Effective, evidence-based policies on post-primary education are of vital importance as many developing countries start to the see a bulge in secondary and postsecondary enrollment, the product of the achievement of near-universal access to primary school. Finding ways to deliver and promote access to high-quality post-primary education, and to ensure that education is relevant to labor market needs, is one of the great challenges of our times. This must be accomplished in countries where governments face severe budget constraints and many, of not most, parents are too poor to cover the costs out of pocket. International reports such as A Global Compact on Learning, by the Center for Universal Education at the Brookings Institution, emphasize providing opportunities for post-primary education as a first-tier policy challenge (Center for Universal Education, 2011). In addition, there has been considerably less progress in gender parity at the secondary level. Meeting these challenges will require a combination of using existing resources more effectively – which requires both understanding which inputs are key and which are not—and a range of innovations that may fundamentally alter the current methods of instruction.
