Early Results: Did Private Outsourcing Improve Liberia's Schools? (Devex)

From the article:

An independent evaluation of a project in Liberia that outsourced the management of nearly 100 schools to mostly international private operators has revealed that student learning improved by up to 60 percent during its first year.

However, the evaluation also raised serious concerns about the financial sustainability and cost effectiveness of the program.

The report, titled “Can outsourcing improve Liberia’s schools?”, was published Thursday by think tank the Center for Global Development and research NGO Innovations for Poverty Action. It offers the first independent findings from the Partnership Schools for Liberia (PSL) program launched by the country’s Education Minister George Werner in 2016.

The project was developed in a bid to transform the country’s lagging education system, which has been decimated by years of civil war and the Ebola epidemic. According to the United Nations, nearly two-thirds of children in Liberia miss out on primary school education, the highest rate in the world.

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