The last mile in school access: Mapping education deserts in developing countries

Reaching SDG4 By 2030: characteristics of interventions that can accelerate progress in the lowest-income countries

“…To improve teaching and learning, teachers must have opportunities for professional development. There are significant disparities between how TCPD is implemented and what is known about effective TCPD implementation (Evans and Mendez Acosta 2021 ; Popova et al 2018 ). There is an urgent need to set standards for TCPD to actualise the impact of the investments being made.…”

“…“At the same time, evidence on what works to improve the quality of education is accumulating at an unprecedented rate … In recent years, hundreds of impact evaluations in low- and middle-income countries have demonstrated the effectiveness — or lack thereof — of a range of interventions at improving education outcomes, for girls and boys” ( Evans and Yuan 2019 , p. 3; referencing Popova et al 2018 ; J-PAL 2017 ).…”

Modelling geographic access and school catchment areas across public primary schools to support subnational planning in Kenya

“…While the simple approaches are easy to understand, implement and explain to stakeholders, they generalise and ignore factors that influence the journey to a school. Most of the previous studies on school access have used Euclidean distances (Lehman 2013;Rodriguez-Segura and Kim 2021), which is questionable since children's travel can significantly deviate from the trajectory of a straight line. A child's travel route to school is complex, influenced by socio-economic factors, facilitators of movement such as tracks and roads, and obstacles.…”

“…Some of the factors include distance (or travel time) to school, household wealth, affordability, parents' past education experience and travel cost (Lavy 1996;Porter et al 2010a;Porter et al 2010b;Siiba 2020;Afoakwah and Koomson 2021;Ngware and Mutisya 2021). Among these factors, particularly for primary school-going children, a significant concern is the travel time between their households and the location of the primary school (Lavy 1996;Afoakwah and Koomson 2021;Rodriguez-Segura and Kim 2021;Ngware and Mutisya 2021). Many children continue to travel long distances, which has been associated with poor schooling and learning outcomes because children are more likely to miss part of the daily instructions, announcements, and other academic activities (Lavy 1996;Cattaneo, Oggenfuss, and Wolter 2017;Afoakwah and Koomson 2021).…”

Defining service catchment areas in low-resource settings

“…This is because such applications rely on a catchment population denominator, which is in turn derived by a spatial overlay of population density maps and the geographical extent of a service catchment area. [4][5][6][7] Across SSA, population settlement and sites of service provision are often not mapped on a regular basis nor are always available at small administrative units for efficient planning. Disaggregating low-resolution census data to presumed high-resolution settlement patterns guided by satellite imagery and building footprints has increased in sophistication in recent years.…”