A bolsa de estudo para o ensino fundamental privado, financiada com recursos da educação pública, está prevista na CF/88 e na LDB/96 em caráter excepcional para atender ao direito público subjetivo de acesso ao ensino fundamental. Trata-se de uma excepcionalidade, pois a Lei permite o uso deste instituto sob três condições: quando não houver vaga na escola pública próxima à residência da criança, quando a criança não possuir recursos para financiar o próprio estudo em escola privada, e como conseqüência, o poder público obrigado a investir prioritariamente na solução da falta de vagas na local de moradia do aluno bolsista. Em resumo a bolsa deve ser transitória. A pesquisa tomou o caso de Nova Iguaçu/RJ, centrandose nos anos de 1997 a 2008, no entanto, mostrou que esse Município tem concedido bolsas de estudo de forma recorrente desde, no mínimo 1990, e no mesmo lugar e a crianças não necessariamente carentes, pois a maior parte delas já estava na escola quando receberam bolsa. O que caracteriza a sua ilegalidade, a sua inconstitucionalidade. A pesquisa objetivou entender a natureza da política de concessão de bolsas no âmbito deste Município. A hipótese de que a concessão de bolsas, mais do que uma resposta ao direito público subjetivo...

Education is one of the most important drivers of the development of individuals and societies. It not only has powerful implications for the creation of human capacity, but also helps people realize their full potential and expand their connections with the world. Economic analyses repeatedly demonstrate that education gives a high economic return within the life - span of an individual and is a key factor underlying the economic growth of nations. Viewed from these perspectives, the decision at the turn of the millennium of governments and development partners to pursue the goal of Education for All (EFA) was not only an important contribution to one sector, but the launch of an endeavor with major implications for the future of humanity. The early perception of the goal of EFA was that all children should have access to education-every child should be able to exercise the right to go to school. This limited goal soon broadened to address the quality of the education that a child received at school and the factors that ensured the child was able to stay in school long enough to learn enough. These additional objectives have expanded the goal of EFA...

The approach to regulating private sector education is as unique as the countries in which the institutions are located. Governments are under considerable pressure as they endeavor to meet access to education targets at all levels, from basic to tertiary. Increasingly, governments are recognizing that they are unable to meet these demands without investment from private providers and thus are eager to ensure that providers and investors are of the highest possible quality. Many governments are endeavoring to determine the most appropriate policy framework that will enable the private sector to contribute to national education goals. Regulation of private education is an issue of critical importance for all stakeholders involved: government, providers, investors, parents, and students. How the government frames its regulatory policies will determine the ease, or difficulty, for private providers to enter the market. At their best, regulations can be welcome guidelines to enable quality providers to understand the requirements for working in a given jurisdiction. When regulations are transparent and appropriately applied...

The goal of Education for All (EFA) is to provide universal access to primary education throughout the world. To accomplish this goal, as many as 10 million classrooms will be built in developing countries by 2015. A key objective of the program is to ensure that no child is denied access to education because of disability. Access to all schools is necessary to ensure that children with disabilities can participate independently in a mainstreamed environment since most villages will have only one school building. The related construction costs, if any, are not a barrier to providing access and are insignificant when compared to the benefits. Children who are educated with their peers have greater opportunities to become productive members of their societies and be more integrated socially in their communities.

This report reviews the tools and mechanisms which could contribute to offsetting the negative effects of the current crisis on primary school outcomes in Madagascar. In a context of rapid deterioration of key education indicators, including enrollment and survival, key education stakeholders are faced with the challenging task of identifying tools and mechanisms that may contribute to rapidly restoring access to education. While a variety of programs have been implemented in the past, limited evidence exists on their potential impact on key factors influencing school outcomes. In addition, given the limited domestic and international resources at the disposal of policy-makers, priorities need to be established that will focus on the most urgent and important aspects of the current situation. This report aims at providing key stakeholders in the sector with information on existing tools and mechanisms that could potentially be used to put a halt to the rapid decline of the sectors. The analysis also identifies interventions with a strong potential to offset the effects of the crisis over the short and medium term.

The future development of Africa and its participation in the knowledge society will be greatly influenced by how Africa manages to deliver quality education to its citizens. Education forms the basis for developing innovation, science, and technology, in order to harness resources, industrialize, and participate in the global knowledge economy and for Africa to take its rightful place in the global community. While information and communication technology (ICT) has been used in many parts of the world to improve the quality and increase access to education, most African countries still face the challenge that increased expenditure on education is not necessarily achieving the expected benefits. This report examines the potential for the use of ICT to support improvement and transformation of the education sector in Africa, including brief case studies of South Africa, Uganda, and Senegal. It identifies specific opportunities and challenges, and recommends areas of intervention for governments, development partners...

The paper examines the levels and trends in access to education and educational outcomes across generations of Egyptian youth. Examination of three cohorts of individuals aged 21 to 24 (born between 1964 and 1967, 1974 and 1977, and 1982 and 1985) shows that access to education has substantially improved during the last three decades. Completion rates increased by more than 60 percent at the preparatory level and 70 percent at the secondary level and the college completion rate more than doubled. However, significant inequities remain in access to education and educational outcomes. The fraction of never enrolled among the cohorts is still large, affecting more girls than boys, more rural than urban areas, and more children of parents with lower level of education and in elementary occupations, such as subsistence agriculture. The analysis of test-scores from the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) and national examinations shows that more than a quarter of learning outcome inequality is attributable to circumstances beyond the control of a student...

Despite a decline in both monetary and multidimensional poverty rates since 2000, Haiti remains among the poorest and most unequal countries in Latin America. Two years after the 2010 earthquake, poverty was still high, particularly in rural areas. This report establishes that in 2012 more than one in two Haitians was poor, living on less than $ 2.41 a day, and one person in four was living below the national extreme poverty line of $1.23 a day. Extreme poverty declined from 31 to 24 percent between 2000 and 2012, and there have been some gains in access to education and sanitation, although access to basic services is generally low and is characterized by important inequalities. Urban areas have fared relatively better than rural areas, reflecting more nonagricultural employment opportunities, larger private transfers, more access to critical goods, and services and narrowing inequality compared to rural areas. Continued advances in reducing both extreme and moderate poverty will require greater, more broad-based growth...

Several studies explore the differences in men’s and women’s labor market participation rates and wages. Some of these differences have been linked to gender disparities in education attainment and access. The present paper contributes to this literature by analyzing the relationship between the proclivity of a firm to have a female top manager and access to education among women relative to men in the country. The paper combines the literature on women’s careers in management, which has mostly focused on developed countries, with the development literature that has emphasized the importance of access to education. Using firm-level data for 73 developing countries, the analysis finds strong evidence that countries with a higher proportion of female top managers also have higher enrollment rates for women relative to men in primary, secondary, and tertiary education.

Egypt's children and youth, representing more than one-third of the country´s population and its future, face several significant challenges, as shown by higher child poverty rates and unequal access to basic services. The objective of this report is three-fold: (i) to analyze the extent of inequality of opportunity among Egyptian children; (ii) to inform government policy on how success in life is influenced by factors predetermined at birth; and (iii) to identify policies and interventions that may contribute to improving equality of opportunity. The underlying premise is that ensuring equality of opportunity entails leveling the playing field in such a way that every child, regardless of the circumstances of his/her birth, will have an equal chance to succeed in life. This report analyzes the extent of provision of equal access to basic opportunities to all children (including healthcare, education, clean water and sanitation), and identifies the main circumstances that affect it and therefore determine human development outcomes. The analysis in this report builds on the concepts and ideas developed in the World Development Report (WDR). The findings are aimed at supporting debates and discussions...

Providing education for all has been a core objective of many governments since the launch of the Millennium Development Goals a decade ago. Basic education is the foundation of education and learning and, as such, is the point where Turkey started its push for education for all. This policy note is designed as an input for the discussion among stakeholders in Turkey on how to improve the quality and equity of basic education. The document provides an analysis and benchmarking of the performance of basic education in Turkey in each of these areas along with international evidence and a discussion of specific policy options. Although Turkey has significantly expanded access to education in the last decade, important challenges await on two interrelated fronts: quality and equity. Turkey's educational system is currently of low quality relative to the growth and competitiveness ambitions of the country and is also significantly more inequitable than other Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development...

With an estimated 115 million children not attending primary school in the developing world, increasing access to education is critical. Resource constraints limit the effectiveness of demand-based subsidies. This paper focuses on the importance of a supply-side factor -- the availability of low-cost teachers -- and the resulting ability of the market to offer affordable education. The authors first show that private schools are three times more likely to emerge in villages with government girls' secondary schools (GSS). Identification is obtained by using official school construction guidelines as an instrument for the presence of GSS. In contrast, there is little or no relationship between the presence of a private school and girls' primary or boys' primary and secondary government schools. In support of a supply-channel, the authors then show that, for villages that received a GSS, there are over twice as many educated women and that private school teachers' wages are 27 percent lower in these villages. In an environment with poor female education and low mobility...

Rwanda's recent history was marred by genocide in 1994, in which at least ten percent of the population lost their lives. Rebuilding the stock of human capital is an important part of the rehabilitation process, where the government has made efforts to broaden access to education, and enhance the quality of services. On the international stage, the education sector has also come into the limelight, specifically under the 2000 United Nations Millennium Declaration, and, the foregoing context presents clear challenges for education managers. The purpose of this report is to provide a factual basis for discussion. Noteworthy are the efforts to reduce grade repetition in primary education; and similarly, reforms in higher education finance have been launched to reduce the cost of government-sponsored overseas studies. The report is addressed to Rwanda's policymakers in the education sector, as well as to education practitioners, and should also be of interest to policymakers in other parts of the government...

Eritrea is one of the poorest countries in the world, with an average annual per capita income of US$ 200 in 2006, and ranks 157th out of 177 countries in the 2005 human development index. Rain-fed agriculture, the predominant economic activity for more than half the population, is a very risky enterprise and food security remains one of the government's main concerns. Given the security situation the government is concerned about fiscal transparency for national security reasons, but has provided access to fiscal data for a review of the education and health sectors. There have been significant improvements in access to education since independence, and improving the skills of the labor force remains critical for Eritrea's long term development. Eritrea's public resource allocation to education has increased rapidly and at 6.7 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in 2005 is slightly higher than many countries in the Africa Region. There has been a rapid expansion in tertiary education following investments in 2005 to provide an additional five colleges. The general health status of Eritrea has greatly improved since independence.

The South Asia region is home to the largest pool of individuals living under the poverty line, coupled with a fast-growing population. The importance of access to basic infrastructure services on welfare and the quality of life is clear. Yet the South Asia region's rates of access to infrastructure (sanitation, electricity, telecom, and transport) are closer to those of Sub-Saharan Africa, the one exception being water, where the South Asia region is comparable to East Asia and the pacific and Latin America and the Caribbean. The challenge of increasing access to these services across the South Asia region is compounded by the unequal distribution of existing access for households. This study improves understanding of this inequality by evaluating access across the region's physical (location), poverty, and income considerations. The paper also analyzes inequality of access across time, that is, across generations. It finds that while the regressivity of infrastructure services is clearly present in South Asia, the story that emerges is heterogeneous and complex. There is no simple explanation for these inequalities...

Indonesia, like many middle income countries, has difficulty providing universal access to education and adequate access to healthcare, particularly in poor and rural areas. To tackle these problems, the Government of Indonesia launched two large-scale programs in 2007. The programs both relied on cash transfers, but one targeted households and one targeted communities. In both cases, the transfers were designed to encourage families to meet basic health and education indicators, including prenatal visits for pregnant women, childhood immunization, regular weight monitoring, and school attendance. To push communities to focus on the most effective policies, a portion of subsequent year grants is based on how well communities do in meeting the previous year's health and education targets. In this way, the program takes aspects of conditional cash transfer and pay-for-performance programs and reformulates them to encourage community-wide performance and accountability. In order to test the effectiveness of linking grants to the previous year's performance...

Former Yugoslav Republic (FYR) of Macedonia has closed several gaps in gender inequalities, particularly in education and health, but key disparities persist in access to economic opportunities and agency, particularly among certain ethnic groups. This report provides an overview of gender disparities in several outcomes related to human and physical endowments, access to economic opportunities, and agency. In addition, it offers potential explanations of these gaps and, in the process, identifies knowledge gaps to be addressed in future research. On average, FYR Macedonia has achieved gender equality in health and in education; however, gender disparities persist for certain population subgroups. However, women are more likely than men to choose general programs or social sciences as their primary field of education. Both men and women are unlikely to undertake additional training following their initial education, but each for different reasons: women are more likely than men to cite family obligations as a key factor in this decision (19 percent of women compared to 1.5 percent of men) as women devote a much larger percentage of their time to domestic activities. In addition...

This assessment provides a broad picture of gender disparities in Moldova in agency, education, health, and access to economic opportunities. The gender gap in education is small, yet it is greatest at higher levels of education. Moldova's health indicators are significantly underperforming compared to other Europe and Central Asia (ECA) countries, and male mortality is of greatest concern. Violence against women is one of the most frequent forms of human rights violations and is widely accepted by both women and men. Male and female labor force participation rates are low, and the gender gap is small. Moldova has one of the highest rates of human trafficking among neighboring countries and is primarily a source country. This paper is structured as follows: chapter one discusses factors which may shape the process of how men and women use their endowments and utilize economic opportunities. Chapter two covers human development disaggregated by gender, focusing on education and health. Chapter three examines the gender gap in employment and opportunities...

In determining whether a country's higher education system should be expanded, it is important for policymakers first to determine the extent to which high private returns to post-secondary education are an indication of the scarcity of graduates instead of the high unobserved ability of students who choose to attend post-secondary education. To this end, the paper identifies the returns to schooling in urban China using individual-level variation in educational attainment caused by exogenous city-wide disruptions to education during the Cultural Revolution from 1966 to 1976. For city-cohorts who experienced greater disruptions, children's educational attainment became less correlated with that of their fathers and more influenced by whether their fathers held administrative positions. The analysis calculates returns to college education using data from the China Urban Labor Survey conducted in five large cities in 2001. The results are consistent with the selection of high-ability students into higher education. The analysis also demonstrates that these results are unlikely to be driven by sample selection bias associated with migration...

Higher Education institutions have developed online information services and degrees as an echo of the Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) incidence in all society fields. Equal access to education is a fundamental right; but equal access to higher education for people with disabilities is far from being achieved yet. To this inequality has to be added the difficulty of some groups to participate in the information society, the so called infoexclusion. The short number of students with disabilities in higher education makes evident the presence of barriers for this people to get into this educational level. One of them is the low degree of accessibility to digital services and studies offered by the Universities, something that can be considered a new kind of segregation.