How Much Difference Does School Make and For Whom? A Two-Country Study of the Impact of School Quality on Educational Attainment

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The Millennium Development Goals include ‘a full course of primary schooling’ for every child by 2015, following the target in ‘Education For All’ of universal access to ‘basic education of good quality’. While considerable progress has been made on access to basic education according to the narrow definition of school enrolment, including in many of the least-developed countries, it is less clear that progress has been made in relation to ensuring that education is of ‘good quality’. Maintaining and improving quality is especially difficult in an environment of rapid enrolment growth, but in countries where universal enrolment has been achieved in large measure, as is the case in Peru and Vietnam, improving quality of schooling is a clear and achievable priority, especially given respectable levels of economic growth and favourable demographic trends such as declining school-age populations.