Summer School (Education News and Research 154)

World Bank–HSE First International Summer School “The Role of Education in National and Regional Socioeconomic Development” | July 8–12, 2019, Moscow, Russia | The summer school included 25 young researchers from 9 countries (China, Czech Republic, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Nigeria, Poland, Russia, Uzbekistan, UK) who pursue various perspectives in the Economics of Education and Education Policy. The focus was on challenges and opportunities in modern education policy, role of education in national socioeconomic development, role of governance in linking education and development, the development of Human Capital 2.0, new trends in the labor market, how to assess the effectiveness and returns on investment in education, early child development, teacher policy and education finance. The speakers included: Isak Froumin (Institute of Education, HSE), Suhas Parandekar, Harry Patrinos, Eduardo Velez (Georgetown University​​​​​​​) and Rong Wang (Peking University).

Educational Intensive “Island 10-22” Conference | July 12 | Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology, Moscow. This is Moscow’s “silicon valley’ and home to innovations and startups. The conference brings together 1000s of people from universities in Russia looing to implement systemic changes in the field of training for technological development. I spoke on the issue of automation and its implications for education system during one of the Master Classes. We had a lively discussion of technology trends and discussed issues for the further development of education systems.

Karel Capek, the Czech writer who invented the word “robot” in 1920, used the Slavic-language word for work, robota, to make it clear what these machines would be used for…

Intergenerational Earnings Mobility in Post-Soviet Russia, by Gleb Borisov and Christopher Pissarides (Nobel Prize Winning Economist) use longitudinal data over 1994–2016 to obtain earnings information about parents and children and find intergenerational correlations for sons and daughters that are comparable to those found in the USA and UK. Sons earn more than daughters conditional on education and parents’ rank. Observable household characteristics and unobservables contribute about the same to the correlations, both more than education…

Generic and Specific Skills as Components of Human Capital: New Challenges for Education Theory and Practice | Human capital theory in recent decades has become the basis for educational policy in many developed countries… In the 21st century, fundamentally new trends in socioeconomic dynamics pose unprecedented challenges for educational systems around the world… Despite the quantitative growth of money and time spent on education, performance per unit of education costs has fallen… Educational systems need to complement practices that contribute to the development of human capital…

The return to non-cognitive skills on the Russian labor market | … significant connection between personality traits and income was detected. Openness and neuroticism have shown to be highly influential on wages. Sustainable gender and sector differences in personality impact on wages were found as well…

On Closing the Gender Gap in Education | There are gender gaps for schooling and learning. In terms of enrollment, girls lag. In terms of learning, girls outperform boys. At the same time, the returns to schooling are higher for women. The schooling gap — in terms of years of schooling completed — is decreasing over time…

Kazakh government plans to provide 46,000 people with new skills this year

 Education for Development: What Policies? | Conventional wisdom today, is that education is a catalyst for economic and social development. Yet, there is no universal agreement on what specific education policies lead to beneficial socioeconomic outcomes. This is evidenced by the continuous education reforms in all countries, rich or poor, that soon have to be replaced by other reforms in the hope of improving the system…

Toward better – On Armenia’s education reform journey

Disminución de los retornos de la educación en Guatemala

Pay by Design: Teacher Performance Pay Design and the Distribution of Student Achievement | Teachers offered “pay-for-percentile” incentives outperform teachers offered simpler schemes based on class average achievement or average gains over a school year

The Long-Run Effects of Reducing Early School Tracking | … raised individuals’ level of education and increased their wages by 4.7 percent at ages 40 to 45, with the strongest effects occurring among individuals from low socioeconomic backgrounds…

Targeting High School Scholarships to the Poor: The Impact of a Program in Mexico | A scholarship program aimed at improving graduation rates and test scores among upper secondary school students from poor backgrounds, but no impact either on graduation rates or on test scores…

Employer Learning and the Dynamics of Returns to Universities: Evidence from Chinese Elite Education during University Expansion | … substantial premium for graduating from an elite Chinese university at job entry, but it declines quickly with labor market experience, consistent with employer learning, where employers pay workers based on more easily observable group characteristics at job entry but rely less on these over time when more accurate information about individual productivity becomes available…

Does More Math in High School Increase the Share of Female STEM Workers? Evidence from a Curriculum Reform | … results provide some evidence that the reform had positive effects on the share of men completing STEM degrees and later working in STEM occupations but no such effects for women…

World Bank to support Georgia’s human capital development efforts (Agenda.ge) | Georgian Prime Minister Mamuka Bakhtadze and the World Bank’s Regional Director for the South Caucasus Sebastian Molineus spoke of “close cooperation” between the World Bank and the Government of Georgia at a meeting on the sidelines of the Batumi International Conference. Sebastian Molineus said the World Bank will support the Georgian Government’s efforts in human capital development to help the country transform into the regional leader, PM Bakhtadze’s press office reported…