Download or read book The Quality of Health and Education Systems Across Africa written by Kathryn Andrews and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2021-12-16 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Have teachers mastered the subject matter they are teaching? Can doctors accurately diagnose and treat critical health conditions? Are schools and health facilities sufficiently stocked with needed equipment and supplies? Are they sufficiently supported and staffed to optimize learning and health care outcomes? For the past decade, the World Bank’s Service Delivery Indicators (SDI) surveys have collected nationally representative data in countries across Sub-Saharan Africa to answer these questions. The surveys aim to measure the quality of services where they meet citizens: in schools and health facilities. The Quality of Health and Education Systems Across Africa: Evidence from a Decade of Service Delivery Services Indicators identifies areas of achievement and constraint in service delivery, shedding light on how service delivery may foster or stunt human capital accumulation. SDI surveys show that schools and health clinics across Africa are still falling short in some critical areas.The delivery of primary care services is very heterogenous between and within countries. Many health facilities lack the basic necessities to provide proper care, such as essential medicines, basic diagnostic equipment, and adequate water and sanitation. Moreover, health care providers’ ability to diagnose and treat common health conditions correctly is low and distributed unevenly. Health personnel’s absence from health facilities remains a concern across the surveyed countries. Learning is low, and, not unlike health care, levels of student learning vary significantly across countries: less than half of grade 4 students can recite a simple sentence or perform basic mathematical operations. This deficient learning is correlated with teachers’ low levels of content knowledge and sub-par pedagogy skills. Some schools are also missing crucial inputs, such as blackboards or private and gendered toilets, and struggle with high pupil-teacher ratios. Despite these challenges, success stories in both sectors illustrate the quality of service delivery that could be achieved and showcase the dedication of teachers and medical staff across Africa. By studying data from thousands of facilities, considering the local context, and drawing insights from the literature, this book offers important insights for how countries can strengthen health and education systems and build back better in the wake of the massive disruptions brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Download or read book The Quality of Health and Education Systems Across Africa written by Kathryn Andrews and published by . This book was released on 2021 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Have teachers mastered the subject matter they are teaching? Can doctors accurately diagnose and treat critical health conditions? Are schools and health facilities sufficiently stocked with needed equipment and supplies? Are they sufficiently supported and staffed to optimize learning and health care outcomes? For the past decade, the World Bank's Service Delivery Indicators (SDI) surveys have collected nationally representative data in countries across Sub-Saharan Africa to answer these questions. The surveys aim to measure the quality of services where they meet citizens: in schools and health facilities. The Quality of Health and Education Systems Across Africa: Evidence from a Decade of Service Delivery Services Indicators identifies areas of achievement and constraint in service delivery, shedding light on how service delivery may foster or stunt human capital accumulation. SDI surveys show that schools and health clinics across Africa are still falling short in some critical areas.The delivery of primary care services is very heterogenous between and within countries. Many health facilities lack the basic necessities to provide proper care, such as essential medicines, basic diagnostic equipment, and adequate water and sanitation. Moreover, health care providers' ability to diagnose and treat common health conditions correctly is low and distributed unevenly. Health personnel's absence from health facilities remains a concern across the surveyed countries. Learning is low, and, not unlike health care, levels of student learning vary significantly across countries: less than half of grade 4 students can recite a simple sentence or perform basic mathematical operations. This deficient learning is correlated with teachers' low levels of content knowledge and sub-par pedagogy skills. Some schools are also missing crucial inputs, such as blackboards or private and gendered toilets, and struggle with high pupil-teacher ratios. Despite these challenges, success stories in both sectors illustrate the quality of service delivery that could be achieved and showcase the dedication of teachers and medical staff across Africa. By studying data from thousands of facilities, considering the local context, and drawing insights from the literature, this book offers important insights for how countries can strengthen health and education systems and build back better in the wake of the massive disruptions brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Download or read book Challenges of Quality Education in Sub Saharan African Countries written by D. N. Sifuna and published by . This book was released on 2010 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Quality is at the heart of all education systems as good quality teaching and learning environments ensure effective learning outcomes. Quality influences what students learn, how well they learn and what benefits they draw from their education. The quest to ensure that students achieve decent learning outcomes and acquire values and skills that help them play a positive role in their societies is an issue on the policy agenda of nearly every country. As many world governments struggle to expand particularly basic education, they also face the challenge of ensuring that students stay in school long enough to acquire the knowledge they need to cope in a rapidly changing world. The purpose of this book is therefore to profile some aspects of education quality in the African education systems and highlight key policies for improving the teaching and learning outcomes. The book is also intended to provide basic information to scholars who are interested in studying education in the Sub-Saharan African region. To enable users understand and appreciate developments, trends and changes that have taken place in the education systems, for most chapters, the book deliberately adopts a historical approach which leads to some focus on developments which date back to the colonial period in Africa.
Download or read book Historical Perspectives on the State of Health and Health Systems in Africa Volume II written by Mario J. Azevedo and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-01-24 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book focuses on Africa’s challenges, achievements, and failures over the past several centuries using an interdisciplinary approach that combines theory and fact and evidence-based practices and interventions in public health, and argues that most of the health problems in Africa are not a result of scarce or lack of resources, but of the misconceived and misplaced priorities that have left the continent behind every other on the globe in terms of health, education, and equitable distribution of opportunities and access to (quality) health as agreed by the United Nations member states at Alma-Ata in 1978.
Download or read book Higher Education Quality Assurance in Sub Saharan Africa written by Peter Nicolas Materu and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2007 with total page 108 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This report assesses the status and practice of higher education quality assurance in Sub - Sahara Africa, focusing on degree - granting tertiary institutions. A main finding is that structured national - level quality assurance processes in African higher education are a very recent phenomenon and that most countries face major capacity constrains. Only about a third of them have established structured national quality assurance mechanism, often only as recently as during the last ten years. Activities differ in their scope and rigor, ranging from simple licensing of institutions by the minister responsible for higher education, to comprehensive system - wide program accreditation and ranking of institutions. Within institutions of higher learning, self assessment and academic audits are gradually being adopted to supplement traditional quality assurance methods. However, knowledge about and experience with self - assessments are limited. The main challenges to quality assurance system in Africa are cost and human capacity requirements. For countries with large tertiary systems, the report recommends institutional, rather than program accreditation as a cost - effective option. However, where tertiary systems are small and underdeveloped, a less formal self - assessment for each institution may be necessary until the capacity could be strengthened to support a more formal nation quality assurance agency in the long run.
Download or read book HEALTH SERVICES IN AFRICA written by Chinua Akukwe and published by Adonis & Abbey Publishers Ltd. This book was released on 2008-04-25 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The challenges to better health services in Africa are well known: Africa lags behind all regions of the world, including other developing regions, on all indicators of better health. A recent report from the World Health Organisation for instance shows that while Africa has 20% of the world's sick people, it has only 4% of its healthcare workers - many of them vulnerable to the high mortality rate associated with malaria and notably the AIDS epidemic. The state of investment in healthcare infrastructure is also grossly inadequate as is the efficiency of healthcare delivery. But does this need to be so? What factors are responsible for this unacceptable state of affairs? Contributors to the volume examine the evolution of healthcare services in Africa, the ongoing national, regional and continental efforts to improve the delivery of healthcare in the continent, and the direct and indirect obstacles militating against the maturation of the services and their efficient delivery. The contributors - all distinguished experts in the field, who hold either challenging responsibilities in health in Africa or have worked in multiple components of the healthcare delivery system in the continent - also provide powerful personal insights and lessons learned in their current or previous work in the health sector in Africa. Some of the themes covered include clinical care and centers of excellence, healthcare finance and resource mobilization, primary health care systems and community health; preventive care and risk reduction in health; the role of reference laboratories; clinical research and partnerships, the role of epidemiology, statistics, monitoring and evaluation in health services; the role of the African Diaspora, and the role of politics in the organization of healthcare and the training of medical and other health professionals. From their analyses and experience the authors articulate proven strategies and solutions based on consensus expert opinions on how to improve the quality of health services and health outcomes in the continent.
Download or read book The Changing Landscape of Education in Africa written by David Johnson and published by Symposium Books Ltd. This book was released on 2008-05-12 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is over 40 years since Coombs (1967) first drew attention to the World Education Crisis, and specifically problems in the educational systems of countries in the developing world. Today, many of these problems remain, and are most visible in the educational systems of countries in sub-Saharan Africa. A large number of children remain out of school and for those who do enrol, less than half complete the primary education cycle. More worrying is the fact that those who do complete primary schooling leave with unacceptably low levels of knowledge and skills. The problems of access to education, and the quality of learning opportunities and learning outcomes are unevenly spread between rural and urban areas, better- and worse-off constituencies, and between boys and girls. This raises questions about the nature of the state and its commitment to equality and equity for all. The chapters in this volume argue that quality, equity and democratic accountability are inseparable objectives in the quest to strengthen and improve educational systems in the developing world. Between them they highlight the specific problems of quality, equity and democratic accountability in a number of African educational systems, and provide useful insights into ongoing work by national governments and international donor agencies to remedy these shortcomings.
Download or read book Facing Forward written by Sajitha Bashir and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2018-09-17 with total page 502 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While everybody recognizes the development challenges facing Sub-Saharan Africa, few have put together coherent plans that offer real hope for any feasible and general improvement. Facing Forward combines an evidence-based plan that not only recognizes the deep problems but provides specific prescriptions for dealing with the problems. In the simplest version, focus on the skills of the people and do it in a rational and achievable manner. †“ Eric Hanushek, Paul and Jean Hanna Senior Fellow, Hoover Institute, Stanford University This book offers a clear perspective on how to improve learning in basic education in Sub- Saharan Africa, based on extremely rigorous and exhaustive analysis of a large volume of data. The authors shine a light on the low levels of learning and on the contributory factors. They have not hesitated to raise difficult issues, such as the need to implement a consistent policy on the language of instruction, which is essential to ensuring the foundations of learning for all children. Using the framework of “From Science to Service Delivery,†? the book urges policy makers to look at the entire chain from policy design, informed by knowledge adapted to the local context, to implementation. Facing Forward: Schooling for Learning in Africa is a unique addition to the literature that is relevant for African policy makers and stakeholders. †“ Professor Hassana Alidou, Ambassador of the Republic of Niger to the United States and Canada As the continent gears itself up to provide universal basic education to all its children by 2030, it has to squarely address the challenge of how to improve learning. Facing Forward helps countries to benchmark themselves against each other and to identify concrete lines of action. It forces policy makers to think “where do I go from here?†? “what do I do differently?†? and to examine the hierarchy of interventions that can boost learning. It rightly urges Ministries of Education to build capacity through learning by doing and continuous adaptation of new knowledge to the local context. Facing Forward will unleash frank conversations about the profound reforms that are required in education policy and service delivery to ensure learning for every child on the continent. †“ Dr. Fred Matiang’I, Cabinet Secretary for the Interior and Coordination of National Government, Government of Kenya (former Cabinet Secretary for Education) Facing Forward couldn’t have come at a more opportune time as countries in the region, including Mauritius, focus more on learning outcomes rather than simply on inputs and processes in education systems. The book underscores the important point that African countries need not exclusively model themselves on high-performing education systems in the world. Much can as well be learnt from other countries at the same level of development, or lower, by virtue of the challenges they have faced and successfully overcome. This presents opportunities for greater peer-sharing and networking with these countries. Indeed a number of key focus areas are highlighted in the book that demonstrate good practices worthy of being emulated. These cover domains as diverse as enabling factors leading to improved student progression, strengthened teacher capacity, increased budgetary allocation with a focus on quality, as well as improved technical capacity of implementing agencies in the region. †“ Hon. (Mrs.) Leela Devi Dookun-Luchoomun, Minister of Education and Human Resources, Tertiary Education and Scientific Research, Republic of Mauritius
Download or read book Leapfrogging Inequality written by Rebecca Winthrop and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page 136 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Confronted with pervasive and persistent inequalities, we must make room for bold new approaches that have the potential to deliver quality learning for all children and youth--not a century from now, but today. In Leapfrogging Inequality, researchers at the Brookings Institution chart a new path for global education by examining the possibility of leapfrogging--rapidly accelerating educational progress to ensure that all young people develop the skills they need to thrive in a fast-changing world. Analyzing a catalog of nearly 3,000 global education innovations, the largest such collection to date, researchers explore the potential of current practices to enable such a leap. As part of this analysis, the book presents an evidence-based framework for getting ahead in education, which it grounds in the here-and-now by narrating exemplary stories of innovation from around the world. .
Download or read book Achieving Education for All written by Ishmael I. Munene and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2016-06-16 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Using the Education for All (EFA) global movement as the setting, this book surveys the complex labyrinths of international education policy making, the design and implementation of system-wide educational reform, and the assessment of learning outcomes in the African context. It addresses the following questions: what does it mean for African states to reform their educational systems to meet the global agenda of Education for All and the Millennium Development Goals? Under what structural conditions have African governments implemented universal primary education programs, and with what outcomes? What are the lessons learned and how do these inform the post-2015 agenda for universal primary education in Africa and other developing countries? This book provides answers to these questions and opens the possibilities for new approaches to Education for All in the context of constrained resources, unstable political climates, and the agency of local communities. It is undeniable that African governments responded to the educational goals espoused in EFA and MDG paradigms through their own “education for all” plans and expended vast resources to realize these objectives. However, there remains a serious gap in knowledge about the design of these plans, the influence of local and international forces in their development, the challenges inherent in executing comprehensive and multifaceted reforms to achieve these goals, and the success of the reform measures as evident in student learning outcomes. This book addresses this knowledge gap in three ways. First, it utilizes empirical data collected over a five-year period from six African countries—Kenya, Mali, Senegal, Nigeria, Tanzania, and Uganda—to illuminate how the global agenda on education has been debated, designed, and implemented across the continent, and with what outcomes. Second, it frames the six nation case studies within the wider logic of international educational policy agenda and the continent-wide search for education quality. Finally, the analysis of universal primary education strategies is undertaken from an interdisciplinary perspective thereby allowing a more comprehensive view of the educational reform.
Download or read book Disease Control Priorities in Developing Countries written by Dean T. Jamison and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2006-04-02 with total page 1449 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Based on careful analysis of burden of disease and the costs ofinterventions, this second edition of 'Disease Control Priorities in Developing Countries, 2nd edition' highlights achievable priorities; measures progresstoward providing efficient, equitable care; promotes cost-effectiveinterventions to targeted populations; and encourages integrated effortsto optimize health. Nearly 500 experts - scientists, epidemiologists, health economists,academicians, and public health practitioners - from around the worldcontributed to the data sources and methodologies, and identifiedchallenges and priorities, resulting in this integrated, comprehensivereference volume on the state of health in developing countries.
Download or read book World Development Report 2018 written by World Bank Group and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2017-10-16 with total page 482 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Every year, the World Bank’s World Development Report (WDR) features a topic of central importance to global development. The 2018 WDR—LEARNING to Realize Education’s Promise—is the first ever devoted entirely to education. And the time is right: education has long been critical to human welfare, but it is even more so in a time of rapid economic and social change. The best way to equip children and youth for the future is to make their learning the center of all efforts to promote education. The 2018 WDR explores four main themes: First, education’s promise: education is a powerful instrument for eradicating poverty and promoting shared prosperity, but fulfilling its potential requires better policies—both within and outside the education system. Second, the need to shine a light on learning: despite gains in access to education, recent learning assessments reveal that many young people around the world, especially those who are poor or marginalized, are leaving school unequipped with even the foundational skills they need for life. At the same time, internationally comparable learning assessments show that skills in many middle-income countries lag far behind what those countries aspire to. And too often these shortcomings are hidden—so as a first step to tackling this learning crisis, it is essential to shine a light on it by assessing student learning better. Third, how to make schools work for all learners: research on areas such as brain science, pedagogical innovations, and school management has identified interventions that promote learning by ensuring that learners are prepared, teachers are both skilled and motivated, and other inputs support the teacher-learner relationship. Fourth, how to make systems work for learning: achieving learning throughout an education system requires more than just scaling up effective interventions. Countries must also overcome technical and political barriers by deploying salient metrics for mobilizing actors and tracking progress, building coalitions for learning, and taking an adaptive approach to reform.
Download or read book COVID 19 written by Nivedita Das Kundu and published by Vij Books India Pvt Ltd. This book was released on 2021-05-31 with total page 239 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: COVID-19 pandemic has created the most significant disruption of education systems that history has ever recorded in all continents. Closures of schools and other learning spaces have impacted hugely on the world’s student population. The book contributes to the debate on experiences during the pandemics by portraying the virus's continued virulence, education disruption, impact on the social and economic sectors, medical concerns, and local and global responses. The book provides a variety of stimulated innovations within the education sector, approaches in support of education and training continuity, the accelerated changes in modes of delivering quality education, distance learning problems and the promising future of learning. Case Studies from different countries in Africa, Asia, Europe and North America have examined the massive efforts made in a short time to respond to the shocks to local and global education systems. The COVID-19 crisis and the unparalleled education disruption is far from over. So, what is the way forward? The research chapters provide experiences and new perspectives of stopping a learning crisis from becoming a generational cataclysm.
Download or read book Collaborative capacity development to complement stroke rehabilitation in Africa written by Quinette Louw and published by AOSIS. This book was released on 2020-12-31 with total page 536 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This scholarly book focuses on stroke in Africa. Stroke is a leading cause of disability among adults of all ages, contributing significantly to health care costs related to long term implications, particularly if rehabilitation is sub-optimal. Given the burden of stroke in Africa, there is a need for a book that focuses on functioning African stroke survivors and the implications for rehabilitation within the African context. In addition, there is a need to progress with contextualised, person-centred, evidence-based guidance for the rehabilitation of people with stroke in Africa, thereby enabling them to lead socially and economically meaningful lives. The research incorporated in the book used a range of primary and secondary methodological approaches (scoping reviews, systematic reviews, meta-analyses, descriptive studies, surveys, health economics, and clinical practice guideline methodology) to shed new insights into African-centred issues and strategies to optimise function post-stroke.
Download or read book Handbook of Quality of Life in African Societies written by Irma Eloff and published by Springer. This book was released on 2019-08-09 with total page 456 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This handbook reflects on quality-of-life in societies on the continent of Africa. It provides a widely interdisciplinary text with insights on quality-of-life from a variety of scientific perspectives. The handbook is structured into sections covering themes of social context, culture and community; the environment and technology; health; education; and family. It is aimed at scholars who are working towards sustainable development at the intersections of multiple scientific fields and it provides measures of both objective and subjective quality-of-life. The scholarly contributions in the text are based on original research and it spans fields of research such as cultures of positivity, wellbeing, literacy and multilinguism, digital and mobile technologies, economic growth, food and nutrition, health promotion, community development, teacher education and family life. Some chapters take a broad approach and report on research findings involving thousands, and in one case millions, of participants. Other chapters zoom in and illustrate the importance of specificity in quality-of-life studies. Collectively, the handbook illuminates the particularity of quality-of-life in Africa, the unique contextual challenges and the resourcefulness with which challenges are being mediated. This handbook provides empirically grounded conceptualizations about life in Africa that also encapsulate the dynamic, ingenious ways in which we, as Africans, enhance our quality-of-life.
Download or read book The Government Analytics Handbook written by Daniel Rogger and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2023-10-20 with total page 1197 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Government Analytics Handbook presents frontier evidence and practitioner insights on how to leverage data to strengthen public administration. Covering a range of microdata sources—such as administrative data and public servant surveys—as well as tools and resources for undertaking the analytics, it transforms the ability of governments to take a data-informed approach to diagnose and improve how public organizations work. Readers can order the book as a single volume in print or digital formats, or visit worldbank.org/governmentanalytics for modular access and additional hands-on tools. The Handbook is a must-have for practitioners, policy makers, academics, and government agencies. “Governments have long been assessed using aggregate governance indicators, giving us little insight into their diversity and how they can practically be improved. This pioneering handbook shows how microdata can be used to give scholars and practitioners granular and real insights into how states work, and practical guidance on the process of state-building.†? —Francis Fukuyama, Stanford University, author of State-Building: Governance and World Order in the 21st Century “The Government Analytics Handbook is the most comprehensive work on practically building government administration I have ever seen, helping practitioners to change public administration for the better.†? —Francisco Gaetani, Special Secretary for State Transformation, Government of Brazil “The machinery of the state is central to a country’s prosperity. This handbook provides insights and methodological tools for creating a better shared understanding of the realities of a state, to support the redesign of institutions, and improve the quality of public administration.†? —James Robinson, University of Chicago, coauthor of Why Nations Fail
Download or read book Improving Effective Coverage in Health written by Damien de Walque and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2022-05-18 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In many low- and middle-income countries, health coverage has improved dramatically in the past two decades, but health outcomes have not. As such, effective coverage—a measure of service delivery that meets a minimum standard of quality—remains unacceptably low. Improving Effective Coverage in Health examines one specific policy approach to improving effective coverage: financial incentives in the form of performance-based financing (PBF), a package reform that typically includes performance pay to frontline health workers as well as facility autonomy, transparency, and community engagement. This Policy Research Report draws on a rich set of rigorous studies and new analysis. When compared with business-as-usual, in low-income settings with centralized health systems PBF can result in substantial gains in effective coverage. However, the relative benefits of PBF—the performance pay component in particular—are less clear when it is compared with two alternative approaches, direct facility financing, which provides operating budgets to frontline health services with facility autonomy on allocation, but not performance pay, and demand-side financial support for health services (that is, conditional cash transfers and vouchers). Although PBF often results in improvements on the margins, closing the substantial gaps in effective health coverage is not yet within reach for many countries. Nonetheless, important lessons and experiences from the rollout of PBF over the past decade can guide health financing into the future. In particular, to be successful, health financing reform may need to pivot from performance pay while retaining the elements of direct facility financing, autonomy, transparency, and community engagement.
