track the trajectories of children who have initial good levels of learning, and hence arguably the potential to progress to higher education, and assess the extent to which socio‐economic background plays a mediating role in these trajectories. Pupils with initially good levels of learning at primary school age, but who are from poor backgrounds, fall back in terms of their relative attainment during secondary schooling years. This implies that socio‐economic status continues to be a barrier to educational attainment throughout these children's lives. We discuss the implications of these findings for policy initiatives aimed at narrowing inequalities in higher education access in poorer countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this commentary, we reflect on progress made in tracking progress towards two targets associated with the education Sustainable Development Goal, namely on global citizenship education (4.7), and on teachers (4c). We highlight that both these targets suffer from problems in their final design, with the global citizenship target becoming a 'residual target', and 4c becoming narrowly focused on the supply of teachers. In both cases, the core intention of the targets has become lost in translation into indicators, with a focus on inputs rather than outcomes. Notably, attention to equity, which is at the heart of the goal overall, and key to quality learning, has become missing in this translation. In going forward, we argue for a need for meaningful participation beyond technical experts in the articulation of both targets and indicators simultaneously, and importantly shifting the focus from institutions in the global North. • The SDG4 Global citizenship education and teacher targets are poorly framed. • Equity as core SDG4 has been lost in the framing of indicators. • Current Indicators are focused on inputs rather than outcomes. • Meaningful participation in the articulation of targets and indicators is needed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article combines large-scale bibliometric analysis of publications on education by researchers based in sub-Saharan Africa with researchers' accounts of their priorities and practice. Patterns in the thematic foci of the research from 48 countries in the region are considered from the perspective of international policy statements (the Education Sustainable Development Goal and the African Union's Agenda 2063), alongside analysis of funding, coauthorship, and citations. We find a large number of publications by these scholars in reputable journals that merit greater scholarly engagement. Furthermore, evidence presented in this article challenges claims about the dominance of Northern research agendas in sub-Saharan Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article sets out a framework for analysing research-policy partnerships for societal change in international development settings. It defines types of change associated with engaging research evidence with policy and practice and draws on existing literature to explore how partnerships between researchers, intermediaries, and evidence users may be better understood. The proposed framework sets out three interconnected qualities of effective partnerships: (1) bounded mutuality, (2) sustained interactivity, and (3) policy adaptability. We apply this framework to the articles included in this IDS Bulletin describing ESRC-DFID-funded research projects in a variety of international development scenarios. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: A large number of patients attend for radiotherapy daily. Primary nurses in the study settings aim to individualize care for their patients. The individual characteristics of patients may determine their perceptions of nursing care, and provide guidance in tailoring their care. This study aimed to assess patients' personal characteristics on their perceptions of individualized care (IC) provided by nurses during a course of radiotherapy, and to determine predictor variables that may inform nursing practice.Methods: This cross-sectional, exploratory study was conducted in three radiotherapy departments in Australia. Patients (n = 250) completed the Individualized Care Scale_Patient (ICS_P). Data were analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics, univariate analysis, and multiple regression analysis.Results: Males reported significantly higher perceptions of IC than females in 7/9 subscales. Patients with head and neck and prostate cancer, as well as those requiring hospitalization during radiotherapy, scored significantly higher in 5/9 subscales. Courses > 30 days, those not receiving chemotherapy, and partnered patients reported greater IC across all subscales. Gender and hospitalization were the main predictor variables for IC.Conclusion: Patients reported moderately high levels of IC during their radiotherapy; however, standard demographic information may provide limited insight into improving care for the individual. Patient characteristics routinely chosen, such as age, gender, and education may not predict how patients perceive their care or support the tailoring of interventions to improve IC. Researching a range of related patient characteristics may prove a more useful concept for future nursing studies aiming to predict outcomes to tailor nursing practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides insights into a decade long process of evidence production and use in support of the Government of Ghana's adoption of the Complementary Basic Education (CBE) program for out-of-school children. A review of existing evidence on the program and our semi-structured interviews with key stakeholders revealed the centrality of the government's culture of evidence-informed policy making. Our findings also highlight the importance of both formal and informal relationships between key stakeholders and the often-neglected significance of civil society in evidence production and uptake, leading to a modification of Hinton et al.'s policy impact framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most countries are far from achieving the new sustainable development target of equal access to higher education by 2030, with those in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa furthest behind. This raises questions about the allocation of public resources across the education system to promote equity. We use data from Demographic and Health Surveys and UNESCO Institute for Statistics in 31 countries in these regions to assess who benefits from public spending on education. Our results reveal an overall pattern of pro-rich education spending, increasing with education level. We find that this pattern can be traced to an allocation of resources to higher education that is disproportionate to the sub-sector’s size: even when higher education spending overall represents a small proportion of total educational expenditure, per-capita expenditure is extremely high. Given that the richest predominantly gain access to higher education, the current spending patterns are likely to reinforce wealth-driven education inequalities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using a large-scale household survey, we investigate how disparities in learning change over the primary school cycle. Even controlling for other factors, household wealth and parental schooling drive sizeable gaps in learning, increasing in magnitude over the school grades. Gender gaps also widen, although only among the poorest. In contrast to other countries, overage status is positively associated with learning early on, but its importance dissipates by later grades. While the importance of factors varies across states, household wealth predominates. The analysis highlights the importance of tackling disadvantage associated with poverty early, to avoid its effects on learning becoming entrenched. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In many low- and lower-middle-income countries, private schools are often considered to offer better quality of education than government schools. Yet, there is a lack of evidence to date on their role in reducing inequalities: namely, the extent to which private schooling improves learning among the most disadvantaged children. Our paper uses household survey data from Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda to identify whether any observed impact of private schooling on core literacy and numeracy skills differs according to children’s household wealth. We demonstrate wealth gaps in access to private schooling, and use inferential models to account for observable differences between those who do and do not enrol in private schools. In Kenya and Uganda, we find that private schooling appears to improve the chances of children learning relative to their peers in government schools, but the chances of the poorest children learning in private schools remains low and is at best equivalent to the richest learning in government schools. In Tanzania, private schooling does not seem to improve poorer children’s learning, whereas it does for richer children. These findings raise a caution about the extent to which private provision can help narrow learning inequalities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Higher education is back in the spotlight, with post-2015 sustainable development goals emphasising equality of access. In this paper, we highlight the long distance still to travel to achieve the goal of equal access to higher education for all, with a focus on poorer countries which tend to have lower levels of enrolment in higher education. Analysing Demographic and Health Survey data from 35 low- and middle-income countries in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, we show wide wealth inequalities in particular, with few if any of the poorest gaining access to higher education in some countries. We further identify that wealth and gender inequalities interact and tend to be wider in countries where levels of higher education are higher. This implies that expansion in access to higher education may predominantly benefit the rich, unless measures are taken to tackle inequalities. We find that that the rates of increase necessary for the attainment of the equal access goal by 2030 are particularly high. They pose a particularly difficult challenge given the access inequalities present from primary and secondary education in a wide majority of countries in our analysis. We therefore suggest that any measures aimed at attaining the goal need to tackle inequalities in access within a system-wide approach, focusing on the level of education at which inequalities initially manifest, alongside higher education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the role of international educational assessment in achieving the Education for All (EFA) educational goals subsequent to the year 2015. Topics addressed include measuring progress toward goals for learning outcomes, the need for improvement in the tracking and utilization of available international educational data, and a need to pay attention to gender equality and marginalisation issues.

Amongst those engaged in devising post-2015 education targets, there is general agreement on the centrality of quality. However, there is greater debate on whether the quality of education can and should be measured by learning outcomes. Even if learning outcomes are viewed as an appropriate measure, what type of outcomes should be measured? Offering lessons from the goals that were set in 2000, this article highlights the importance of making sure goals and targets are clear and measurable, and put equity at their heart. From a rights-based perspective, the paper proposes tracking progress towards a universal target that, at a minimum, ensures that all children, regardless of circumstance, complete primary school and achieve the basics in reading and mathematics. The paper illustrates the importance of adopting a ‘stepping-stones’ approach to ensure that no one is left behind by 2030, with interim targets that assess progress for the most disadvantaged. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Is education consequential for popular endorsement of democracy in developing societies and, if so, what are the mechanisms that account for this influence? We investigate the micro-foundations of the education–democracy nexus using a survey of 18 sub-Saharan African countries. We demonstrate that educational level is the strongest influence on support for democracy and rejection of non-democratic alternatives via its impact on comprehension of, and attention to, politics. This is consistent with a cognitive interpretation of the effects of education on democratic values rather than one which treats education as a marker of economic resource inequalities. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Education is commonly regarded as a state responsibility. Non-state provision is, however, increasingly prevalent in many developing countries in response to the inaccessibility and poor quality of state provision. Its unplanned growth has led to proposals for developing ‘public–private partnerships’. However, as a number of the papers in this collection indicate, such partnerships are insufficiently developed in national planning, with potentially adverse consequences for equity. More often, non-state providers are attempting to develop relationships with the state, both to strengthen their own service delivery as well as to put pressure on government to improve the quality of its own provision. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Collaboration between governments and non-state providers of basic services is increasingly a focus of attention by international agencies and national policy makers. The intention of such collaboration is to support common goals for achieving universal provision. Drawing on research in Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan, the contribution shows that collaboration can be successful where NGOs do not depend on limited sources for their funding, and invest time in building an informal relationship with government officials. In such cases, not only can collaboration strengthen NGO service provision directly, but it also provides opportunities for NGOs to engage in broader policy advocacy through insider influence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on approaches by non-government organisations (NGOs) to reach primary school-aged children excluded from access to the conventional state education system. It highlights recent shifts in international literature and agency priorities from the portrayal of NGO provision as a (non-formal) 'alternative' to (formal) state schooling, towards developing approaches for 'complementary' provision. This shift is occurring as a means of making progress towards achieving Education for All (EFA) goals. The paper then compares these international trends with attention paid to NGO provision in national education plans across four countries (Bangladesh, India, Ethiopia and Ghana). Based on the analysis of international and national approaches, the paper argues that NGO provision continues to be seen as 'second-best' to state schooling, with state schooling remaining the focus of attention for EFA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses various reports published within the issue, including one on the various forms of profit-motivated private provision, one on the nature of classroom environment in private schools, and one on various private-public relationship views in education provision.

Abstract: With the move towards achieving universal primary education, focus is increasingly shifting towards early childhood development. Within this, debates are apparent between those who view education at this stage holistically, with concern that it should not be directly linked with primary schooling, and those who view it more explicitly as contributing towards achieving universal primary completion by ensuring that children will be appropriately prepared for studying at this level. Moreover, it is apparent that views of different stakeholders vary. Evidence from Malawi indicates that national policies are closely linked with the international agenda, with a focus on holistic approaches. However, parents view pre-schooling in a narrower way, as an important step towards preparing their children for studying successfully at the primary level. Rather than considering this as parental ‘misunderstanding’, we argue that this perspective shows a greater awareness of local realities and is, therefore, more likely to support an escape from poverty. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Summary: Education is assumed to be an important influence on citizens’ understanding and endorsement of democracy, but whether this occurs in newly democratic societies with relatively low levels of educational provision is less clear. This paper explores the effect of education on understandings of and support for democratic government in Malawi—paying particular attention to the consequences of primary schooling, which remains the modal experience of Malawian voters. Analysis of a national survey indicates that primary schooling promotes citizen endorsement of democracy and rejection of non-democratic alternatives even when it has taken place under authoritarian rule, without explicit civic education. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: The Education for All Fast Track Initiative (FTI) has evolved since the 2000 World Forum on Education for All at Dakar in recognition that, without support, some countries would not achieve the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) of Universal Primary Completion by 2015. A key question that emerges is whether the FTI can help the achievement of the goal. While it is evident that some progress has been made, the analysis suggests that problems remain. These include the omission from the FTI process of those countries most off-track; inappropriate choice of benchmarks used to allocate resources; and inadequate analysis of key demand-side issues. Importantly, despite considerable momentum surrounding the FTI, it is not yet evident that donors have met their side of the bargain of coordinating their activities and providing additional funds to ensure that no country will not be thwarted in the achievement of the MDG due to insufficient resources. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This special issue is the third collection of papers Compare has published from the 2003 UKFIET/Oxford conference on The State of Education: Quantity, Quality and Outcomes . The papers presented here were originally given in the Education and Decentralisation symposium organised by Caroline Dyer, Mark Poston and David Theobald, and in the Michael Crossley and Keith Holmes symposium on Culture, Context and the Quality of Education . [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores progress in designing and implementing privatisation and decentralisation reforms in the education sector, which have become increasingly advocated by international agencies over the past two decades. Privatisation can be considered one of the organisational forms of decentralisation – indicating a transfer of authority and responsibility from government to private hands. However, in national policy, the reforms are often considered independently of each other. Importantly, evidence from Malawi indicates that there are differences in implementation of the reforms. Decentralisation is taking place by design, but progressing slowly as the central government seeks to maintain control over the education sector. By contrast, private schools have been rapidly expanding by default in some areas of Malawi, paradoxically resulting in a shift in control away from the central government, with potential adverse consequences for educational quality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following elections in 1994, the Government of Malawi embarked on an ambitious programme of free primary education (FPE), resulting in a dramatic increase in enrolment. The paper argues that the policy did not sufficiently consider the ways in which direct and indirect costs of schooling continue to be prohibitive for some households, or the effects that the expansion would have on quality. The relevance of education for the majority of children who receive only a few years of primary schooling is also questioned. The paper suggests that FPE might not be contributing to the achievement of poverty alleviation goals, as intended. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Explores the extent to which publicly-stated policy commitments towards community participation in education are realized in Malawi. Motivation for participation; Need to encourage local ownership and accountability; Marketization or entrenchment of individual responsibility for meeting social needs.

Education is receiving ever-increasing priority in the post-Washington consensus era, which views education as both a means to and end of development. However, justification for the attention given to education continues to be centrally focused on the notion of human capital. By consequence, marketisation and privatisation of education are becoming increasingly significant. With the World Bank and WTO joining forces to create a vision for a 'global education industry', emphasis is placed on free trade in educational goods and services. The paper examines critically the implications of this international education agenda for developing countries, focusing on the experience of Malawi. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Identifies individual and household characteristics of child schooling by gender in Ethiopia. Determination of the probability of a child attending and completing primary school; Impact of the characteristics on completion of primary school; Persistence of the gender gap in enrollment.

Summary: Motivation: The Government of Ethiopia has a long‐standing commitment to improving the quality of education. In recent years, this has shifted to include a more explicit focus on equity in learning outcomes. In this paper, we examine the education reform design process in the context of Ethiopia's political environment which is widely recognised as a strong developmental state. Purpose: The article examines how federal, regional, and international donor actors negotiate their interests in relation to Ethiopia's national quality education reform programme, the General Education Quality Improvement Programme for Equity (GEQIP‐E). Methods and approach: We conducted 81 semi‐structured, key informant interviews with federal and regional government officials and international donors who were involved in the design of GEQIP‐E. Findings We find that federal government was able to leverage considerable political influence over high‐level priorities and the framing of GEQIP‐E. Large donors leveraged financial influence to exclude some specific priorities, while smaller donors were able to draw on social influence and technical expertise to include priorities aligned with their interests. Regional governments—which are responsible for policy implementation—were largely excluded from the reform design process. Policy implications: Our analysis highlights the importance of recognizing and understanding different forms of influence in the dynamic process of negotiating reform between government and donors. It identifies that both government and donor voices counted in the process of negotiations, but in different ways and to varying degrees. Understanding how different actors draw on their relative political, financial, and social influence is vital for ensuring successful implementation and sustainability. Importantly, we identify that voices of local actors are left out. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents a crosscountry analysis of the impact of economic adjustment programs on female education. Decline in female enrollment rates; Gap between male and female enrollment rates.

This article explores equity with respect to South-North partnerships in the context of education research involving scholars based in sub-Saharan Africa. Drawing on large-scale bibliometric analysis of over 1,000 publications published in English between 2010 and 2018, it finds that participation in such partnerships favours a relatively small number of countries in sub-Saharan Africa. These collaborations appear to be reproducing gender imbalances in authorship. Complemented by interviews with 31 researchers based in the region, it further identifies examples of asymmetrical relationships alongside more positive partnerships and practices. Scholars based in sub-Saharan Africa were more likely to view partnerships initiated by researchers based in the region as equitable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Invisibility of children with disabilities in data on educational access and learning is a key policy challenge for tracking progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals. In this article, we report findings from a household survey undertaken in rural Punjab, Pakistan. These data enable us to identify the extent to which children with disabilities are in school and learning the basics in literacy and numeracy. We find that, perhaps contrary to expectations, many of these children in this context are in mainstream (government and private) schools, although their chances of being in school are lower than their peers. We further find that overall levels of literacy and numeracy are low, even more so for children with disabilities. Our findings corroborate recent research from other countries. The paper highlights important lessons for the policy which are of relevance to other low-income contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Research assesses learning in complementary education and school transition in Ghana. • Initial low learning is shown to be associated with subsequent low performance. • Boys are more likely than girls to escape the trap of low performance. • Greater support for most marginalised is needed in complementary and formal schools. This study examines the link between initial school performance on subsequent learning for marginalised children in the Complementary Basic Education programme in Northern Ghana. Specifically, we focus on whether initial low performance of girls and boys differentially affects learning trajectories. Drawing on longitudinal data, we find a significant association between initial and subsequent low performance as students transit into formal education, even after taking account of other potential factors. Boys are more likely than girls to improve from low attainment as they move into formal school. As such, girls are at particular risk of maintaining low levels of learning, and therefore warrant greater support within both complementary and mainstream schooling contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Following a national policy reform of early childhood education in Ethiopia, the enrolment rate increased from 5 percent in 2010 to 46 percent in 2016. • Following this large-scale expansion of early childhood education, we find that inequalities in preschool access persisted with respect to a child's geographical location, gender, age. • Parental literacy plays a significant role in determining preschool participation in both 2010 and 2016. • After the expansion, preschool participation is significantly and positively associated with children's early reading skills in primary schools. In Ethiopia, major policy reforms to increase equitable access to pre-primary education were instigated in 2010, leading to a surge in pre-primary school enrolment. This paper investigates the effects of the expansion on who gets access to pre-primary education and on readiness for primary school. We find that inequalities in pre-primary access between advantaged and disadvantaged regions of the country persist following the reforms, with girls less likely to attend school, particularly in more disadvantaged regions. More than half of children enrolled in pre-primary classrooms are below the official age of 6 years. Children from more advantaged backgrounds (those whose parents are literate, have reading materials at home, and live in urban areas) are more likely to participate in pre-primary schools both before and after the reform. Yet pre-primary education could play a role in equalizing opportunities in primary school: we find pre-primary participation to be positively associated with children's reading skills in Grades 2 and 3 of primary school after the expansion. These findings highlight the need to focus policy attention on efforts to reduce barriers to pre-primary access for children in disadvantaged circumstances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A contentious debate in academic as well as policy circles relates to the growth in private schooling in the Global South. While proponents highlight the superior learning outcomes of pupils in private schools, others have argued that this is merely a reflection of the more advantaged family background of private school pupils, rather than an effect of private schooling itself. We contribute to this debate by providing estimates derived from household fixed-effect models, which control for any observed or unobserved differences between government and private school pupils at the household level. We argue that these can be interpreted as an upper bound estimate of the effect of private schooling on learning. We rely on large-scale, comparable household survey data from Kenya, Uganda, India, and Pakistan, focusing on children enrolled in grades 2–6 of primary school. Private school attendance ranges from 12 percent in Kenya to 33 percent in rural India, with substantial within-household variation. The findings show that controlling for family background almost eliminates the positive effect of private schooling in rural Pakistan and reduces it by around half in rural India, Kenya, and Uganda, to about a quarter of a standard deviation. Subgroup analyses show that the effect of private schooling is similar for children from poor and wealthier families. We argue that the benefits of private schooling are unlikely to outweigh its social costs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates the extent to which education publications authored by researchers based in sub‐Saharan Africa are published as open access (OA). We draw on bibliometric analysis of 1,858 peer‐reviewed articles over the period 2010‒18, together with interviews with 31 academics based in the region. Overall, we find a steady increase in OA publishing in the region over this period, although the proportion of OA publications remains low. The study finds that: (1) open access articles by researchers in sub‐Saharan Africa are concentrated in journals with a lower impact factor; and (2) authors in sub‐Saharan Africa tend to publish in higher quality journals behind a paywall, rather than in lower quality journals that either have no or lower cost for open access. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Primary school enrolment in Ethiopia has more than doubled over the past two decades. In spite of this impressive achievement, and as in many low- and middle-income countries that have experienced rapid expansion, the Ethiopian education system is characterised by a 'learning crisis' in which many children are leaving school without basic numeracy and literacy skills. In this paper, we explore the relationship between low learning levels and the features of an education system characterised by a sudden increase in learners from disadvantaged backgrounds, including 'first generation learners', or students whose parents have never been to school. Using unique longitudinal school survey data, we examine whether first-generation learner status represents an additional layer of disadvantage in the Ethiopian education system; the relationship between first-generation learner status and learning outcomes; and the educational trajectories of first generational learners through primary school. Based on these findings, we consider the implications of a rising tide of access for Ethiopia as it seeks to provide equitable, quality education for all by 2030. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The education Sustainable Development Goal includes a commitment to ensuring that all children – regardless of their gender and circumstances within which they are born – should complete free, equitable and quality primary and secondary education. The Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in April 2018 re-affirmed the importance of 12 years of quality education for all, particularly marginalised groups including disadvantaged girls. To inform these commitments, this paper aims to situate the current evidence on girls' education across the 53 countries in the Commonwealth, with a particular focus on low- and lower-middle income countries where the challenges are the greatest. It identifies the current status of access to school and learning, and highlights trends in domestic and aid financing to support the targets. It then presents evidence on interventions aimed at tackling barriers to girls' access and learning to achieve the commitments. The paper argues a need not only to focus on gender parity in education – i.e. an equal proportion of girls and boys in school and learning – but also to pay greater attention to the more ambitious target of gender equality, which requires an end to discrimination if a truly level playing field is to be achieved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article talks about the provision of education services in fragile states. It reports that the Fragile State Group brings experts on governance, conflict prevention and reconstruction from development agencies to enhance development effectiveness in fragile states. Fragile states, as characterized by the Development Assistance Committee, are countries where there is a lack of political commitment or weak capacity to develop and implement pro-poor policies.

The article focuses on the provision of education in fragile states. The Fragile States Group, an organization within the Development Assistance Committee of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, works to advise donors on providing education services in countries with a lack of political commitment to develop and implement pro-poor policies. Fragile states are home to a seventh of the world population, of which a third live on $1 a day.

Across many low- and lower middle-income countries, aid donors are promoting results-based financing approaches as a means to link their funding directly with development outcomes. In this paper, we explore one such approach, the Programme for Results (PforR) financing approach in support of Ethiopia's large-scale education quality reform. We assess whether the PforR approach is fit for purpose, drawing on interviews with 72 key donor and government stakeholders. Our findings suggest that the ability of the approach to achieve its stated goals of building capacity and strengthening the system for equitable learning is limited in this context. While the approach is helping to reorient attention from inputs to results, questions remain as to whether the focus is on the right results. Our findings highlight the need for the careful design of such approaches that take account of the context including with respect to ensuring that necessary preconditions are in place prior to implementation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]