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Teacher evaluations are conducted to inform employment decisions and teacher professional development with the ultimate goal to create beneficial student learning environments. The effectiveness and feasibility of teacher evaluations, particularly in high-stakes contexts (hiring, firing, promotion, pay-for-performance schemes), crucially depends on the support these evaluations receive from the various education stakeholders involved. While many governments around the world, including the Government of Indonesia, are interested in reforming and expanding their current teacher evaluation systems, often little is known about how principals, teachers, parents, and students perceive these evaluations. This paper uses data from a recent large-scale opinion survey in Indonesia to examine and provide rare insights into the attitudes of key education stakeholders towards teacher performance evaluations. Four key insights are identified. First, many principals and teachers agree with existing evaluation schemes employed in Indonesia, such as the teacher competence test (ujian kompetensi guru (UKG)) and the teacher performance evaluation (penilaian kinerja guru (PKG)) and are also open to reforms and the introduction of new schemes. Second, pay-for-performance schemes are generally popular among principals and teachers, and preferred over seniority-linked pay systems. Third, teachers in urban areas are more favorable towards pay-for-performance schemes than teachers in semi-urban areas. Finally, all stakeholders generally support the concept of principals, teachers, and parents fulfilling performance evaluator roles.

Education --- Teacher Salaries

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Over the last decade, research from many different countries has demonstrated the important role played by teachers in increasing students' learning and improving their academic performance. Studies from countries as different as the US and Indonesia have shown the enormous benefits that follow from having adequate and effective teachers working in a country's schools. In Indonesia, a value-added analysis of student learning outcomes found that the more teachers know, the greater the improvements in the learning competencies of primary and junior secondary students. In the US, better teaching in elementary and secondary schools has been shown to increase students' college participation rates, raise their subsequent earnings, and improve other long-term outcomes. Providing teachers with good quality professional development opportunities has been shown to be an effective way of increasing their competencies and improving student learning outcomes in many different settings. A series of systematic reviews have been undertaken recently to assess the impact of different interventions on student learning outcomes in developing countries. One of the most consistent findings from these reviews has been the positive and significant impact that interventions to strengthen teaching practice, introduce innovative instructional methods, and strengthen teachers' subject knowledge can have on student learning. However, in many countries, such professional development opportunities frequently fail to meet even minimum levels of quality and fall short of what teachers want and need.

Education --- Education For All --- Education Reform --- Human Development --- Primary Education --- Secondary Education --- Teacher Salaries --- Teacher Training

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The sound of children's voices reciting in unison could be heard from afar, as our mission approached a school in rural Cambodia. Inside a second-grade classroom, students took turns at the blackboard. One pointed with a stick at a list of words written by the teacher, while the rest recited. A colleague approached, wrote on the blackboard the same words in a different order, and asked the children to read. Suddenly, there was silence. Most kids had merely memorized the sequence of the words and could not even identify single letters. This scene is frequent. In the poorer schools of low-income countries, many students remain illiterate for years, until they finally drop out. With some care, the process is observable. Typically the teacher writes on the board some letters or words and asks students to repeat them. The letters may be scribbled, the children often sit at a distance, textbooks may be insufficient, and children may not have anyone at home to help them read. But they do repeat the words in unison, getting cues from a few knowledgeable classmates. The teachers stand by the blackboard, address students at large, and call on the few who perform well. How come this issue has not attracted attention? One reason is that in the middle-class schools of capitals students perform much better. Soon after our rural observations, we observed second graders in a middleclass school of Pnom Penh fluently handling the extremely complex Khmer script. However, the schools of the poor have less time for their students. There is teacher absenteeism, a lack of textbooks to take home, parental inability to make up for school weaknesses, no specific curricular time for reading. The result has been chronic illiteracy, high dropout and high repetition rates. To reduce repetition and maximize enrollments, some donors advise governments to promote students automatically.

Curriculum --- Economic Development --- Education --- Education For All --- Expenditures --- Higher Education --- Lifelong Learning --- Nutrition --- Primary Education --- Quality of Education --- Reading --- Schools --- Teacher Salaries --- Teacher Training --- Teachers --- Technical Assistance --- Technology Transfer --- Textbooks --- Tutoring --- Workers --- Youth

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The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has focused on increasing student learning outcomes by improving the quality of education in the country. An effective student assessment system is an important component to improving education quality and learning outcomes as it provides the necessary information to meet stakeholders' decision-making needs. In order to gain a better understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of its existing assessment system, DRC decided to benchmark this system using standardized tools developed under The World Bank's Systems Approach for Better Education Results (SABER) program. SABER is an evidence-based program to help countries systematically examine and strengthen the performance of different aspects of their education systems. The key policy areas for this students assessment are as follows: (i) Classroom Assessment; (ii) Examinations; (iii) National Large-Scale Assessment (NLSA); and (iv) International Large-Scale Assessment (ILSA).

Children --- Curriculum --- Decision Making --- Education --- Education For All --- Equity --- Human Resources --- Knowledge --- Leadership --- Primary Education --- Public Examination System --- Quality Assurance --- Quality Control --- Quality of Education --- Reading --- Schools --- Secondary Education --- Teacher Salaries --- Teacher Training --- Teachers --- Tertiary Education --- Textbooks --- Universities --- Youth

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Reliable evidence is needed to design policies that will allow overcoming Timor-Leste's remaining challenges in provision of quality education. In recent post-conflict years, aided by availability of oil revenues, Timor-Leste has been able to considerably improve availability of schools and access to education. This report presents findings of the 2012 Education Survey, collaboration between the Ministry of Education, the National Directorate of Statistics, AusAID and the World Bank. The survey collected detailed information at all primary, pre-secondary and secondary schools in the country. Its objectives were to support the improvement of Timor-Leste's education quality and service delivery through building a solid information source and analytical foundation which will allow for sound, evidence-based policy making. The survey results indicate that student absenteeism should be a major cause for concern. More than one third of grade one students were absent from school on the day of the survey, in some districts it was half or even more. Education levels of primary school teachers are low, with the majority only having secondary education. For 71 percent of primary school teachers the highest level of education is secondary school, for 6 percent it is even lower. Both demand and supply side interventions are needed to tackle the challenges faced. Some key policy areas should be: 1) improving school attendance through creating appropriate demand-side incentives; 2) enhancing teacher quality; 3) strengthening instruction language policy; 4) improving education system management; 5) improving school infrastructure and learning environment; and 6) ensuring adequate supply of textbooks.

Access to Education --- Capacity Building --- Curriculum --- Decentralization --- Decision Making --- Economic Development --- Education --- Education For All --- Educational Institutions & Facilities --- Ethics --- Human Development --- Leadership --- Literacy --- Mobility --- Primary Education --- Quality of Education --- Reading --- Rural Population --- Sanitation --- School Attendance --- School Construction --- School Health --- Schools --- Secondary Education --- Small Schools --- Student-Teacher Ratio --- Teacher Salaries --- Teachers --- Textbooks --- Workers