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Blog Post
May 05, 2023
There’s something just perfectly British about having local elections just 48 hours before an obscenely wealthy 70-something puts on a hat made from plundered jewels, sits on an ancient bit of granite and becomes King. The local elections are just about as pure a form of democracy as possible, in wh...
Blog Post
April 28, 2023
Earlier this week, my sister sent a message to the family chat which just read “Harry Belafonte”. At first, it hadn’t occurred to me that he might have passed away (surely, he was immortal?), and I just assumed she was randomly thinking about what a genius and a brilliant man he was, so I responded ...
Blog Post
April 21, 2023
John Mortimer’s third autobiography (he was very long-lived; after each one he found he went through a lot of unexpected life, hence the trilogy) opens with the reflection that the marker of elderliness is the moment you realise you cannot put on your own socks. I think the Rubicon of middle-age is ...
Blog Post
April 19, 2023
According to the IDB’s independent evaluation office, only 53 percent of IDB sovereign projects in the latest validation cycle were successful in the four core areas of relevance, effectiveness, efficiency, and sustainability. This falls considerably short when compared to the World Bank's 80 percen...
Blog Post
April 14, 2023
I’ve been away for the last couple of Fridays, so this week there is an absolute mass of material to get through this week. I’ve been brutal in editing it down: there are probably ten times as many interesting bits of esoteric statistics, development economics and political commentary from the last ...
WORKING PAPERS
April 11, 2023
This paper focuses on the content and implementation of reforms to raise teacher quality in Peru in the period 2007-2020 in the hope that other countries facing the same challenges can benefit from this experience. We conclude with reflections on how education policy and education politics have cont...
Blog Post
April 11, 2023
It is now 10 years since Jaime Saavedra became the education minister of Peru and 7 years since he left that position. This blog summarizes key insights from a new paper with former Minister Saavedra—reflections on what Peru has achieved in education over the past 15 years, what else might have been...
Blog Post
March 28, 2023
In this piece, I recap a few key messages on USAID’s call to action, honing in on the role of data and evidence in driving policy and decision-making. I argue that we need better data on the progress of maternal and child survival through improved health information systems as well as greater use of...
Blog Post
March 24, 2023
This week’s edition of The Chronicles of Unpacking is entitled “How much of my lifetime income was spent on all of these books, and why are there never enough shelves?” We’ve been unboxing books over the last four days, and we’re almost finished, but ran out of shelf space some time ago—a few are st...
Blog Post
March 17, 2023
A week into the house move there are definite signs of progress: we have a sofa, which has been thoroughly colonised by my son, who has mastered the art of arranging his four rather small limbs and body in such a fashion as to occupy as large a surface area as possible; the boxes have graduated from...